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    Fields's work habits were highly disciplined. Typically, she would spend eight weeks researching, discussing, and making notes on a project, before settling into an 8:30 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. daily work routine. She worked at a bridge table in her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and preferred to write with pencil on a yellow legal pad. She kept notebooks in which she copied passages from Dryden, Shaw, and Thoreau; unusual synonyms for commonly used words; humorous proverbs; rhyming phrases; odd-sounding words; and anything else that might come in handy in writing a lyric. Tall, slender, and well dressed, with chestnut hair and hazel eyes, she spoke well and was active in charitable causes throughout her life. Fields collaborated with her brother and composer Morton Gould on the lackluster "Arms and the Girl" in 1950. The following year, she wrote several fine lyrics to Arthur Schwartz's melodies for "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." She scored two films with composer Harold Arlen, MR. IMPERIUM (1951) and THE FARMER TAKES A WIFE (1953), then returned to Broadway to work with Schwartz again on "By the Beautiful Sea" (1954). Herbert Fields died in 1959, while "Redhead," the show they were working on with composer Albert Hague, was having its out-of-town tryout. Although not a great show, "Redhead" captured the Tony Award for Best Musical in a lean year for Broadway theater. Her penultimate musical, "Sweet Charity," written with composer Cy Coleman and librettist Neil Simon, was the biggest hit of the 1965-1966 season. Songs such as "Big Spender" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now" proved that Fields, despite her advancing age, had not lost her knack for up-to-the-minute slang and phraseology. In 1971, Fields became the first woman inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her last show, "Two for the Seesaw" (1973), also written with Coleman, was not a popular success, but her lyrics were praised for their evocation of modern life in New York. She died at home in New York City. During her forty-eight-year career Fields cowrote more than 400 songs and worked on 15 musicals and at least 26 movies. Her lyrics were noted for their strong characterization, clarity of language, and middlebrow humor. An amateur pianist and lifelong lover of classical music, she was highly conscious of the melodic line, and tailored her lyrics to float freely over it. Fields' professional longevity, rare for a songwriter in the popular field, may be attributed to her undimming imagination and her willingness to adapt to changing trends in the musical theater.
-- Gregory Robinson
Source: DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY, SUPPLEMENT 9: 1971-1975. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group.
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