Although later naturalised American, the songwriter Frederick Loewe was born in Vienna, on 10th June 1901 (some sources give 1904), the son of an actress and Edmund Loewe, an international tenor of some note, who first sang in New York in 1905 in operetta at the Irving Place Theatre. The young Frederick trained in Europe as a concert pianist with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugen d’Albert and as a composer with Emile Reznicek and made his first appearance at the age of thirteen as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic. After achieving some fame in Europe as a songwriter in traditional Viennese operetta vein (his 1919 song Katrina proved a minor hit), in 1924 he settled with his father in New York where, after various unsuccessful attempts at carving a career as a performer and composer, he had, out of necessity, from the mid-1930s found a more congenial and lucrative niche as a club pianist and theatre organist, although, before he teamed with Lerner, there were occasional contributions to shows and two well-meaning musical flops with Earle Crooker, Salute to Spring (St. Louis, 1937) and Great Lady (Broadway, 1938). Based until the early 1960s mainly in New York and Hollywood, Loewe died in retirement in Palm Springs, California, on 14th February 1988.