Adelaide's Lament Lyrics – Guys and Dolls

Song Overview

Review & Highlights

“Adelaide’s Lament” snaps like a comedy bit and aches like a diary note. Vivian Blaine turns pop-psych jargon into streetwise confession, and those lyrics balance sniffs, sighs, and side-eye with perfect timing. The groove is gentle - pit brass in soft focus, reeds cushioning the patter - so every punchline lands clean.

One-line snapshot: a showgirl reads a self-help book and decides her cold is really heartbreak with a medical alias, which is funny until it’s not, then funny again.

Verse 1

The opening reads like a case study with a lipstick smear. “The average unmarried female” is both statistic and character sketch, and Blaine sells it like she’s trying not to cough on the truth.

Chorus

“A person can develop a cold” is a thesis disguised as a catchphrase - deadpan, repeatable, a shrug with rhythm. Each return tightens the setup-payoff cycle until the audience breathes with her.

Exchange/Bridge

The book’s tone shifts to warnings and syndromes; Adelaide pivots to real stakes - names, hotels, time slipping. The harmony warms, and the comic mask blinks.

Final Build

Niagara dreams detour at Saratoga; the cough becomes la grippe; the joke turns tender. By the last button, the room is hers - again.

Song Meaning and Annotations

This number treats love like a diagnosis and the city like a clinic. The joke isn’t cruel - it’s precise. A chorus girl keeps waiting, and the body starts talking in sneezes.

Adelaide always carries a handkerchief and sniffles and sneezes during her scenes. Her permanent ”cold” is a physical expression of her unhappiness that Nathan, her 14-year fiancé, won’t marry her.

The running bit - a dainty “Achoo!” - becomes character shorthand, so every laugh carries a little sting. That’s why the song sticks after the glitter falls.

Loesser’s language plays doctor and straight man at once. Scientific words bump against Broadway slang, which makes the frustration feel weirdly official.

Psychosomatic illness isn’t caused by any disease or organic condition, but by your own mind, though that doesn’t make the symptoms less “real.” Adelaide starts sneezing every time she thinks about her frustration with Nathan.

She’s translating ache into symptoms because that’s the vocabulary she’s got - and it works until it doesn’t.

Even the microbes get a cameo. It’s funny because it’s overkill, like bringing a textbook to a lovers’ quarrel.

Streptococcus bacteria can cause a number of types of infection, most commonly what we call “strep throat.” It’s generally treated with antibiotics.

Big, clinical nouns against a light swing - that contrast gives the lyric its comic pressure.

The hotel gag bites harder than it first sounds. Reputation is a character in this show, and Adelaide knows who’s watching.

She’s tired of checking into hotels with Nathan because it looks like she’s meeting him like a prostitute. She keeps getting the “fish eye” (suspicious looks) from the hotel clerk because of it.

The fish-eye line lands because the rhyme is crisp and the social math is brutal.

“Just in the legal sense” is the kind of aside that wakes a house up. The joke grins at a truth - marriage as paperwork and promise - that Adelaide hasn’t gotten to sign.

Her and Nathan are not married legally, but they’ve been together fourteen years and should be married by now.

The book says syndrome; the heart says deadline.

The home remedies are theatre props, little rattles of hope that miss the target.

Vitamin C is sometimes used to treat colds. It’s not clear vitamin A would do anything, but presumably Adelaide doesn’t know that.

So she keeps dosing herself with patience and patter, and neither cures it.

Old brand names and fizzing tablets pull the number into its era - mid-century self-help wrapped in tin and paper.

“Bromofizz” refers to Bromo-Seltzer, a mixture of acetaminophen, sodium bicarbonate, and citric acid… a popular cold and hangover remedy.

You can almost hear the tablet crackle between consonants.

The reputation piece cuts deepest: a name that isn’t his, a future that won’t arrive. Comedy lets her say it out loud without breaking.

She’s frustrated that she’s perceived as a “floozy” because she’s still with Nathan but they’re still not married.

Underneath the sparkle, that’s the tender engine of the song.

Then the rail itinerary - Niagara, Saratoga - turns romance into a racing form.

Niagara Falls is a common honeymoon destination… Saratoga Springs… has a popular horse racetrack…

Every time they get close to vows, the dice rattle. Of course they do. It’s Guys and Dolls.

Even the word “pip” pulls double duty - bird disease and dice dots. The lyric keeps a gambler’s world humming under every joke.

Pip… a disease… Interestingly, pip also refers to a dot… on a playing card… a major plot point… Nathan Detroit… has a tendency to gamble with dice.

Nothing in this song is small talk; every noun is a clue.

Message

The surface is comic, but the center is agency: if you can name a feeling, you can move it. The lyrics hand Adelaide a diagnosis so she can finally write a prescription - marry him or move on.

Emotional tone

Wry, brisk, and quietly bruised. It starts clinical, veers into confession, then circles back to a brave little smile.

Production and instrumentation

Pit orchestra warmth - reeds and muted brass - leaves air for patter. Classic Broadway voicing that flatters speech-rhythm delivery and keeps the laugh lines audible.

Key phrases, idioms, and symbols

“A person can develop…” repeats like a stamp; “la grippe” dates the era; hotels and trains map a life on hold. Every prop - handkerchief, vitamin, fizz - is a symbol without fuss.

Creation history

Frank Loesser wrote music and lyrics for Guys and Dolls, which opened November 24, 1950 at the 46th Street Theatre. Vivian Blaine originated Miss Adelaide on Broadway and repeated the role in the 1955 film; the song has since been a calling card for revivals and star albums.

Key Facts

• Featured: Vivian Blaine as Miss Adelaide
• Producer: Cy Feuer, Ernest H. Martin
• Composer/Lyricist: Frank Loesser
• Release Date: January 8, 1951 - Original Broadway Cast album on Decca
• Genre: Show tune with light swing-cabaret inflection
• Instruments: pit orchestra - reeds, muted brass, rhythm section
• Label: Decca Records (OBC); later reissues on MCA/UMe
• Mood: wry, urbane, quick
• Length: ~3:17 on the OBC configuration; film soundtrack versions around ~3:24
• Track #: typically 5 on cast album configurations
• Language: English
• Album: Guys & Dolls - Original Broadway Cast Recording
• Music style: 4/4 patter-swing; speech-rhythm lead with call-and-response tags
• Poetic meter: conversational iambs, syncopated stresses
• © Copyrights: © 1950 Frank Music Corp.

Questions and Answers

Who first performed “Adelaide’s Lament”?

Vivian Blaine originated it on Broadway in 1950 and sang it again in the 1955 film adaptation.

Why do people call it a perfect comic song?

Because every line advances story and character while keeping the laugh on time - a view echoed in NPR’s 50th-anniversary retrospective and later scholarship.

Where can I hear famous recordings?

Start with the Original Broadway Cast album, then Blaine’s film soundtrack cut; also check Debbie Reynolds on Reprise’s 1963 studio set, Faith Prince on the 1992 revival album, and Barbra Streisand’s CD bonus on The Broadway Album.

Did it chart on its own?

No single chart run stands out for the track itself, but the Guys and Dolls cast album hit No. 1 on Billboard’s best-selling 33 1/3 rpm LP chart in March 1951.

What’s with the medical vocabulary in the lyrics?

It’s a comic frame: dressing a relationship crisis in clinic talk. The jargon makes the heartbreak oddly legible - and funnier.

Awards and Chart Positions

Guys and Dolls won Best Musical at the 5th Tony Awards on March 25, 1951, with additional wins including Best Direction and Best Choreography. The Original Broadway Cast album reached No. 1 on Billboard’s best-selling 33 1/3 rpm LP chart for the week of March 17, 1951. Later renditions of Adelaide’s signature moment surfaced often - from Reprise’s 1963 studio set to Barbra Streisand’s The Broadway Album CD bonus cut - keeping the song in circulation far beyond its original run.

How to Sing Adelaide’s Lament?

Think character-first belt with speech rhythm. Keep consonants crisp, vowels narrow, and let the laugh sit on the breath. Typical published cuts live around F major to G?/F# major, with many rental keys available; practical range sits roughly G#3/Ab3 to D5, though editions vary. Tempo is a relaxed medium, text-led rather than metronomic. Save your widest resonance for the “A person can develop…” payoffs, then reset quickly for the patter lists.

• Range: about G#3/Ab3–D5 in common performance practice; some sources mark C#4–C#5 in F# major editions.
• Keys: widely published and transposable; OBC-era sheets circulate in flat keys that flatter alto/mezzo mix.
• Breath: top off before each “In other words” and before the Niagara–Saratoga travel run.
• Diction: lean into polysyllables - the joke is in the clarity.
• Acting: start clinical, let warmth creep in, and land the last “cold” with a wink, not a wallop.