Lyricist and marriage: 1958–1969
Through a chance contact with film producer Arthur Freed, she gained a job as a lyricist at MGM. There she met, and began collaborating with, composer André Previn. In 1958, as Dory Langdon, she recorded an album of her songs, The Leprechauns Are Upon Me, with André Previn and jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell accompanying her, for Verve Records. She married Previn in 1959. The couple collaborated on a number of songs used in motion pictures, including "The Faraway Part Of Town", sung by Judy Garland in the film Pepe, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song in 1960. In 1961 they wrote "One, Two, Three Waltz" for the movie One, Two, Three, and in 1962 "A Second Chance" for the movie Two for the Seesaw, which won them a second Oscar nomination. They also wrote songs recorded by Rosemary Clooney, Chris Connor, Vic Damone, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr., Doris Day, Eileen Farrell, Jack Jones, Marilyn Maye, Carmen McRae, Matt Monro, Leontyne Price, Nancy Wilson, and Monica Zetterlund. In 1964, they collaborated with Harold Arlen on "So Long, Big Time!", which was recorded by Tony Bennett. Later in 1966, the song was covered by Carola, accompanied by the Heikki Sarmanto Trio. During this period, Dory Previn wrote lyrics with other film composers for the movies Tall Story, Goodbye Again and Harper.
By the mid-1960s, André Previn had become a classical music conductor, touring worldwide, but Dory's fear of air travel kept her from joining him. In 1965 she suffered a psychiatric breakdown for which she was briefly hospitalized, but continued to write songs with André, including You're Gonna Hear from Me, recorded by Frank Sinatra, and began to use the name Dory Previn professionally. In 1967, they wrote five songs for the movie Valley of the Dolls. The soundtrack album spent six months on the charts, and Dionne Warwick had a pop hit with her version of the theme song. In 1968, she wrote a new English language libretto for Mozart's The Impresario. The next year, she won a third Oscar nomination for "Come Saturday Morning", with music by Fred Karlin, from the movie The Sterile Cuckoo. A hit version was recorded by The Sandpipers.
In 1968, André Previn had fully moved from composing film scores to conducting symphony orchestras, most notably the London Symphony Orchestra. While in London, he began an affair with 23-year-old actress Mia Farrow, who was working on the film A Dandy in Aspic. In 1969, Dory Previn discovered that Farrow had become pregnant by her husband, which led to their separation. In a cruel twist of fate, Farrow had been married to Frank Sinatra during the time Previn and her husband composed You're Gonna Hear from Me which was recorded by Sinatra. Their divorce became final in July 1970. Two months later, André Previn subsequently married Farrow in September 1970. The betrayal led to Previn's being hospitalized again, where she was treated with electroconvulsive therapy. This seemed to change her outlook as a songwriter, making her more introspective. She expressed her feelings about Farrow and the end of her marriage in the song "Beware of Young Girls" on her 1970 album On My Way to Where.
In a 1973 interview, Previn said: "I'd been writing for films for several years, but nothing I could say in those theme songs had not been said better by many songwriters before me; and gloriously by poets. So what did I do? Did I want to go on and write more poetic lyrical metaphors on things already said? Or did I want to write about the one thing I can only presume to be an authority on: myself?"
