- Gained a nation-wide audience from 1965 as conductor and musical director of the popular TV variety show "Zum Blauen Bock".
- Created the Franz Grothe Stiftung (Foundation) in 1960 to assist up and coming or struggling musicians and composers.
- Pianist, conductor and composer of film music, operettas, swing jazz and popular songs.
- Was a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1933 and remained opposed to de-nazification after the war.
- Began as a sixteen-year old pianist in the orchestra of saxophonist Eric Borchardt.
- His father was a pianist, his mother a soprano.
- During the 1950's he often composed music for the films of actress Ruth Leuwerik and for the director Kurt Hoffmann.
- Wartime leader (along with Georg Haentzschel) of Germany's foremost dance band, the 'Deutsche Tanz- und Unterhaltungsorchester'.
- He took music lessons in young years and when he knew his trade for violin and piano he composed for the first time at the age of 10.
- He kept in the same way busy after the war and wrote countless scores in the 50's. This decade marked the busiest one in his composer career.
- His first success came when Richard Tauber took Rosen und Frauen, a tango from an unproduced Grothe operetta, into his repertory. The two began a long relationship, with Grothe composing or serving as accompanist on more than 300 recordings by Tauber. During this period, he was also an orchestrator for Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kalman, and Robert Stolz.
- The death of his father forced Grothe to become a working musician, playing piano in an orchestra led by Dajos Bela. During this period, he started composing, including symphonic jazz works and more traditional operetta.
- Throughout the Nazi era, Grothe was associated with light escapist musical fare in German movies; though cut off from America, he managed to emulate the same kind of rich, compelling post-Romantic music that Max Steiner was writing in Hollywood during this era.
- Franz Grothe had a "hereditary handicap" with regard to the music so to speak. His mother was a soprano, his father a pianist.
- At age four, he was proficient on the glockenspiel. At ten, he was composing songs and had given his first solo recital on the violin.
- The new medium sound film fascinated him in the 30's and with his song "Ich kenn dich nicht und liebe dich" for the movie of the same name he created his first evergreen in 1934.
- From 1938 there was hardly a movie composed by Grothe which didn't contain a melody which became a catchy tune.
- In 1992, ten years after his death, Cappriccio Records released the first modern recordings of Grothe's best film scores.
- After 1969 he retired from the film business and worked often for television.
- Franz Grothe was one of the generation of talented German film composers who did not move to America in the 1930s.
- The film composer Franz Grothe influenced the German film music during 40 years.
- He composed the score for 155 movies, among them nearly all movies with Martha Eggerth and later with Marika Rökk.
- Franz Grothe had his breakthrough in the 20's when he composed many songs for the legendary singer Richard Tauber.
- During World War II the German film industry produced many entertainment movies in order to take people's mind off there worries. With film compositions the audience was "kidnapped" into an other world by Grothe.
- Partly owing to the dire condition of the postwar German film industry, Grothe's music was absent from movies for the first five years after World War II. When he did return, he was a somewhat anachronistic figure; having outlived Lehár, Kalman, and others, he was one of the last practitioners of the light, lyrical, yet sophisticated music that they represented.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content