I Feel a Song Coming on: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical

Famed lyricist Dorothy Fields penned the words to more than four hundred songs, among them mega-hits such as "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, " and "The Way You Look Tonight." In Pick Yourself Up , Charlotte Greenspan offers the most complete treatment of Fields's life and work to date, tracing her rise to prominence in a male-dominated world. Born in 1904 into a show business family--her father, Lou Fields, was a famed stage comedian turned Broadway producer--Fields first teamed with songwriter Jimmy McHugh in the late 1920s and went on to a series of Hollywood collaborations with Jerome Kern, including the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers classic Swing Time . With her brother Herbert, she co-authored the books for several of Cole Porter's shows and for Irving Berlin's classic Annie Get Your Gun . Fields's lyrics--colloquial, urbane, sometimes slangy, sometimes sensuous--won her high praise from later generations of songwriters including Stephen Sondheim, and her stellar career opened a path for other women in her profession, among them Betty Comden and Dory Previn.Greenspan, Charlotte is the author of 'I Feel a Song Coming on: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical', published 2009 under ISBN 9780195111101 and ISBN 0195111109.