Fields

Fields, prominent American family associated with the musical theater:

(1) Lew Fields (real name, Lewis Maurice Scan-field ), actor, singer, producer, and director; b. N.Y., Jan. 1, 1867; d. Beverly Hills, July 20, 1941. He was only 10 when he made his first stage appearance with the young Joe Weber. They subsequently toured for some 20 years as the comedy duo of Weber and Fields. In 1896 they opened Weber and Field’s Broadway Music Hall in N.Y., where their burlesque productions and variety musicals became celebrated. Although they went their separate ways in 1904, they did make a few reunion appearances in subsequent years. Fields pursued his solo career by appearing in and producing musicals. His last appearance on the N.Y. musical stage was in Jimmy McHugh’s Hello Daddy (1928), to a text by Field’s son Herbert and daughter Dorothy. Field’s children, whose entries follow, were also closely associated with the musical theater.

Bibliography

F. Inman, Weber and F. (N.Y., 1924).

(2) Joseph (Albert) Fields , playwright and librettist;b. N.Y., Feb. 21, 1895; d. Beverly Hills, March 3, 1966. Although mainly known as a playwright, he also collaborated on the librettos of four musicals: Styne’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949; with Anita Loos), Bernstein’s Wonderful Town (1953; with Jerome Chodorov), Romberg’s The Girl in Pink Tights (1956; with Chodorov), and Rodgers’s flower Drum Song (1958; with Oscar Hammer stein, II).

(3) Herbert Fields , librettist; b. N.Y., July 26, 1897; d. there, March 24, 1958. He was educated at Columbia Univ., where he first collaborated with Rodgers and Hart. Between 1925 and 1928 he wrote the librettos for seven of their Broadway shows, including Dearest Enemy (1925), The Girl Friend (1926), and A Connecticut Yankee (1927). He also wrote the libretto for Youmans’s Hit the Deck (1927). For Porter, he wrote the librettos for 50 Million Frenchmen (1929), The New Yorkers (1930), Dubarry Was a Lady (1939), and Panama Hattie (1940). In collaboration with his sister Dorothy, he wrote the librettos for Porter’s Let’s Face It (1941), Something for the Boys (1943), and Mexican Hayride (1944), Romberg’s Up in Central Park (1945), Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Gould’s Arms and the Girl (1950), Schwartz’s By the Beautiful Sea (1954), and Hague’s Redhead (1959).

(4) Dorothy Fields , lyricist and librettist; b. Allen-hurst, N.J., July 15, 1904; d. N.Y., March 28, 1974. She had her first success as a lyricist working with Jimmy McHugh. Their hits included ”I Can’t Give You Any-thing But Love” from the revue Blackbirds of 1928 and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” from the International Revue (1930). They subsequently worked on Hollywood films. She also collaborated with Kern on his film versions of Roberta (1935) and Swing Time (1936). There-after she pursued a notably successful career working as a librettist on Broadway shows. She collaborated with her brother Herbert on Porter’s Let’s Face It (1941), Something for the Boys (1943), and Mexican Hayride (1944), Romberg’s Up in Central Park (1945), Berlin’s Annie Get your Gun (1946), Gould’s Arms and the Girl (1950), Schwartz’s By the Beautiful Sea (1954), and Hague’s Redhead (1959). She was also the librettist for Schwartz’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951) and for Coleman’s Sweet Charity (1966) and Seesaw (1973).

—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire