Dorothy Fields

Oscar-winning American pop lyricist Dorothy Fields earned election as the first woman in the Songwriters Hall of Fame for a career that produced hit songs, film scores, and stage scores from the late 1920s into the early 1970s. Born July 15, 1905, in Allenhurst, NJ, she was raised in a theatrical household as the daughter of Lew Fields, one half of the celebrated vaudeville duo Weber & Fields. Her most acclaimed partnership was with composer Jimmy McHugh, with whom she formed a songwriting team between 1929 and 1935. During the 1930s she concentrated primarily on motion-picture assignments, supplying material for seven films in 1935 alone; four of those projects, among them Every Night at Eight and Hooray for Love, were written with McHugh. Her Broadway credits encompass Hello Daddy (1929), Singin' the Blues (1931), Stars in Your Eyes (1939), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951), Sweet Charity (1966), and See-Saw (1973). She also shared libretto duties with her brother Herbert Fields on several productions, among them Up in Central Park (1945), Arms and the Girl (1951), By the Beautiful Sea, and Redhead (1959), the last of which received six Tony Awards. Among her best-known numbers are “I Can't Give You Anything but Love” (1928), “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (1930), “I'm in the Mood for Love” (1935), and the Oscar-winning “The Way You Look Tonight” (1936). In addition to McHugh she worked with such composers as Jerome Kern, Fritz Kreisler, and Sigmund Romberg. Fields died of a heart attack in N.Y.C. on March 28, 1974.