Continuing on our topic of classic musicals, I have been thinking about the one I just rewatched the other day. I am going to assume you are familiar with Guys and Dolls.
If you aren’t, you should go right now and watch it on Netflix. I guarantee a sublime experience.
The central romantic tension of G&D is between Sky Masterson, a high rolling gambler — a man who will bet on anything — and Sarah Brown, a devout missionary who is vainly trying to convert sinners in a city filled with sin. It would appear to be the very definition of “opposites attract”. How, the audience is encouraged to wonder, could a devoted Believer and a sinful Atheist ever end up together?
In this fictional world of relatively benign gangsters — based on the short stories of Damon Runyan — all men are always referred to as guys, and all women are referred to as dolls. Even Sarah Brown — who is as far removed from the ethos of gangsters as one can get — is referred to as a “mission doll”.
Yet Sky’s central song, in some ways the linchpin of the story, is Luck, be a Lady Tonight. The song takes the form of a conversation with “Lady Luck”. He is pleading with her to allow him to win the dice roll that will allow him to get into the good graces of Sarah, with whom he has fallen in love.
In a world where absolutely all women are “dolls”, it is significant that Luck itself is referred to as a “lady”. I think this a clue that Sky is actually pleading with his own deity for divine intervention.
I believe that Frank Loesser’s lyrics were carefully chosen to clue us in here. Sky worships and believes in his Lady Luck every bit as devoutly as Sarah worships and believes in her Christian God.
When you consider this, the metaphysics of Guys and Dolls makes a lot more sense. In the end we have a true marriage of two true believers. Both partners believe in a divinely ordered universe. They just have different names for it.