Dissertation Is to Determine That Voice And, in So
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“JUST ENOUGH WOMAN FOR ME:” AN ANALYSIS OF THE UNINTENTIONALLY FEMINIST LYRICS OF DOROTHY FIELDS by JESSICA KRISTIN STULTZ (Under the Direction of Freda Scott Giles) ABSTRACT Dorothy Fields was a Broadway lyricist and librettist. Long overlooked by scholarship, the work of Fields is landmark. For much of the Golden Age of the American musical, Fields was one of the only women writing for the Broadway theatre. As such, her voice is distinct in many ways. The project of this dissertation is to determine that voice and, in so doing, to establish her unique contribution to the canon of musical theatre. INDEX WORDS: “Dorothy Fields, Broadway, musicals, Golden Age, lyricist, librettist, Tony Awards, Herbert Fields, Lew Fields, Cy Coleman, theatre” “JUST ENOUGH WOMAN FOR ME:” AN ANALYSIS OF THE UNINTENTIONALLY FEMINIST LYRICS OF DOROTHY FIELDS by JESSICA KRISTIN STULTZ BA, Furman University, 1999 MA, University of Kentucky, 2005 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2011 © 2011 Jessica Kristin Stultz All Rights Reserved “JUST ENOUGH WOMAN FOR ME:” AN ANALYSIS OF THE UNINTENTIONALLY FEMINIST LYRICS OF DOROTHY FIELDS by JESSICA KRISTIN STULTZ Major Professor: Freda Scott Giles Committee: John Kundert-Gibbs David Saltz Judith Sebesta Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2011 DEDICATION Mom, you let me watch Annie every single day. You endured my childhood obsessions with movie musicals from The Sound of Music to The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. You never complained when I’d tap dance on top of the coffee table or sang every lyric to every song Cole Porter ever wrote. In so doing, you birthed in me a passion that is, next to my faith, the greatest gift you ever gave me. Daddy, you saw the shows and then took me to see them. You bankrolled our common addiction — providing airfare, hotel rooms, and show tickets for our many theatre-going trips to New York City (or, in the case of Karen Ziemba’s tour with Chicago, Nashville). You made a way for me to meet Bill McCutcheon. You celebrated my 21st birthday by taking me to the Tony Awards, and when I got the chance to go to grad school at UGA, you and Mom generously paid my way. As a result, the passion that Mom birthed, you nurtured [cue emotional explosion into song]: “So I say thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing! Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing. Who can live without it? I ask in all honesty, what would life be? Without a song or a dance, what are we? So I say thank you for the music, for giving it to me.” — from Mamma Mia! I dedicate this dissertation to the two of you, because I am so unspeakably grateful for your dedication to me. In other words, “thank you for the music.” iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Theatre is a collaborative process. Though the actor on stage generally gets all the accolades, it actually takes a team of designers, directors, house staff, musicians, performers, producers, stagehands, technicians, and writers to put on a show. The process of writing a dissertation is very similar. It may be my name on the Title Page, but without the support, assistance, and input of family, friends, and fellow theatre folk, the work would never have been completed. Thank You, first of all, to God, from Whom comes “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17). It is undeniable to me that whatever I have accomplished in my life is an outgrowth of His mighty work in me. Without hesitation, I give Him all of the glory for this achievement, as I know that it is only through His strength that I am able to do “all things” (Phil. 4:13). Thank you also to my family. Mom and Daddy, you have been forced to bear the brunt of my exhaustion and frustration through my four year doctoral journey. Thank you for that. Sissy, David, Camden, Payton, Lizzie Gray, and Lila, thank you for decorating my apartment when coursework kept me from having the time to do it myself. Because of you, I didn’t have to celebrate Christmas, Scrooge-style! Thank you to my friends. More than once, you’ve heard the excuse, “No, I can’t have dinner. Dissertation.” Thank you that you’re still there now I have no more excuses! To Dr. Charlotte Greenspan, thank you for making your manuscript available to me before it was even published. Finally, thank you to my dissertation committee for reading what I’ve written and for giving me the thoughtful feedback necessary to get it into its final form. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES....................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 THE PROJECT..............................................................................................................1 Chapter Outline......................................................................................................31 2 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................34 3 “A LADY WITH A PIN” OR “A GIRL WITH A FLAME?” 1776 vs. ARMS & THE GIRL.....................................................................................................50 4 “HAPPY TO KEEP HIS DINNER WARM” OR “I’D RATHER WAKE UP BY MYSELF”? BELLS ARE RINGING AND HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING VS. BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA ............................84 By the Beautiful Sea...............................................................................................85 Bells Are Ringing ...................................................................................................88 How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ..............................................92 5 “THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS” OR “THERE’S GOTTA BE SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS”? LITTLE ME VS. SWEET CHARITY ........107 Little Me...............................................................................................................122 Sweet Charity.......................................................................................................125 6 CONCLUSION: “I’M WAY AHEAD” ....................................................................138 vi REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................151 APPENDICES A THE SHOWS OF DOROTHY FIELDS....................................................................160 B THE SONGS OF DOROTHY FIELDS ....................................................................161 vii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 6.1 ......................................................................................................................................139 Table 6.2 ......................................................................................................................................147 viii CHAPTER ONE THE PROJECT1 Dorothy Fields was a woman ahead of her time. A lyricist, Fields played a major part in the American music industry from the early years of the prohibition era (early 1920s) to the end of the hippie movement (mid 1970s). She commenced her songwriting career in 1924, four decades before the most integral years of the modern Women’s Movement. While her contemporaries worked the typing pools or ran their households, Fields wrote with more than a dozen composers — all males — to produce over 400 songs for the stage and screen. Many of these songs were immensely popular hits that became beloved American standards. Fields wrote hit after hit for more than 30 Hollywood films and 19 Broadway musicals.2 “On the Sunny Side of the Street (1930),” “Close as Pages in a Book (1945),” and “Hey, Big Spender (1966)” are only a few of the recognizable titles from her expansive catalog of work.3 In addition to her work as a lyricist, Fields was also a librettist. Collaborating with her brother Herbert, she penned the books for eight Broadway musicals. For her work, Fields became the first woman to receive an Academy Award for a song, “The Way You Look Tonight.” She wrote it with Jerome Kern for the movie musical Swing Time (1936), produced by the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Studio (RKO). At the time, Fields was 32 1 Kristin Stultz, “Defining a Style for the Lyrics of Dorothy Fields” (Masters thesis, University of Kentucky, 2005). Much, though not all, of this introductory chapter is based on the research done for my Master’s thesis. The thesis, an attempt to define a style for Fields’s lyrics, was completed at the University of Kentucky in May of 2005. This chapter refines that work and updates it with more recent information. 2 Deborah Grace Winer, On the Sunny Side of the Street: the Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), 241. 3 Clearly, the span of time between these hits illustrates the longevity of Fields’s career. 1 years old. Fields later earned a Tony Award for her lyrics to Redhead, the Best Musical of 1959. In 1971, sixty-six year old Fields was in the early stages of her work on the musical Seesaw (1973)4 when she was again honored by becoming the first woman inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. The following year, Stanley Adams, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), referred to her catalog of songs as “the most significant of any woman songwriter in the history of ASCAP.”5