World Theater, Opera, and Performance: Frank Loesser | I Believe in You from How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying / 1961

Frank Loesser’s beautiful song from his How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying is sung twice in the 1961 Broadway production, once as a kind of love paean to the young would-be executive, former window-washer, J. Pierrepont Finch. The second time it’s sung by the now on-the-rise businessman Ponty as a love song to himself, while all around him other young executives plot his downfall with a sub-song “Gotta Get that Man,” wherein the other employees even beg the audience “Don’t let him be such a hero!”

Only Robert Morse perfectly captured the totally self-captivated, yet utterly charming character he represented, although later Matthew Broderick and the elfin Daniel Radcliffe bravely tackled the dichotomy of a man so enchanted with himself that he is simply beautiful to watch as he stands at a sink before the mirror that reflects his charming smile—to both himself and to us. Like the secretary Rosemary Pilkington (in the original stage musical Bonnie Scot and in the movie version the glorious singer Michele Lee), we love Morse despite his obvious inability, until late in the show, to share love with anyone else. When he finally does, in the beautiful crescendo of “Rosemary” and the later all-team love-a-thon “Brotherhood of Man,” he moves on to become the Chairman of the Board of the mysterious World Wide Wicket Company.

The young Morse, long before his drag queen days of Sugar and his one-man impersonation of Truman Capote in Tru, was as cute—in his heterosexual role as Finch in How To, that my old aunts might have expressed it—as a button, with even the great gay-oriented Carl Van Vechten putting him before the camera. In real life, Morse, was married, and had five children. But you might never know it, given his gay-winking delight with his audiences.

As a character, he’s utterly terrified of women, including the well-endowed Hedy LaRue. And when he finally does fall for Rosemary, it is only after she has done nearly everything in the secret book of “How to Catch a Husband” to lasso him in, at the very moment she is not so sure that she wants her trophy. Still, she’s “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm,” and is absolutely ready to retire to New Rochelle, even though, ultimately the couple move into the World Wide Wicket Suite for the Chairman of the Board.

The great composer Loesser’s songs include some very engaging pieces, including “The Company Way,” “A Secretary Is Not a Toy,” and the nearly impossible to dance, Bob Fosse’s “Coffee Break” (we’re told they simply could not recreate it for the movie). But there’s only one song you might go home humming, the smug commitment to the self so beautifully expressed in “I Believe in You.”

Executives:

Gotta stop that man,

I gotta stop that man cold . . .

Or he'll stop me.

Big deal, big rocket,

Thinks he has the world

In his pocket.

Gotta stop, gotta stop,

Gotta stop that man.

FINCH:

Now there you are;

Yes, there's that face,

That face that somehow I trust.

It may embarrass you to hear me say it,

But say it I must, say it I must:

You have the cool, clear

Eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth;

Yet there's that upturned chin

And that grin of impetuous youth.

Oh, I believe in you.

I believe in you.

Los Angeles, September 18, 2017

Reprinted from US Theater, Opera, and Performance (September 2017).

World Theater, Opera, and Performance

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Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Frank Loesser | I Believe in You from How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying / 1961

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