Fields wrote the screenplays for a string of mostly B-movies, including Let's Fall in Love (1933), Hands Across the Table (1935), Love Before Breakfast (1936), Fools for Scandal (1938), Honolulu (1939), and Father Takes a Wife (1941). He was also one of several writers who worked on The Wizard of Oz, although he did not receive a screen credit for his contribution.
He never married and seems to have lived comfortably as an openly gay man, at least within the worlds of Broadway and Hollywood. George Gershwin once wrote a letter to his brother Ira in which he mentions that he attended a party in NY and that “Herbie Fields was there with his (male) sweetheart”. And author Frederick Nolan tells us that, “Herb was part of the gay scene, but also always maintained the fiction of straightness. He had a string of statuesque chorus girls for whom he bought immensely ostentatious mink coats.”
