Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical

ISBN-13: 9780199958634 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 336 str.

Charlotte Greenspan

Opis

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.

Recenzje

This marvelously researched and highly readable book is the definitive account of Dorothy Fields's path-breaking career-and of its interactions with her famously accomplished family (Weber and Fields), colleagues (Rodgers and Hammerstein), and collaborators (Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Bob Fosse, Cy Coleman). Greenspan's thoughtful analyses, her lively exploration of historical mysteries, and her grasp of both Broadway and Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1970s make this chunk of Americana irresistible, both for song lovers and for scholars.

O autorze

Charlotte Greenspan is a musicologist and pianist who has written extensively on music and film. She lives in Ithaca, New York.