Dorothy Fields, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany

Overview and Commentary: Dorothy Fields

For William Zinsser, Dorothy Fields was first among the small group of women popular songwriters during period of The American Songbook. He divides the women into two groups of three: those who made "a sizable contribution to the literature of American popular song" and those who left "a small but exceptional legacy." The former group included, along with Fields, Betty Comden and Carolyn Leigh, the latter, Kay Swift, Ann Ronell and Dana Suesse. Zinsser notes that the members of this "barely remembered" second trio were "gallant also-rans in a mans race."

As for Fields, Zinsser reminds us that she might have gotten a head start by belonging to a very successful show business family headed by her father Lou Fields, most well known as half of the vaudeville comedy team of Weber and Fields as well as a successful Broadway producer. He is quick to add, however, that Dorothy was not in any "need of nepotistic favors," eventually becoming one of the most successful of all songbook songwriters with more than 400 songs written over four decades to her credit.

Zinsser credits much of her success to her ability to write directly with no affect: Her lyrics" say what someone in love should say--no inversion, no allusion, no poetic effects:

I can't give you anything but love, baby, That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby . . . .

Ken Bloom comments that Dorothy Fields was able to write with a group of collaborators who were "wildly diverse in style." Bloom also reflects that Fields was not only flexible in her ability to write with such a wide range of composers but was "able to keep up with her times, using contemporary idiomatic phrases without sounding forced or trendy."

In an "aside," Bloom points out Fields' inclination to employ the negative in her titles, such as "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," You Couldn't Be Cuter," and "Nobody Does It like Me" (Bloom p. 225).

Fields' biographer Charlotte Greenspan informs us that after the 1959 show Redhead for which Dorothy co-authored the book and wrote the lyrics, and which had swept the Tonys in all musical categories, it appeared that her career was over. "For more than five years, there was no Broadway show, no musical, no movie featuring songs with new lyrics by Dorothy Fields." But that was about to change. Greenspan lets Cy Coleman tell the story:

"How would you like to write a song?" With this harsh question I approached the veteran lyricist Dorothy Fields at a songwriters' meeting in her home and waited nervously while the writer of such songs as " The Way You Look Tonight ," " Remind Me ," " I Can't Give You Anything but Love ," " Sunny side of the Street ," and countless others looked at me and said, "Why not?" This was the beginning of a collaboration that was destined to go far beyond the tune I had in mind at that moment. (Greenspan, p. 205).

"If you don't have a story that will hold the audience, you won't have a successful show. And as for the songs that go into that book, they have got to move the plot forward. I don't care how good a song is--if it holds back the story line, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it" (Wilk, p. 43). She adds, "I'm not out to write popular song hits, though I've written songs that have become popular; I'm writing a song to fit a spot in the show. To fit a character, to express something about him or her . . . to move that story line forward" (Wilk, p. 45).

Despite Dorothy's feelings about the importance of integrating a song into a show's book, she was relatively easily charmed out of her principles by Cole Porter. Fields' brother Herb Fields wrote the books for several Porter shows and Dorothy collaborated with him on the book for for the 1941 Porter show Let's Face It. Dorothy told Max Wilk,

Oh, I loved Cole. He and Herbie had worked together so many times before . . . . and they were very close friends. So I learned to disregard the way Cole ignored the book. I got used to it. Lots of times he'd read something in a scene we'd written and he'd say, "Oh, you two people are so talented!" And then he'd cop a couple of lines of dialogue from that scene and put hem into his lyrics. He'd say, "Oh, you don't need this--you'll write something else, I'm sure you will."

On the occasion of Let's Face It trying out in Boston, Dorothy, her brother and Porter were in the lobby during intermission eavesdropping on comments by audience members: "And right next to us was a very aristocratic old dame. She said, 'I don't know how these actors think up all those funny things to say!' Cole was delighted with her remark. He nudged us, and he asked, 'You Fieldses want to write book?'"

When Max Wilk followed up on her anecdote by asking Fields if when she was writing the book for Let's Face It, she wasn't reluctant "to retire as a lyricist and bequeath that spot to Mr. Porter?" Her answer was, "Oh, honey, let me tell you, it's great. The book is always the toughest thing to do; one doesn't need the added responsibility of doing the lyrics, I can assure you. (Wilk, pp. 43-44)

Cafe Songbook Music-Video Cabinet: Dorothy Fields

• Blue Again
• Clsoe as Pages in a Book
• Don't Blame Me
• Exactly like You
• A Fine Romance
• I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby
• I Feel a Song Coming On
• I Won't Dance
• I'm in The Mood for Love
• Lost in a Fog
• Lovely To Look At
• Make the Man Love Me
• Never Gonna Dance
• On the Sunny Side of the Street
• Pick Yourself Up
• Remind Me
• The Way You Look Tonight
• You Couldn't Be Cuter

Research Resources: Dorothy Fields

• Amazon (publications by and about, recordings, videos, sheet music, etc.)
• The Baltimore Sun ("An engaging visit with Dorothy Fields at Everyman Theatre" (article, Dec. 23, 2011).
• DBOPM (Database Of Popular Music: song list; awards; hit songs; co-writers)
• Discogs.com (songwriting and arranging credits)
• Michael Feinstein's American Songbook (Biography, back stories, The Great Songs)
• Internet Broadway Database (Broadway productions and song credits)
• Internet Movie Database (brief biography, filmography, movie song credits)
• Internet Off-Broadway Database (off-Broadway productions of songwriter's shows)
• JewishTheater.com: (article: "Dorothy Fields on the Sunny Side of the Street" By Will Friedwald)
• New York Public Library (catalog entries for books, personal papers, recordings, scores, etc.)
• The New York Times (articles about or related to the songwriter)
• NPR Music (archive of relevant programs often including audio segments): including American Popular Song Series--Fresh Air/WHYY, December 24, 2001; Jeff Lunden, "Dorothy Fields' Sweet, Various Gifts to Popular Song." NPR blog at NPR.ogr, July 15, 2005.
• Songwriters Hall of Fame (biography and song list)
• Wikipedia (Dorothy Fields article)
• WildWomenofSong.com (Dorothy Fields entry, biog. selected, annotated song list)
• YouTube (A selection of Dorothy Fields related videos)
• Max Wilk, They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters (originally published 1973 as They're Playing Our Song: From Jerome Kern to Stephen Sondheim—The Stories behind the Words and Music of Two Generations), New York and Stratford, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008 (includes chapter long interview with Fields).
• ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Cattell/Bowker, Fourth edition, 1980 (dates, collaborators, shows/movies, songs, etc., entry p. 156)
• David Ewen. American Songwriters, An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists). -- a wide selection of used copies is available at abebooks.com (entry, pp. 158-160).
• Thomas S. Hischak. Word Crazy: Broadway Lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim. New York: Praeger, 1991 (pp. 75-78 and others).
• Deborah Grace Winer, On the Sunny Side of the Street: The Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields, (foreward by Betty Comden), New York: Schirmer Books, 1997.
• Gary Marmorstein, Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and Its Makers, 1900-1975,
  New York: Schirmer Books, 1997 (discussion of Dorothy Fields in Hollywood, pp. 148-149 and others).
• Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball (Eds.), Reading Lyrics, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000 (biographical sketch and various lyrics of Dorothy Fields, pp. 379-385).
• William Zinsser. Easy to Remember The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs. Jaffrey, New Hampshire: David R. Godine, 2001 (pp. 110-112 and many others).
• Ken Bloom. The American Songbook, The Singers, The Songwriters and the Songs. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2005 (entry--pp. 224-225 and others).
• Thomas S. Hischak. The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008 (entry--p. 240).
• Alyn Shipton, I Feel a Song Coming On: The Life of Jimmy McHugh, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2009 (three chapters on McHugh and Fields).
• Charlotte Greenspan, Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical
  New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
• A selection of books on women songwriters.
• Dorothy Fields: WildWomenOfSong
• PeterMintun: PeterMintunMusic
• Hildegard: KidMillions

Notes

• William Zinsser. Easy to Remember The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs . Jaffrey, New Hampshire: David R. Godine, 2001.
• "This is the English language at its most declarative--a writer making her feelings available to us." (Zinsser, pp. 107-111)
• Ken Bloom, The American Songbook: The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs , New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2005.
• Cy Coleman on Dorothy Fields
• Charlotte Greenspan Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
• Coleman and Fields wrote music and lyrics respectively for Sweet Charity (1966) and Seesaw , (1973), Fields' last show.
• Dorothy Fields on integrating a song into a show and on writing the book for a show.

Cite this page: Dorothy Fields, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songwriters/f_sws/fields_dorothy.html