In his foreword to Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical, Geoffrey Block, editor of Oxford University Press's Broadway Legacies series, notes the anonymity of lyricists who are not part of famous musical theatre partnerships such as Rodgers and Hammerstein (xi). Dorothy Fields's lyrics are memorable enough that President Obama quoted “Pick Yourself Up” from Swing Time during his inaugural address, but Fields herself is so anonymous that neither Obama nor those reporting on the address recognized or cited her as its lyricist (xii). More than a biography, musicologist Charlotte Greenspan's monograph seeks to rescue Fields from anonymity and offer readers a history of American stage and film musicals through the career of a lyricist whose collaborators are a “who's who” of Broadway and Hollywood. Fields's lyrics and libretti form a rich body of work through which to study the musical, and her versatility demonstrates the form's dynamism from the 1920s through the 1970s.

Fields was the daughter of vaudevillian Lew Fields, and the sister of writers Joseph and Herbert Fields, making show business a family business for the “Fabulous Fieldses.” In her book's first three chapters, Greenspan offers a thorough discussion of Lew Fields's Lower East Side childhood and his later success as a performer and impresario. Subsequent chapters chart Dorothy Fields's development as a lyricist and librettist contributing songs to Broadway revues, Harlem's Cotton Club, and Hollywood musicals before she reestablished herself in New York as a lyricist and librettist of book musicals. Chapters 5 through 8 chronicle Fields's lengthy collaboration with composer Jimmy McHugh, with whom she wrote hits such as “I Can't Give You Anything But Love,” “I'm in the Mood for Love,” and “I Feel a Song Coming On.” The songwriting team's work on both coasts illustrates Broadway and Hollywood's close relationship in the 1920s and 1930s, and Greenspan effectively contrasts Fields's Broadway career with the security of Hollywood's contract system.

Greenspan also provides much insight into the highs and lows of Fields's brother Herbert's Broadway career as a librettist, including his collaborations with Rodgers and Hart. Dorothy's own early failures highlight a radically different climate on Broadway than the one that exists there today. Both brother and sister continued to be employed despite their contributions to flop musicals, and—as is frequently noted regarding writers and composers of this period—were able to develop their skills and talent rapidly, and on Broadway, rather than through the endless years of workshops which have now become the norm.

Tracking Fields's collaborations with composers including Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Sigmund Romberg, Arthur Schwartz, and Cy Coleman is not unlike following teams in a sports league, and Greenspan proves adept at reporting not only on their work with Fields but also on their individual career trajectories. For scholars interested in the collaborative nature of musical theatre, this is a useful study of how partnerships form, develop, create, and dissolve. What is missing is Fields's own voice. Greenspan makes some use of the Columbia University Oral History Collection's 1958 recording of Fields's reminiscences, but other voices offer a sharper impression of the hard-working writer. Greenspan cites the biography of one Fields collaborator, film composer Harry Warren, in which Warren describes Fields as “a rather aggressive woman” who rankled him by advising that he give up Hollywood for New York (169). We also learn that Fields was keen to begin her workday early, irritating many collaborators with early morning phone calls.

Unfortunately, Greenspan shares such details sparingly and instead speculates about how Fields's emotions as a daughter or a mother might have influenced her professional work. Analyzing a photograph of Fields at work with her brother Herbert, Greenspan concludes that “[i]t is as if it has become clear to Dorothy, after her marriage and the death of her father, that her career and her family life were not in opposition” (129). Yet Greenspan provides no evidence to indicate Fields struggled with an opposition between her personal and professional lives, or was particularly thoughtful about her gender roles. Similarly, in her analysis of the ending to Annie Get Your Gun (coauthored by Fields and her brother Herbert), in which sharpshooter Annie Oakley misses the target in order to secure her relationship with Frank Butler, Greenspan suggests that “[p]erhaps Dorothy, as coauthor of the book, knew … the different ways a talented woman could be strong when choosing to reveal or conceal abilities” (151). Again, no evidence is provided to indicate that Fields struggled, or believed that her career might be at a disadvantage, because of her gender. To be sure, her collaborators were exclusively male, but there is no sense that Fields manipulated her talents as does Oakley in the musical.

Measured against Greenspan's thorough discussion of Lew Fields's personality and performance style, later chapters disappoint. Despite the author's admiration for Dorothy Fields's talent and achievements, her writing process and style are not strongly conveyed. Like her lyrics, Fields becomes anonymous as Greenspan's study is regularly derailed by lengthy discussion of Fields's many collaborators. The details of the hospital ward in which Ethel Merman delivered a child by caesarean section before accepting the lead in Annie Get Your Gun, or the Golden Globe and Emmy awards Richard Kiley won years after appearing in Redhead, become clutter rather than valuable insight into Fields.

While this monograph loses its focus at times, Greenspan does observe interesting trends in Fields's writing, such as self-deprecating women pondering in song their pursuit of men (179), the dominant personalities of her secondary characters, and the older, experienced heroines of her later musicals (184). The sections on Fields's songs introduced at the Cotton Club will be of value to scholars of the Harlem venue, and those on Annie Get Your Gun, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Sweet Charity in particular will be valuable to scholars studying these musicals. Unfortunately, the Fields estate did not grant permission to publish a selection of Fields's lyrics, and the licensing costs to do so were prohibitive. The inclusion of lyrics in Gary Konas's discussion of Fields in Bud Coleman and Judith A. Sebesta's Women in American Musical Theatre (McFarland, 2008) demonstrates how lively an examination of Fields's work can be when illustrated by her lyrics. Konas and Greenspan's studies join Philip Furia's consideration of Fields in The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Deborah Grace Winer's On the Sunny Side of the Street: The Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields (Schirmer, 1997). Less anonymous now for this growing bibliography, Dorothy Fields's “fine romance” with the American musical has been ably charted by Charlotte Greenspan.