Guys and Dolls

I have read about Guys and Dolls for the last 30 years but never saw the show. Me Broadway naive. No kidding. (I have other equally large blind spots.) Upon reading about how great the show is yet again yesterday I decided to visit YouTube, and there I found the film with Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson and Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit...which I found to be of great interest on several levels. (It's free to watch the whole thing if you don't mind the occasional ads.) First of all, I don't much like a lot of things about the style of the show and the movie. Really, I have more than a bit of a problem with mid-20th Century Broadway shows. And I'd hate to defend the sexual politics and some stereotypical elements of the Havana visit in Guys and Dolls to my wife and daughters. And the instrumental elements of the musical arrangements go from Cheesy to Wonderful to Very Cheesy. But wow, the book and the songs are GREAT!!! Some of the best songwriting, dramatic or otherwise, I've ever encountered. Great melodies. Even better lyrics. Which make for even better melodies, which of course feed back to great effect upon the words. Loesser just nails it, again and again. Perhaps better than anything I've ever heard. Sondheim is amazing, possibly a bit more crafty, but maybe that's not always a virtue. And Loesser's craft is impeccable here. He achieves exactly the right density of information again and again and makes it look effortless. To my great surprise, I even found the show emotionally moving. Also of interest is to hear Marlon Brando sing. It's him, not a ringer - the voice is unmistakable. On his first tune he tends to be a bit sharp on sustained notes. But it mostly doesn't matter whether it's precisely in tune. It's interesting to see Brando the method actor caught up in a Hollywood musical. So anyhow, even though I didn't like the movie much, I loved it.