The Playwright For Guys and Dolls
Filed Under (Uncategorized) by admin on 11-10-2011
We all know the multi-dimensional characters, the perfect dialog, and the unforgettable libretto of Guys and Dolls. But who was behind the story of Nathan, Adelaide, Sky and Sarah? It was a radio writer turned Broadway giant: Abe Burrows.
Abe Burrows began his career in radio, writing for such shows as This is New York and Duffy’s Tavern. In fact, he used ideas from those radio shows to begin forming the characters from Guys and Dolls. He enjoyed the thought of having rougher characters speak like ladies and gentlemen.Check out this link here. This is how the uniquely flawless dialog in the musical came to be.
When Burrows began writing for theatre, he didn’t think that anyone would buy tickets to a funny play that he wrote. Was he ever wrong! The first musical he wrote was Guys and Dolls, which not only ran for 1200 performances on Broadway, but won the Tony for Best Musical and was selected the winner of the 1951 Pulitzer Prize. He later went on to write such classics as Can-Can, Silk Stockings, and the infamous How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Sadly, Burrows died of Alzheimer’s disease in 1985. But his theatre legacy will live on.