Frederick Loewe was born to the Viennese couple Edmund Loewe and Rosa, née Stagl, and spent his childhood and youth with his mother in Berlin, while his father Edmund Loewe traveled the world as a singer and actor (operetta buffo). He followed him to New York City in 1924. There he kept his head above water with small jobs (including as a boxer) and as a pianist in nightclubs, beer halls and bars (alcohol prohibition was in force in the United States at the time). In the mid-1930s, he met the writer Earle Crooker, with whom he wrote his first musicals.
In 1942, he began working with songwriter Alan Jay Lerner on the new version (Life of the Party) of Salute to Spring. Brigadoon became their first joint success and their association became one of the most successful working partnerships in American theater history. My Fair Lady, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, became one of the most successful musicals and is part of the repertoire of many theaters around the world. The film adaptations of the musicals also ensured their great popularity. Lerner and Loewe received an Oscar for the title song of the film version of Gigi. The album Timeless Favourites, created in collaboration with Lionel Bart, was awarded a gold record in the UK.
After the musical Camelot, Loewe retired, partly due to the heart attack he survived in 1958, until he began working with Lerner again in the early 1970s.
