Dorothy Fields wrote songs for a wide variety of musicals that became classics of American culture, from “Hey Big Spender” to “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” which won an Academy Award in 1936. Fields joined the vaudeville family business after high school, penning songs for Cotton Club acts. She wrote the lyrics for songs in more than twenty-five films and theatrical productions, including Sweet Charity, Annie Get Your Gun, Swing Time, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both alone and with collaborators who included her brother Howard and musical legends Irving Berlin, Cy Coleman, and Jerome Kern. In 1971, when the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame held its first annual nominations, Dorothy Fields was the only woman named to the ballot.
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