Jo Sullivan Loesser: Broadway star who left a musical legacy

She made her name in ‘The Most Happy Fella’, written by husband-to-be Frank Loesser

Jo Sullivan Loesser with her husband Frank in the 1950s (Bettmann Archive/Getty)

The story of Jo Sullivan Loesser, who has died aged 91, could easily have been plucked from one of the Broadway shows she starred in. When the actor and singer left Missouri to pursue fame in New York, little did she know that she would land a Tony Award nomination, marry a prolific composer and be given creative control over some of the biggest songs of musical theatre.

Elizabeth Josephine Sullivan was born in 1927 in Mounds, Illinois. Her father worked for a lumber-distributing company and her mother sold cosmetics. After graduating from high school, she went on to study singing in St Louis, Missouri, and then took her dream of becoming a Broadway star to the Big Apple.

Despite failing to get a scholarship at the city’s prestigious Juilliard School, she was discovered singing in a nightclub and was offered the chance to be the understudy for the lead female role in Oklahoma! on Broadway.

But her career truly started to take off when she was discovered by the producers of an upcoming musical, The Most Happy Fella, written by composer and lyricist Frank Loesser. The actor was performing in The Threepenny Opera at the Theatre de Lys in Greenwich Village, when, she said: “The producers saw me and then dragged Frank down to see me.”

But landing the leading role for The Most Happy Fella wasn’t a done deal just yet. Frank Loesser opened the windows of the room when he heard Sullivan, his future wife, sing for the first time at her audition. “Too loud,” he said. He then made her audition 20 more times and tried to annoy her by making her sing “Happy Birthday to You” as highly pitched as she possibly could.

“Loud is good,” he concluded. And indeed, it was; Sullivan’s soprano voice was an outstanding fit for the role of the mail-order bride Rosabella in the acclaimed Broadway show which ran for 676 performances and for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1957.

Although they tried to keep it hidden, they would fall in love during the production of The Most Happy Fella. “Well, you just couldn’t work with Frank and not fall in love with him. I admired his work greatly, he was witty,” she said in a 2006 interview on national radio. “There was a spark there. People sort of… knew it.

“[He] was just a wonderful human being to be with and both of us were not exactly happy in the arrangements we had. Both of us were married.”

The production closed at the end of 1957, by which point Sullivan gave Loesser a deadline: either they married by 1 May 1959, or she would carry on with her career and forget about him. They married on 29 April 1959.

This was the start of a 17-year hiatus in Sullivan’s performing career. “Though I still had the longing to perform,” she said in 1980, “it wasn’t appropriate because Frank didn’t want to come home at night to an empty house.

“He wanted me to go where he went and we had two beautiful children, two girls. But it worked out fine, I was very happy.”

Until her husband’s death from lung cancer in 1969, just 10 years after they married, she accompanied him on every trip and worked closely with him while raising their two daughters, Hannah and Emily. The latter would follow in her mother’s footsteps as a singer and actor.

Jo Sullivan Loesser and Sir Paul McCartney, who owns the rights to her husband's music, although she retained creative control over the production of his plays (Getty)

Sullivan Loesser inherited her husband’s estate, including his publishing company and now had creative control over his highly sought-after theatre music from shows such as Guys and Dolls, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and The Most Happy Fella.

It wasn’t until 1977 that the acclaimed soprano would return to the stage, slowly starting to sing in Manhattan venues such as the Ballroom, the Russian Tea Room and Michael’s Pub.

She would go on to perform in bigger productions, appearing in a few reprises of Loesser’s works. In 1989, she would co-star her with daughter Emily in Together Again for The First Time at the Kaufman Theatre in New York.

Although Sir Paul McCartney owns the rights to Frank Loesser’s music today, she retained creative control over the production of his plays. She oversaw the Guys and Dolls revival on Broadway in 1992 which won a Tony Award.

Sullivan is survived her daughter Emily; two stepchildren, four grandchildren and her partner Jacquin Fink.

Jo Sullivan Loesser, actor and singer, born 28 August 1927, died 28 April 2019