Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls
Original Cast Recording
Music	Frank Loesser
Lyrics	Frank Loesser
Book	Jo Swerling Abe Burrows
Basis	The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown and "Blood Pressure" by Damon Runyon
Productions	1950 Broadway 1953 West End 1976 Broadway revival 1982 London revival 1992 Broadway revival 2005 West End revival 2008 Australia 2009 Broadway revival 2015 West End revival
Awards	Tony Award for Best Musical Tony Award for Best Book (1982) Olivier for Outstanding Musical Tony Award for Best Revival Drama Desk Outstanding Revival (2005) Olivier for Outstanding Musical

Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure" – two short stories by Damon Runyon – and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories – most notably "Pick the Winner".

The premiere on Broadway was in 1950. It ran for 1200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical has had several Broadway and London revivals, as well as a 1955 film adaptation starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine.

Guys and Dolls was selected as the winner of the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, because of writer Abe Burrows' troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Trustees of Columbia University vetoed the selection, and no Pulitzer for Drama was awarded that year.

Guys and Dolls was conceived by producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin as an adaptation of Damon Runyon's short stories. These stories, written in the 1920s and 1930s, concerned gangsters, gamblers, and other characters of the New York underworld. Runyon was known for the unique dialect he employed in his stories, mixing highly formal language and slang. Frank Loesser, who had spent most of his career as a lyricist for movie musicals, was hired as composer and lyricist. George S. Kaufman was hired as director. When the first version of the show's book, or dialogue, written by Jo Swerling was deemed unusable, Feuer and Martin asked radio comedy writer Abe Burrows to write a new version of the book.