Dorothy Fields

Dorothy Fields (July 15, 1904 – March 28, 1974) was an American lyricist, librettist, and composer born in Allenhurst, New Jersey, who grew up in New York City. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she cowrote more than 400 songs and contributed to 15 stage musicals and 26 films. She graduated from the Benjamin School for Girls in New York City in 1923, where she excelled in English, drama, and basketball and had her poems published in the school's literary magazine. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was among the first women to achieve sustained success as a songwriter in Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood.

Fields came from a family deeply embedded in show business. Her father, Lew Fields, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who formed one of the most popular comedy vaudeville duos of the late nineteenth century with Joe Weber. After the partnership dissolved in 1904, Lew Fields produced approximately 40 Broadway shows between 1904 and 1916 and earned the nickname "The King of Musical Comedy." Her mother was Rose Harris. Her two older brothers, Joseph and Herbert, both built successful Broadway careers — Joseph as a writer and producer, and Herbert as a writer who later became Dorothy's frequent collaborator. Despite these family connections, her father disapproved of her pursuing a performance career and blocked an early opportunity with a stock company in Yonkers, leading her to work as a teacher and laboratory assistant while submitting work to magazines in secret.

Early in her career, Fields appeared on stage alongside English actress Sylvia Ashley in Midnight Follies at the London Metropole, billed as "Silly and Dotty," and subsequently appeared in Tell Me More at London's Winter Gardens and The Whole Town's Talking. In 1926, she was introduced to composer Jimmy McHugh through songwriter J. Fred Coots. Her professional songwriting career began in earnest in 1928 when McHugh invited her to write lyrics for Blackbirds of 1928, a Broadway revue starring Adelaide Hall that became a hit. Fields and McHugh continued collaborating until 1935, producing songs including "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" (1928), "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930), and "Exactly Like You" (1930). During this period they also wrote specialty numbers for Cotton Club revues, many of which were recorded by Duke Ellington.

In the mid-1930s, Fields moved into film work and began collaborating with composer Jerome Kern. Together they worked on the film adaptation of Roberta and on Swing Time (1936), for which their song "The Way You Look Tonight" earned an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Other well-known songs from her career include "A Fine Romance" (1936), "Don't Blame Me" (1948), "Pick Yourself Up" (1936), "I'm in the Mood for Love" (1935), "You Couldn't Be Cuter" (1938), and "Big Spender" (1966). She also wrote lyrics for The King Steps Out (1936), directed by Josef von Sternberg and based on the early life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Returning to Broadway, Fields transitioned into work as a librettist, first collaborating with Arthur Schwartz on Stars in Your Eyes, and later reuniting with Schwartz in 1951 for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In the 1940s, she and her brother Herbert wrote the books for three Cole Porter musicals: Let's Face It!, Something for the Boys, and Mexican Hayride. In 1945, Fields brought Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II the concept for a musical based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. They agreed to produce it, and Kern was engaged to write the music; following Kern's death before work could begin, Irving Berlin was hired in his place. Dorothy and Herbert Fields wrote the book for Annie Get Your Gun, which starred Ethel Merman and ran for 1,147 performances. Fields also contributed to Arms and the Girl and By the Beautiful Sea among other Broadway productions.

Her biggest Broadway success of the 1950s was Redhead (1959), which won five Tony Awards including the Tony Award for Best Musical. In the 1960s, she began collaborating with composer Cy Coleman, and their first project together was Sweet Charity, which introduced "Big Spender." Their second collaboration, Seesaw, opened on Broadway on March 18, 1973, and closed on December 8, 1973; its signature song was "It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish."

In her personal life, Fields married Eli Lahm in 1939, having been introduced to him by Herbert Sondheim, the father of Stephen Sondheim, who referred to her as Aunt Dorothy. She and Lahm had two children, David, a jazz pianist, and Eliza. Lahm died in 1958. Fields maintained highly disciplined work habits, typically spending about eight weeks researching and developing a project before settling into a daily work routine from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. She was an amateur pianist and a lifelong devotee of classical music, which informed her ability to fit lyrics to melodic lines. Fields died of a heart attack on March 28, 1974, at the age of 69. She was inducted posthumously into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1988.