Casting Guys and Dolls by Ron Fassler has factual errors and oversights concerning Sam Levene, the original Nathan Detroit in the original 1950 Broadway production of Guys and Dolls.
Sam Levene is synonymous with Nathan Detroit, a role he created in the original 1950 Broadway production of Guys and Dolls and reprised in the first UK production which opened 5/28/53 at the Coliseum, and the first Las Vegas production which opened 9/7/55 at The Royal Nevada, the first time a Broadway musical was produced on the strip. My dad was a consummate actor and a perfectionist; I know if he were alive, he’d be sure to point out the inaccuracies.
Abe Burrows specifically crafted the role of Nathan Detroit around Sam Levene for whose New York Jewish cadences the role was written; Sam Levene was committed and signed for the project long before Burrows ever wrote a single word of dialogue, a similar break Burrows said he had when he wrote Cactus Flower for Lauren Bacall. In “Honest, Abe: Is There Really No Business Like Show Business?”, Burrows recalls “I had the sound of their voices in my head. I knew the rhythm of their speech and it helped make the dialogue sharper and more real”.
A consummate actor, but not a singer, Sam Levene tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from Guys and Dolls, but was repeatedly reassured he was the only one meant for the role by Abe Burrows, Feuer & Martin and George S. Kaufman. Damon Runyon, author of the Guys and Dolls source material was a Sam Levene fan and wanted him for the project. Sam Levene co-starred as Horsethief in The Big Street, a 1942 film starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda produced by Damon Runyon based on Little Pinks, a Damon Runyon story written for Colliers Weekly in 1940. On 12/23/1943, Sam Levene narrated Romance in the Roaring Forties, a Christmas story by Damon Runyon for CBS radio,
Producers Cy Feuer and Ernst Martin recognized Sam Levene was born to play Nathan Detroit and were so enamored with Sam Levene’s talent they accommodated his lack of vocals skills, reducing his character’s original four songs to one duet with Adelaide, Sue Me. The creative team was so convinced Sam Levene was the best actor to play Nathan Detroit, the producers were even willing to postpone the original Broadway production to accommodate Sam Levene’s schedule.
Many articles about the original production of Guys and Dolls are superficial, only mentioning Sam Levene was not a good singer which my dad would not dispute; but that didn’t stop producers from casting him in four musicals, Let It Ride, Cafe Crow, The Prince of Grand Street and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The Forum which at the time broke box office records in Mineola, New York
But worse, many like Ron Fassler’s are sloppy. In this regard Ron Fassler incorrectly states: only no one ever considered finding out conclusively whether he could sing or not.
Who is no one?
Mr. Fassler didn’t bother to fact check. Hyperbole and exaggeration get attention and too often, unnecessarily repeated in additional erroneous articles by lazy authors.
Everyone associated with the original Broadway production of Guys and Dolls was aware Sam Levene could not sing when he signed his contract. Book writer Abe Burrows, director George S. Kaufman, composer and lyricist Frank Loesser, author Damon Runyon and producers Cy Feuer and Ernst Martin each recognized my dad couldn’t sing. It was not a surprise.
Composer and lyricist Frank Loesser specifically wrote Sue Me for Sam Levene and structured the song so he and Vivian Blaine never sang their duet show stopping number together; the son of a cantor, Sam Levene was fluent in Yiddish: Alright, already, I’m just a no-goodnick; alright, already, it’s true, so nu? So sue me. According to Variety the Guys and Dolls cast album had sales of 250,000 albums by 9/1/54.
Frank Loesser felt Nathan Detroit should be played as a brassy Broadway tough guy who sang with more grits than gravy. Sam Levene sang Sue Me with such a wonderful Runyonesque flavor that his singing had been easy to forgive, in fact it had been quite charming in its ineptitude.
Musically, Sam Levene may have been tone-deaf, but he inhabited Frank Loesser’s world as a character more than a caricature, says Fordham Professor of Music Larry Stempel, author Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater.
Composer and lyricist David Yazbek, who wrote music and lyrics for The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Band’s Visit and Tootsie observes some characters can be played by actors or actresses who are not good singers, if they deliver it right. I always think of Sam Levene who played Nathan Detroit in the original Guys and Dolls. And some of my favorite theatre singers are people who consider themselves bad singers. With a show like this (The Band’s Visit) there are some characters you can say, as long as the character is in that voice, imperfections are fine.
Although Sam Levene and Jack Albertson created the roles of the aging vaudevillians Al Lewis and Willie Clark in the original 1972 Broadway production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, Sam Levene never appeared in vaudeville.
Sam Levene was the only Guys and Dolls lead in the original 1950 company who had previously appeared on Broadway before the show opened. When Sam Levene signed his Guys and Dolls contract, his Broadway credits from 1927 to 1949 included 20 Broadway plays, many now legendary; Sam Levene originated roles in 16 of those Broadway productions.
Director George S. Kaufman knew first-hand about Sam Levene’s talent because he created the role of Max Gordon in the original 1932 Broadway production of Dinner at Eight, co-authored by the Guys and Dolls director, the first Broadway show where Levene received critical recognition; 835 performances as Patsy in the original 1935 Broadway production of “Three Men On A Horse”, a role he recreated on screen in his 1936 motion picture debut for director Mervyn LeRoy; 21 films including major roles in two of six “Thin Man” films with Myrna Loy & Dick Powell, co-starring roles in films with Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Jimmy Stewart, to name a few; numerous TV shows, a 1944 USO tour of Three Men On A Horse, the first legitimate show to go overseas, numerous national tours and starring roles in Orson Welles’ Campbell Playhouse, including Lefty in the February 17, 1939 radio production of Burlesque and the role of Owen O’Malley in the March 24, 1939 production of Twentieth Century.
Six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner Alan Alda, son of Guys and Dolls co-star Robert Alda, recalls watching Sam Levene perform Nathan Detroit while standing in the wings. In Never Have Your Dog Stuffed; And Other Things I’ve Learned, Alan Alda recalls: watching Sam Levene was thrilling. He could ride a moment as if a wild animal…New meanings occurred to him on the spot. Not only did he play the same lines differently every night, but the laughs rolled in from the audience in different places. How did he do it?
This kind of spontaneity and this utter commitment to the moment became what I wanted to have. As good as my father was, what I was seeing as they played together a few feet away was the difference between burlesque and theatre, between performing and acting. I chose acting. I wanted to be Sam.
I cherish a 6/9/92 letter from Alan Alda, who wrote One of the things I said about your dad was that he was a genius. I not only watched him from the wings every Saturday night in Guys and Dolls, I worked with him as an actor in two Broadway shows. He always amazed me
Guys and Dolls film director Joseph L. Mankiewicz wanted to cast Sam Levene as Nathan Detroit, but producer Sam Goldwyn insisted on giving the part to Frank Sinatra, who Frank Loesser felt played the part like a “dapper Italian swinger”. Mankiewicz said if there could be one person in the world more miscast as Nathan Detroit than Frank Sinatra that would be Laurence Olivier and I am one of his greatest fans; the role had been written for Sam Levene who was divine in it.
Sinatra did his best to give Nathan Detroit a few stereotyped Jewish gestures and inflections, but Frank Loesser hated how Sinatra turned the rumpled Nathan Detroit into a smoothie. Sam Levene’s husky untrained voice added to the song’s charm, not to mention its believability. Frank Loesser died in 1969, still refusing to ever watch the film version of Guys and Dolls which was released in 1955.
American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim who has eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize wrote film reviews six decades ago for Films In Review. A then 25 year old Sondheim reviewed the film version of Guys and Dolls observed Sinatra ambles through his role as Nathan Detroit as though he were about to laugh at the jokes in the script. He has none of he sob in the voice, and the incipient ulcer in the stomach, that the part requires and Sam Levene supplied so hilariously on the stage. Sinatra sings on pitch, but colorlessly; Levene sang off pitch, but acted while he sang. Sinatra’s lackadaisical performance, his careless and left handed attempt at characterization not only harm the picture immeasurably but indicate an alarming lack of professionally.
Many articles overlook any reference about Sam Levene’s extraordinary legendary performance as Nathan Detroit in the original Broadway production of Guys and Dolls. Laurence Olivier said Sam Levene’s performance as Nathan Detroit was the greatest stage performance he’d ever seen. In Loitering With Intent, an autobiography by seven time Academy Award nominee, Peter O’Toole, an actor I don’t believe my dad knew, states Sam Levene gave, uniquely, his form and pressure to the age and body of Detroit’s time, which would have pleased my lord Hamlet who wisely instructs us actors to do just that, and makes the to consider Sam Levene’s playing of Nathan (Detroit) to be one of the great classical performances of our time.
