Local auction house The Potomack Company released a photo Friday of Broadway composer Frank Loesser sitting at the desk in the late 1950s or '60s. The auction house will put the desk up for bidding at a live auction on Feb. 2. The Potomack Company is located at 1120 N. Fairfax St. in Old Town Alexandria.
"Baby, It's Cold Outside," a Christmas classic written in 1944, was featured in the 1949 MGM film “Neptune’s Daughter,” for which it won an Oscar.
The song has made headlines recently during the #MeToo era because of its lyrics, including "Say, what's in this drink?" Several radio stations across the country pulled the song in recent weeks from holiday playlists.
Frank Loesser's daughter Susan, 74, defended the song and her father in an interview with NBC News. "Absolutely, I get it, but I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time," she said.
“Bill Cosby ruined it for everybody,” she told TIME magazine. “Way before #Me Too, I would hear from time to time people call it a date rape song. I would get annoyed because it’s a song my father wrote for him and my mother to sing at parties. But ever since Cosby was accused of drugging women, I hear the date rape thing all the time.”
Loesser also wrote several Broadway musicals including "Guys and Dolls" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."
Loesser died of lung cancer at the age of 59 on July 26, 1969, in New York City.
