take your daughter to work

Did you know that the 4th Thursday of every April is "Take Your Daughter To Work Day"?
I can’t look at this event without recalling Ruth Lowe, one of the earliest female ground breakers, who wrote the song in 1939 that kicked off Frank Sinatra’s amazing singing career, “I’ll Never Smile Again”. She also wrote Sinatra’s theme song “Put Your Dreams Away” and nearly 50 other songs for Hollywood and Broadway. But here’s what’s amazing: Ruth accomplished all this in what was very much a man’s world: Tin Pan Alley, that assembly of songwriters in New York City who composed the popular music of the 20th century. Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Vernon Duke… the list goes on and on with hundreds of entries, virtually all the songwriters being male, most of them writing in teams as well. But then there was Ruth Lowe, a single female writing both lyrics and melody to “I’ll Never Smile Again” (putting her alongside Irving Berlin and Cole Porter as two gifted tunesmiths who scored with both the words and music). You’d be hard put to call up more names of female song writers who worked in Tin Pan Alley back then, managing to shatter the glass ceiling the way Ruth did.
I’m pleased to have been selected to write about the fascinating life of Ruth Lowe in my book “Until I Smile St You” (untilismileatyou.com). And I’m pumped that plans are well underway to turn this into a major feature film.
So, as you consider “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”, think about Ruth Lowe, who never let her gender nor good looks get in the way of a stellar career.

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