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, each of which enjoyed success on Broadway and in London and were adapted for film.

Born in Prague, Czech Republic (then part of the Austro Hungarian empire) 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 later in America he composed and published songs, piano pieces and other music, including the prize-winning set of songs, Pisne Zavisovy. The last of these, Za tichych noci, later became the basis for a famous film in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1941.

After the conservatory, Friml took a position as accompanist to the violinist Jan Kubelík. He toured with Kubelik twice in the United States (1901–02 and 1904) and moved there permanently in 1906, apparently with the support of the Czech singer Emmy Destinn. His first post in New York was as a repetiteur at the Metropolitan Opera. He had made his American piano debut at Carnegie Hall in 1904, and premiered his Piano Concerto in B major in 1906 with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Walter Damrosch. He settled for a brief time in Los Angeles where he married Mathilde Baruch (1909). They had two children, Charles Rudolf (Jr.) (1910) and Marie Lucille (1911). His second marriage was to Blanch Betters, an actress who had appeared in the chorus of Friml's musical Katinka; his third was to actress Elsie Lawson (who played the maid in Friml's Glorianna, and by whom he had a son William); and his fourth and final marriage was to Kay Wong Ling. The first three marriages ended in divorce.

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