Song Lyric of the Day (“Guys and Dolls,” on “The Horse Right Here”)

“I got the horse right here The name is Paul Revere And here's a guy that says that the weather's clear.”—Frank Loesser, “Fugue for Tinhorns,” from Guys and Dolls (1950) 

In his memoir My Prison Without Bars, Pete Rose described a childhood visit to a race track that would lead him, years later, to gambling on baseball. Many film and theater fans such as myself think he could have gotten the same adrenaline rush without such dire consequences by listening to “Fugue for Tinhorns” from Guys and Dolls, the Frank Loesser musical that premiered at the 46th Street Theater on this date in 1950. 

The infectious adaptation of work by Damon Runyon (based largely on his short story "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown)" ran for more than 1,200 performances and has been a staple of theaters around the country ever since. 

Other songs from the show are better known than “Fugue for Tinhorns” (e.g., “Luck Be a Lady”). But watch this YouTube excerpt from the 1955 film, featuring the wonderful Stubby Kaye (pictured here) as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, and tell me if any song in the vast world of the American musical surpasses this in bravura inventiveness and transmission of unbridled joy. 

Without Playbills distributed at theaters, most people would not, on a first listening, identify the title as “Fugue for Tinhorns.” Growing up, I knew it as “Can Do,” the snippet of the song used for a Gold Medal Flour commercial. I don’t know how often that TV ad was broadcast, but it wouldn’t have mattered: once the groove entered my head, I could never forget it. 

The last time I watched the film version of Loesser’s landmark musical was a quarter century ago. At the time, Nathan Detroit’s long-term relationship with Adelaide (14 years engaged!) reminded me an awful lot of someone I knew--a fact I couldn’t resist needling this guy about.

Frank Sinatra played Nathan onscreen, much to his chagrin. The role he really wanted--one he felt he owned, practically--was that of gambler Sky Masterson. But the part went instead to the nonsinging Marlon Brando, then, like a gambler, on a a major winning streak of his own. (He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar every year from 1951 through 1954, when he finally won for On the Waterfront.)

Brando was not the Chairman of the Board’s favorite person, even before this film. When Brando was first offered, then rejected, the role of On the Waterfront’s Terry Malloy, Sinatra practically grabbed at the role. With his scrappy Hoboken upbringing, the singer-actor felt a deep affinity for the mobbed-up young man trying to avoid “a one-way ticket to Palookaville.” 

Years ago, when I saw On the Waterfront screenwriter Budd Schulberg at a book appearance at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he said Sinatra might have done very well with the role. But before filming started, the script made its way back into the hands of Brando, who had a change of heart. Sinatra had lost a very real chance for back-to-back Oscars (he had won Best Supporting Actor the year before for his comeback role in From Here to Eternity). 

So here Sinatra was, a couple of years later, still sore, and now peeved again over not getting the part of Sky Masterson. Still, he tried to swallow his disappointment--after all, enough money in a high-profile film would incline you, too, at least somewhat toward acting maturely and professionally. 

But filming, even with long-time pro Joseph Mankiewicz as director, wasn’t all that smooth. Brando’s numbers had to be spliced together from multiple takes--a fact that must have rankled Sinatra, since a) he knew he could have aced each the first time, and b) he hated multiple shots himself, because he was an instinctive actor who became progressively worse after, say, about the fifth take. (For more on this, see especially the awkward meshing of styles with co-star Edward G. Robinson during the filming of A Hole in the Head, as recounted by director Frank Capra in his memoir The Name Above the Title.) 

An episode on the set probably didn’t help matters. For the scene in which Masterson and Detroit first meet, Sinatra was required to eat cheesecake. This required multiple takes because Brando kept flubbing his lines. At last, Sinatra--who loathed cheesecake--had to call it a day because he couldn’t eat another bite. When filming began the next day, this scene was concluded on a single take.

What was Brando up to during the first set of takes? Was he trying out different ways of tackling the scene? For this actor who loved to experiment, that was possible. Did he have trouble remembering lines? That, too, was possible--an uncle of mine, who had occasion to observe the filming of On the Waterfront as a Port Authority cop, said the actor had to repeat scenes because he couldn’t remember lines.

Or was something else at play here? Did Brando, something of a practical joker, screw up the lines on purpose because he knew how much Sinatra disliked cheesecake?

That was the story that went the rounds of Hollywood. Maybe that helped account for why Sinatra began calling his co-star “Mumbles”--or why Brando, when asked years later about Sinatra, replied that he was “the kind of guy who, when he gets to Heaven, is going to give God a hard time for making him bald.”