- Born
- Died
- Dorothy Fields, daughter of vaudeville star Lew Fields (of Weber & Fields) started writing songs for Tin Pan Alley and Broadway in the 1920s, in spite of the fact, that her first Broadway show was a flop. From the 30s on she also worked for Hollywood with her partner, composer Jimmy McHugh. She won an Oscar for the song "The Way You Look Tonight" from Swing Time (1936), which she had written with Jerome Kern. She has at least one child, David Lahm.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@inka.rg.chemie.tu-meunchen.de>
- Prolific Tony/Grammy-winning ("Redhead", 1959) and Academy Award-winning ("The Way You Look Tonight", 1936) lyricist and songwriter, educated at the Benjamin School for Girls. She wrote the Broadway stage scores for "Blackbirds of 1928", "Hello, Daddy", "International Revue", "Stars in Your Eyes", "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", and "Sweet Charity". She also was the co-librettist with her brother Herbert Fields for "Up in Central Park", "Arms and the Girl", "By the Beautiful Sea", and "Redhead". Joining ASCAP in 1929, she also collaborated musically with Jimmy McHugh, Jerome Kern, Arthur Schwartz, Fritz Kreisler, Sigmund Romberg, Morton Gould, Burton Lane, Albert Hague and Cy Coleman. Her other popular-song compositions include "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby", "Diga Diga Doo", "Doin' the New Low Down", "Porgy", "I Must Have that Man", "Blues Again", "Exactly Like You", "On the Sunny Side of the Street", "Cuban Love Song", "Hey Young Fella", "Don't Blame Me", "Dinner at Eight", "Thank You for a Lovely Evening", "I Dream Too Much", "Jockey on the Carousel", "I Won't Dance", "Lovely to Look At", "I Feel a Song Coming On", "I'm in the Mood for Love", "Stars in My Eyes", "Pick Yourself Up", "Bojangles of Harlem", "Never Gonna Dance", "A Fine Romance", "Just Let Me Look at You", "You Couldn't Be Cuter", "This Is It", "It's All Yours", "I'll Pay the Check", "Terribly Attractive", "A Lady Needs a Change", "Remind Me", "April Snow", "Close as Pages in a Book", "The Big Back Yard", "When You Walk in the Room", "Andiamo", "Nothin' for Nothin'", "There Must Be Something Better than Love", "Look Who's Dancin'", "I'm Like a New Broom", "Love Is the Reason", "Make the Man Love Me", "I'll Buy You a Star", "More Love than Your Love", "Merely Marvelous", "Look Who's in Love", "Big Spender", "There's Gotta Be Something Better than This" and "Where Am I Going?".- IMDb Mini Biography By: Hup234! (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)
- SpousesDavid Eli Lahm(July 15, 1939 - March 24, 1958) (his death, 2 children)Dr. Jack Weiner(1924 - c. 1932) (divorced)
- Was introduced to her future husband by his friend Herbert Sondheim, father of future Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, who grew up calling her 'Aunt Dorothy.'.
- Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971.
- Daughter, Mrs. Eliza [Lahm] Oprava, an artist.
- Daughter of Lew Fields
- Younger sister of Joseph Fields and Herbert Fields.
- Remember, when I'm working on songs, I'm still a book-writer. 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. You can't fool that audience out there. They'll always tell you whether a song is right or not. And they're not polite about it either.
- [Jimmy]McHugh said, 'Would you like to do some songs for the Cotton Club in Harlem?'. And I said, 'I would write for the Westchester Kennel Club, I don't care what it is!' So we did a few shows there.
- [on Harry Warren] You know, Harry has carried on for years about how anonymous he is. With him, it's always some sort of a mass plot on the part of the world to keep his name hidden. Harry always says, 'If anybody gets the smallest billing , I get it'. I remember one day we were on our way to the studio to play our songs, and he said, 'Now remember, Dorothy, when we get to the Metro lot, you walk you walk three Oscars behind me - because I had only one'.
- Mills Music was the kind of firm that when Valentino died, the next day they had a song out: 'There's a New Star in Heaven Since Valentino Passed Away'. When Caruso died, the next day there was "A Songbird in Heaven named Caruso'. At this time a lady named Ruth Elder was going to fly the Atlantic. So Mills says, 'She's going to fly today and we have to have a song. I'll help you out. I'll give you fifty dollars to do this, if you can do it by tomorrow. I'll even give you a title. 'Our American Girl'. The two lines of verse you have to use are, 'You took a notion to fly across the ocean'. I said, 'Mr. Mills, you don't take a notion to fly across the ocean'. Well, anyhow, Ruth Elder never made it, so the song was never published.
- [on Jerome Kern] He didn't play the piano very well - not a great pianist like Arthur Schwartz, or Harold Arlen, or Cy Coleman, who play beautifully. He'd play something he'd written, and if there was an expression on your face that showed you didn't care for it - he'd react very quickly to what you thought - he'd turn this little statuette around, facing away, and say 'Wagner doesn't like it'.
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