Dorothy Fields

Dorothy Fields (July 15, 1904 – March 28, 1974) was an American librettist and lyricist. She wrote more than 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films. Her best-known pieces include "The Way You Look Tonight" (1936), "A Fine Romance" (1936), "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930), "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). Throughout her career, she collaborated with various influential figures in the American musical theater, including Jerome Kern, Cy Coleman, Irving Berlin, and Jimmy McHugh. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters.

Fields was born in Allenhurst, New Jersey, and grew up in New York City. In 1923, Fields graduated from the Benjamin School for Girls in New York City. At school, she was outstanding in the subjects of English, drama, and basketball. Her poems were published in the school's literary magazine.

Her family was deeply involved in show business. Her father, Lew Fields, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who partnered with Joe Weber as one of the most popular comedy vaudeville duos near the end of the nineteenth century. When the duo separated in 1904, Lew Fields became one of the most influential theater producers of his time. From 1904 until 1916, he produced about 40 Broadway shows, and was nicknamed "The King of Musical Comedy" because of his achievements. Her mother was Rose Harris. She had two older brothers, Joseph and Herbert, who also became successful on Broadway: Joseph as a writer and producer and Herbert as a writer who later became Dorothy's collaborator.

Despite her natural familial connections to the theatre via her father, he disapproved of her choice to pursue acting and did everything he could to prevent her from becoming a serious actress. This began when he refused to let her take a job with a stock company in Yonkers. Hence, Dorothy began working as a teacher and a laboratory assistant while secretly submitting work to magazines.

Early in her career Fields appeared on stage with English actress and socialite Sylvia Ashley—who subsequently married Douglas Fairbanks Sr and Clark Gable—as "Silly and Dotty" in Midnight Follies at the London Metropole, followed by further appearances in Tell me More at London's Winter Gardens and The Whole Town's Talking.

In 1926, Fields met the popular song composer J. Fred Coots, who proposed that the two begin writing songs together. Nothing actually came out of this interaction and introduction; however, Coots introduced Fields to another composer and song plugger, Jimmy McHugh.

Fields's career as a professional songwriter took off in 1928 when Jimmy McHugh, who had seen some of her early work, invited her to provide some lyrics for him for Blackbirds of 1928. The show, starring Adelaide Hall, became a Broadway hit. Fields and McHugh teamed up until 1935. Songs from this period include "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" (1928), "Exactly Like You" (1930), and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930). During the later 1920s, she and McHugh wrote specialty numbers for the various Cotton Club revues, many of which were recorded by Duke Ellington.

In the mid-1930s, Fields started to write lyrics for films and collaborated with other composers, including Jerome Kern. With Kern, she worked on the movie version of Roberta and also on their greatest success, Swing Time. The song "The Way You Look Tonight" earned the Fields/Kern team an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936.