Abe Burrows

Songwriter, composer, writer, panelist, director, singer and pianist, educated at City College of New York and New York University. He began his writing career as a script writer for "Duffy's Taven" on radio, and later, the Rudy Vallee program. He sang in his own radio shows , in night clubs, and on television. He wrote the Broadway librettos for "Guys and Dolls" and received a Tony award and a New York Drama Critics award in 1951), and also directed "Happy Hunting", "Silk Stockings", "First Impressions", "Can-Can", "Say, Darling", and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (earning a Pulizer Prize and a Tony and New York Drama Critics awards). He directed "Two on the Aisle", "Reclining Figure", "The Golden Fleecing", and "What Makes Sammy Run?". He was also the playwright and director of "Cactus Flower".

Abe Burrows won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the musical "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying" collaborating with Frank Loesser.

In addition to his fine work as a composer and playwright, he was also much in demand as a "script doctor". If a Broadway show needed a rewrite, he was often called to do the job. His talents were so well known, he was mentioned by name in The Dick Van Dyke Show: Baby Fat (1965).

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 117-119. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

Biography in: Kurt Ganzl's "The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre". Pp. 276-277. New York: Shirmer Books, 2001. ISBN 0028649702.

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 87-88. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Frank Loesser and his musical, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" at the Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2014 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award for Midsize Musical Production.