Frederick Loewe was a composer who moved to the United States in 1924 and died in California in 1988. He was born in Berlin in 1901. He began composing at the age of seven and soloed as a pianist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of thirteen, making him the youngest pianist ever to do so. When he was 15, he wrote the song “Katrina,” which became his first hit. However, his work received little attention after he moved to the United States, even when he teamed up with lyricist Earle Crooker.
Loewe met Alan Jay Lerner in a New York City theater club in 1942. Before meeting Loewe, Lerner had been writing radio scripts and lyrics in New York City, where he would also die in 1986. Lerner and Loewe formed a partnership, but it had a rocky start. Their first Broadway production was a flop, and their second only ran for a few weeks.
However, in 1947, they collaborated on Brigadoon, a story that alternates between New York City and a mysterious and magical city in the Scottish highlands that is only accessible to the rest of the world for one day every hundred years. This was their first big hit, and it was turned into a movie in 1954. The title song, “Brigadoon,” “The Heather on the Hill,” and “Almost Like Being in Love” are probably the most well-known songs.
Then there was Paint Your Wagon, a play set in California during the Gold Rush that first premiered on Broadway in 1951 and was later adapted into a film in 1969. “I Talk to the Trees” and “They Call the Wind Maria” were the most popular songs. This was Lerner and Loewe’s fourth musical.
Paint Your Wagon was followed by a highly successful Broadway musical score, My Fair Lady, which broke the record for the longest-running Broadway production in 1956. The show was nominated for nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It has received at least one award for Broadway revivals in 1976, 1981, and 1993, as well as a West End revival in 2001. “The Rain in Spain,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” and “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly?” are among the well-known songs. “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” are two songs from the album. The 1964 film version received seven Academy Awards.
After that, Lerner and Loewe did a direct-to-film production, Gigi, which won nine Academy Awards. Gigi won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1958, based on a novella by Colette that had already been adapted several times. The title song and “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” are two well-known songs.
Camelot, the next Lerner and Loewe production, was a smash hit, winning five Tony Awards as a musical in 1960 and three Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards as a film in 1967. “If Ever I Would Leave You” is perhaps the most well-known song. There was tension between Lerner and Loewe during the production, and they worked with other collaborators for the next decade before reuniting in the early 1970s to adapt Gigi for a stage production in 1973 and write a score for the film The Little Prince in 1974.