The original musical play the film is based on was one of the biggest hits of the 1950-51 Broadway season and the fifth longest-running musical of the decade. It starred Robert Alda (father of Alan) as Sky Masterson, Sam Levene as Nathan Detroit, Isabel Bigley as Sarah Brown, and Vivian Blaine as Adelaide, and won five Tony Awards.

A 1965 revival featured Jerry Orbach (from TV's Law and Order) as Sky, for which he received a Tony nomination.

Guys and Dolls was revived again in 1976 with an all-black cast featuring Robert Guillaume (TV's "Benson") as Sky who was nominated for a Tony for his performance (It was one of three nominations).

The 1992 revival, starring Nathan Lane as Nathan Detroit and Peter Gallagher as Sky Masterson ran for nearly three years and received eight Tony Award nominations, winning four, including Faith Prince as Adelaide. Prince and Lane also won Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards as Best Actor and Actress. The cast album (whose recording was the subject of a television documentary) won a Grammy.

The story continues to be a popular one. A recent show business report noted that action star Vin Diesel had met with Nicole Kidman, who made her musical debut in Moulin Rouge (2001), to discuss a remake.

Damon Runyon's writing was used as the basis for 32 films. Runyon often used the same characters from story to story. Some of the characters from Guys and Dolls appeared in other movies adapted from Runyon's work: Nathan Detroit and Harry the Horse in Butch Minds the Baby (1942), Benny Southstreet in the Bob Hope comedy The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) and Hold 'Em Yale (1935), Nicely Nicely Johnson in the Henry Fonda-Lucille Ball vehicle The Big Street (1942), often considered the best adaptation of the author's writing. Sam Levene, the actor who created the role of Nathan Detroit in the original 1950 stage production, played a character named "Horsethief" in The Big Street.

Mindy's Restaurant, hangout of the gamblers and their dolls, has also been used in other Runyon-based movies.

Because he was under contract to another record company, Frank Sinatra does not appear on the soundtrack album. But Sky Masterson's song "Luck Be a Lady," sung by Marlon Brando in the picture, later became a big hit for Sinatra. He eventually recorded Nathan Detroit's numbers for his own Reprise company as part of a series of recordings of tunes from various Broadway shows.

The title tune was given an ironic twist when it was featured in Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie about man-made humanoids.

by Rob Nixon