Rudolf Friml

Charles Rudolf Friml (December 7, 1879 – November 12, 1972) was a Czech-born composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a brief performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States, where he became a composer. His best-known works are Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King, both of which enjoyed success on Broadway and in London and were adapted for film.

Friml was born Rudolf Antonín Frymel on December 2, 1879, in the Old Town 445, Prague, Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and was baptized Roman Catholic at the Church of Saint Giles. Friml showed aptitude for music at an early age. He entered the Prague Conservatory in 1895, where he studied the piano and composition with Antonín Dvořák. Friml was expelled from the conservatory in 1901 for performing without permission. In Prague and soon afterwards in America he composed and published songs, piano pieces and other music, including the prize-winning set of songs, Písně Závišovy. The last of these, Za tichých nocí, later became the basis for a famous film in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1941.^{[citation needed]}

After the conservatory, Friml took a position as accompanist to the violinist Jan Kubelík. He toured with Kubelík twice in the United States (1901–02, 1904) and moved there permanently in 1906, apparently with the support of the Czech singer Emmy Destinn. His first regular post in New York was as a repetiteur at the Metropolitan Opera, but he had made his American piano debut at Carnegie Hall. On November 17, 1904, there, he gave the premiere of his Piano Concerto in B-flat major with the New York Symphony, under the baton of Walter Damrosch, in a concert that also included Friml playing his own Etude de concert, Op. 4, Smetana's "Am Seegestade", Liszt's Liebesträume No. 3, the Grieg A minor piano concerto with the orchestra, and a solo improvisation.

He later settled briefly in Los Angeles where he married Mathilde Baruch (in 1909). They had two children, Charles Rudolf Jr. (born 1910) and Marie Lucille (born 1911). His second marriage was to Blanch Betters, an actress who had appeared in the chorus of Friml's musical Katinka. His third marriage was to actress Elsie Lawson (who played the maid in Friml's Glorianna, and by whom he had a son, William). His fourth and final marriage was to Kay Wong Ling. The first three marriages ended in divorce.

In 1912, it was announced that operetta diva Emma Trentini would star in a new operetta on Broadway by veteran Victor Herbert and lyricist Otto Harbach titled The Firefly. Shortly before the composition of the operetta, Trentini appeared in a special performance of Herbert's Naughty Marietta conducted by Herbert himself. When Trentini refused to sing "Italian Street Song" for an encore, an enraged Herbert stormed out of the orchestra pit refusing any further work with Trentini. Arthur Hammerstein, the upcoming operetta's sponsor, frantically began to search for another composer. Not finding another theatre composer of comparable reputation to Herbert, Hammerstein settled on the almost unknown Friml because of his classical training. After a month of work, Friml produced the score for his first theatrical success.

After tryouts in Syracuse, New York, The Firefly opened at Broadway's Lyric Theatre on December 2, 1912, to a warm reception by both the audience and the critics. The production moved to the Casino Theatre after Christmas, where it ran until March 15, 1913, for a total of 120 performances. After The Firefly, Friml produced three more operettas that each had longer runs than The Firefly, although they are not as enduringly successful. These were High Jinks (1913), Katinka (1915) and You're in Love (1917). He also contributed songs to a musical in 1915, The Peasant Girl.

Trentini was named as a co-respondent in Friml's divorce from his first wife in 1915, and evidence was introduced that they were having an affair. Another show, Sometime, written with Rida Johnson Young and starring Ed Wynn and Mae West, ran successfully on Broadway in 1918–19.

Friml wrote his most successful operettas in the 1920s. In 1924, he wrote Rose-Marie. This operetta, on which Friml collaborated with lyricists Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach and co-composer Herbert Stothart, was a hit worldwide, and a few of the songs from it also became hits including "The Mounties" and "Indian Love Call". The use of murder as part of the plot was ground-breaking among operettas and musical theatre pieces at the time.