Biography
Marilyn Bergman joined forces with her spouse Alan to establish one of the leading lyric-writing partnerships in modern cinema scoring, supplying memorable title songs for such productions as In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, and The Way We Were. Born Marilyn Keith on November 10, 1929, in New York City, she graduated from the High School of Music and Art and later pursued studies in English and psychology at N.Y.U. She wed Alan in 1958, and three years afterward the pair received their initial feature-film assignment on The Right Approach. Their breakthrough arrived with the 1967 release In the Heat of the Night, whose title song they crafted alongside Quincy Jones and which Ray Charles performed. In 1968 they began a sustained association with composer Michel Legrand on The Thomas Crown Affair, highlighted by Noel Harrison’s worldwide success with “The Windmills of Your Mind”; further results of that partnership included “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” and “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” Their most celebrated composition, the title theme for the 1973 drama The Way We Were, was created with Marvin Hamlisch, reached number one on the pop charts via Barbra Streisand, and captured an Academy Award. Emmys followed for the television films Queen of the Stardust Ballroom and Sybil. Rejoining Hamlisch, the Bergmans supplied the Oscar-nominated “The Last Time I Felt Like This” for the 1978 picture Same Time, Next Year. Working with Dave Grusin, they wrote the Tootsie song “It Might Be You,” which became a Top Ten single for Stephen Bishop in 1982. The following year they received the Oscar for Best Original Score for Streisand’s Yentl. Additional Academy Award nominations recognized their contributions to Shirley Valentine in 1989 and Sabrina in 1995. On January 8, 2022, Marilyn Bergman passed away at age 93 from respiratory failure at her Los Angeles residence.