Theatre Register
The Most Happy Fella

The Most Happy Fella

Shows · The Most Happy Fella

The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the 1924 play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard.

Opened
1956
Performances
676
Type
Musical
Era
Golden Age
Music: Frank Loesser

Productions3 on Broadway

1956 Imperial Theatre Original. May 3, 1956 · Joseph Anthony 676 performances
1979 Majestic Theatre Revival. October 11, 1979 · Jack O'Brien 53 performances
1992 Booth Theatre Revival. February 13, 1992 · Gerald Gutierrez 229 performances

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.

Licensing 1 entry

US Music Theatre International The Most Happy Fella matched on title alone — a lead, not a confirmed licensor

Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.

In the literature39 passages

Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella (1956) book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p4

Her solid and commanding stage presence and her no-nonsense way with a song should have catapulted her into stardom, but except for The Most Happy Fella all her appearances were in short-running musicals (Oh Captain! , Whoop-Up , and Donnybrook! ). book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p284

Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella (1956), Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (1956), and Blitzstein’s Juno (1959). book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p320

Three other musicals touched upon the basic plot of Fanny (a young woman is deserted by her lover and marries an older man), two of which were also set in France: Michel Legrand’s 1964 film musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Stephen Schwartz’s 1976 The Baker’s Wife, which closed during its pre-Broadway tryout (like… book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p426

The original cast album was released on a three-LP set by Columbia (# OL-5120-22) and later issued by Sony Broadway on CD (# 52K-48010), and it remains the definitive recording of the score. book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p538

The original London production opened on April 21, 1960, at the Coliseum for 288 performances; the cast included Inia Watts (Tony) and Helena Scott (Rosabella), with Art Lund again as Joe and Libi Staiger as Cleo, the role she had played for the 1959 revival. book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p539

Passages naming this show, found by keyword across 178 books. Where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

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