Imagine a crisp, blue Northern sky, a Canadian Mountie in a bright red tunic, and, what else—an elaborately coiffed operatic soprano singing in the middle of the woods. Yes, it was on today’s date in 1924, at the Imperial Theater in New York, that “The Indian Love Call” made its debut as part of a musical entitled “Rose-Marie,” with tunes provided by an American composer of Bohemian birth named Rudolf Friml.

This one-time Dvorak pupil was born in Prague in 1879. He scored such a hit when he debuted his own Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall in 1904 that he decided to make America his home. His early years as an American composer were pretty rough, but by 1912, “The Firefly,” his first musical on Broadway, was a great success.

Friml followed this with a string of increasingly popular New York shows. “Rose-Marie” from 1924 and “The Vagabond King” from 1925 proved to be the most lucrative, but by the mid-1930s Friml’s old-world musical style was judged too old-fashioned for the Broadway of George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Ironically, it was during the 30s that Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald films based on Friml musicals broke box office records. These campy films are now treasured precisely for their sweet, if rather affected, “period” flavor. Before retirement, Friml worked for the film industry and died in Hollywood in 1972, at the age of 92.