Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical by Charlotte Greenspan (review)

Although lyricist Dorothy Fields has never been a household name like Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, or Oscar Hammerstein II, she penned lyrics for more than four hundred songs that appeared in nineteen Broadway revues and musicals and over thirty films. If that were not enough, with her brother Herbert she wrote a screenplay for Hollywood and the books for eight Broadway musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun (1946). Fields's nearly five-decade career spanned many of the sociocultural movements from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, from "I'm a Broken-Hearted Blackbird" for a 1927 Cotton Club revue to "I'm a Brass Band" for the 1967 book musical Sweet Charity. In between she provided the lyrics for such standards as "I Can't Give You Anything but Love," "Pick Yourself Up," and "I'm in the Mood for Love," and worked with such luminaries as Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, Cole Porter, Harry Warren, Arthur Schwartz, Harold Arlen, Burton Lane, and Cy Coleman.

That diverse litany of collaborators may be one reason why Fields's name does not roll off the tongue, as do those of lyricists who enjoyed longtime partnerships such as George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Kander and Ebb. Also, as a member of the creative team, she worked in what was then a man's world, not as a Hollywood starlet or Broadway headliner, or in one of the more typically gendered roles for women among the production team: choreographer, costume designer, or makeup artist. Finally, when Fields did not write the lyrics, she collaborated on the screenplay or book—an even more behind-the-scenes assignment. She grimly recalled overhearing an intermission conversation during the Boston tryout of Cole Porter's Let's Face It (1941) when a Back Bay dowager intoned, "I don't know how these actors think up all those funny things to say!" Seventy years later, Fields may finally be getting her moment in the spotlight thanks to Charlotte Greenspan's new biography Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical.

In documenting the life and career of Fields (1904-74), Greenspan includes a detailed genealogy of Dorothy's theatrical family. Her father, Lew (1867-1941), comprised half of the vaudeville team Weber and Fields. Dorothy's eldest brother, Joseph (1895-1966), churned out screenplays in Hollywood and collaborated with Jerome Chodorov on two successful plays for Broadway: My Sister Eileen (1940) and Junior Miss (1941). Her other brother, Herbert (1897-1958), wrote the books for more than twenty Broadway musicals, including most of Rodgers and Hart's hits from the 1920s, and many of Cole Porter's in the 1930s and 1940s. By 1943, Herbert, Joseph, and Dorothy collectively had five shows running on Broadway (a newspaper headline that season ran "The Fields Family Has a Field Day on B'way"). In addition to chronicling the siblings' successes, Greenspan provides an astute cultural analysis of their father's assimilation:

Lew's parents may have been disappointed with their son's assimilated ways: neither of his own sons had a formal bar mitzvah ceremony, the Fields family did not keep kosher, and they even celebrated Christmas with a tree and gifts. But the Fields family script was not The Jazz Singer; the patriarch was not inflexible, and differences in the ways the generations lived did not cause irreconcilable divisions.

Greenspan provides similar insights into Dorothy's inspirations as a writer, tracking down possible influences. When discussing Fields's early collaboration with composer Jimmy McHugh on the song "Porgy" for the nightclub revue Blackbirds of 1928, Greenspan points out, "Dorothy's lyrics, 'He ain't much for to look and see / Lazy and no' count as he can be' are similar to the opening of 'She's Funny That Way,' written by Richard Whiting in the same year." In the case of McHugh...