Dorothy Fields
b. 15 July 1905, Allenhurst, New Jersey, USA, d. 28 March 1974, New York, New York, USA. A librettist and lyricist; one of the few, and arguably the best and most successful female writers of ‘standard’ popular songs, and the first woman to be elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The list of her distinguished collaborators includes Jerome Kern, Jimmy McHugh, Sigmund Romberg, Harry Warren, J. Fred Coots, Harold Arlen, Morton Gould, Oscar Levant, Arthur Schwartz, Albert Hague, Cy Coleman and Fritz Kreisler. Dorothy Fields’ parents were Lew and Rose, better known as the famous comedy team, Weber And Fields. She had one sister, and two brothers: Joseph, who became a Broadway playwright, and Herbert (b. 26 July 1898, d. 24 March 1958), a librettist, with whom she worked frequently. Shortly after she was born (while her parents were on holiday in New Jersey), Weber and Fields termin ated their partnership, and Lew Fields became a Broadway producer and appeared in several of his own shows. It was because of her father's show business associations that Dorothy Fields, at the age of 15, took the lead in one of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's earliest musical shows, YOU'D BE SURPRISED, which played for one night at the Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom in New York. After graduating from the Benjamin Franklin High School, Fields contributed poetry to several magazines, and worked with J Fred Coots (who went on to write the music for songs such as Love Letters In The Sand, ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’, and You Go To My Head), before being introduced to the composer Jimmy McHugh at Mills Brothers Music. With McHugh, she initially wrote sundry novelty numbers, and some songs for Cotton Club revues. The new team made their Broadway debut with the complete score for Lew Leslie's BLACKBIRDS OF 1928, which starred Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Aida Ward and Adelaide Halland ran for over 500 performances. The songs included Porgy, I Must Have That Man, Doin The New Low Down’, and future standards, I Can't Give You Anything But Love and Diga Diga Doo. In the same year, McHugh and Fields’ next effort, HELLO DADDY, proved to be a family affair, with Fields’ brother Herbert as librettist, and her father as the producer and leading man, although the show's comedy hit number, In A Great Big Way, was sung by Billy Taylor. In 1930, another of Lew Leslie's lavish productions, THE INTERNATIONAL REVUE, contained two of McHugh and Fields’ most enduring songs: On The Sunny Side Of The Street, which was introduced by Harry Richman, and Exactly Like You, a duet for Richman and Gertrude Lawrence. 
After contributing Button Up Your Heart and Blue Again to the unsuccessful VANDERBILT REVUE (1930), McHugh and Fields moved to Hollywood, and, during the next few years, wrote songs for movies such as LOVE IN THE ROUGH (Go Home And Tell Your Mother, One More Waltz), CUBAN LOVE SONG (title number), Dancing Lady (My Dancing Lady), HOORAY FOR LOVE (title song, Livin In A Great Big Way’, I'm In Love All Over Again, You're An Angel), and THE NITWITS (Music In My Heart). EVERY NIGHT AT EIGHT, which starred Frances Langford, Harry Barris, Patsy Kelly, and Alice Faye, included two more McHugh and Fields all-time favourites: I'm In The Mood For Love and I Feel A Song Coming On; another, Don't Blame Me, was interpolated into the Broadway revue, CLOWNS IN CLOVER (1933). Two years later, Dorothy Fields began to work with other composers, including Jerome Kern, with whom she collaborated on the score for the film, Roberta, which included Lovely To Look At, and I Won't Dance, a song that had been in Kern's locker for a couple of years, and which, for complex contractual reasons, is usually credited to five songwriters. The Kern/Fields partnership continued with Swing Time, the sixth Fred Astaire/ Ginger Rogers screen musical. Often regarded as Kern's finest film score, the songs included Pick Yourself Up, Bojangles Of Harlem, Waltz In Swing Time, A Fine Romance (‘You're calmer than the seals in the Arctic Ocean/At least they flap their fins to express emotion’), and The Way You Look Tonight (‘With each word your tenderness grows/Tearing my fear apart/And that laugh that wrinkles your nose/Touches my foolish heart’), which gained Kern and Fields an Academy Award. During the remainder of the '30s, they worked together again on two Grace Moore vehicles, I DREAM TOO MUCH(I'M The Echo, and the title song), WHEN YOU'RE IN LOVE (Our Song, The Whistling Boy); and others such as ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS(Remind Me) and JOY OF LIVING, which starred Irene Dunne and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr., and included Just Let Me Look At You, What's Good About Good-Night?, and You Couldn't Be Cuter (‘My ma will show you an album of me that'll bore you to tears!/And you'll attract all the relatives we have dodged for years and years’). Dorothy Fields also wrote film songs with Oscar Levant (Don't Mention Love To Me, Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind), Max Steiner (I Can't Waltz Alone), and provided new lyrics to Fritz Kreisler's music in THE KING STEPS OUT. Before the end of the decade Fields was back on Broadway, working with the composer Arthur Schwartz on STARS IN YOUR EYES. Their score included This Is It, A Lady Needs A Change, Just A Little Bit More, I'll Pay The Check, and the show's highlight, It's All Yours, a duet by the stars, Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante. In the early '40s, Dorothy Fields turned from writing lyrics and collaborated with her brother Herbert on the books for three highly successful Cole Porter musicals: LET'S FACE IT (starring Danny Kaye), SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS, (Ethel Merman/Bill Johnson), and MEXICAN HAYRIDE (Bobby Clark/June Havoc), each of which ran for well over a year. In 1945, the Fields partnership again served as librettists, and Dorothy wrote the lyrics, to Sigmund Romberg's music, for the smash-hit, UP IN CENTRAL PARK. Not surprisingly, with Romberg's participation, the score had operetta overtones, and included the robust The Big Back Yard, two charming ballads, April Snow and Close As Pages In A Book, and a skating ballet in the manner of a Currier and Ives print. Towards the end of 1945, Dorothy Fields was set to collaborate again with Jerome Kern, on Annie Get Your Gun, a musical loosely based on the life of sharp-shooter, Annie Oakley. When Kern died in November of that year, Irving Berlin was brought in to write what is generally regarded as his greatest score, while Dorothy and Herbert Fields provided the highly entertaining book for a production which ran for 1,147 performances. In contrast, ARMS AND THE GIRL (1950) closed after only 134 shows, despite Rouben Mamoulian's involvement with Dorothy and Herbert Fields in a libretto which was based on the play, THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. The Dorothy Fields/Morton Gould score included Pearl Bailey's inimitable renderings of Nothin For Nothin’’ and There Must Be Somethin Better Than Love’; a strange attempt at a tender love song called A Cow, And A Plough, And A Frau, and the double entendres of That's What I Told Him Last Night. During the '50s, Dorothy Fields teamed again with Arthur Schwartz for two shows. The first, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, was a critical success, but a commercial failure. Based on Dorothy Smith's best-selling novel, the witty and melodic score included If You Haven't Got A Sweetheart, I'll Buy You A Star, Make The Man Love Me, Look Who's Dancing, Mine Till Monday, I'm Like A New Broom, and Growing Pains. Shirley Booth stopped the show each night with He Had Refinement, the story of Harry, her late spouse, who ‘only used four-letter words that I didn't understand’, and ‘undressed with all the lights off until we was wed—a gentleman to his fingernails, was he!’. The show lasted for 270 performances, and so did the second Fields/Schwartz '50s collaboration, BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA (1954), mainly due to the presence, once again, of Shirley Booth. The songs included Alone Too Long, Happy Habit, I'd Rather Wake Up By Myself, Hang Up!, More Love Than Your Love, By The Beautiful Sea, and Coney Island. Far more successful, was REDHEAD (1959), which ran for 452 performances, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Dorothy Fields and Albert Hague's score, which also won a Tony, included I Feel Merely Marvelous, I'm Back In Circulation, Just For Once, The Uncle Sam Rag, The Right Finger Of My Left Hand, Look Who's In Love, Erbie Fitch's Dilemma’, and My Girl Is Just Enough Woman For Me. 
Dorothy Fields’ last two Broadway scores were written with Cy Coleman, a composer who was 25 years her junior. The first, Sweet Charity (1966), a musical version of Federico Fellini's movie, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, was conceived, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, and starred Gwen Verdon as the good-hearted hostess at the Fan-Dango ballroom, who almost—but not quite—realises her dream of being a conventional wife and mother. Fields and Coleman's score produced several popular numbers, including Big Spender (‘So let me get right to the point/I don't pop my cork for every guy I see!’), which quickly became associated with the UK singer Shirley Bassey, and Baby, Dream Your Dream, If My Friends Could See Me Now, I'm A Brass Band, Where Am I Going?, There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This, Too Many Tomorrows, and I Love To Cry At Weddings (‘I walk into a chapel and get happily hysterical’). Fields’ Broadway swansong came in 1973, with SEESAW. Her lyrics for this musical adaptation of William Gibson's play, TWO FOR THE SEESAW, are regarded as somewhat tougher than much of her previous work, although they continued to have the colloquial edge and the contemporary, witty, ‘street-wise’ quality that had become her trademark. The songs included Seesaw, In Tune, Spanglish, We've Got It, Welcome To Holiday Inn, Poor Everybody Else, I'm Way Ahead, and the two best-known numbers, Nobody Does It Like Me (‘If there's a problem, I duck it/I don't solve it, I just muck it up!’), and Tommy Tune's show-stopper, It's Not Where You Start (It's Where You Finish). The latter song closed with. . . ‘And you're gonna finish on top!’. Dorothy Fields did just that, 45 years after she had her first Broadway hit with I Can't Give You Anything But Love. Shortly before her death in March 1974, she appeared in a programme in the LYRICS AND LYRICISTSseries at the Kaufmann Concert Hall, New York, giving her ‘observations on the fine art and craft of lyric writing’, and performing several of her own numbers.