Biography
Marvin Hamlisch first surfaced in the mid-1970s as a leading figure among composers working across film, stage, and mainstream songwriting. Possessing multiple gold-record honors tied to his soundtrack and original-cast releases, he supplied several signature numbers recorded by Barbra Streisand and Lesley Gore and stood out as one of the rare songwriters and composers to gain widespread public notice after rock’s dominance began in the 1960s.
Born in New York in 1944, he spent his childhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His father, an accordionist and bandleader focused on dance repertoire, watched his son display an early absorption with music. By age five Hamlisch was replicating radio melodies on the piano; formal lessons followed a year later. At seven he auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music by spontaneously transposing the then-current hit “Goodnight Irene” into varied keys at the judges’ request. Accepted as the institution’s youngest pupil ever, he eventually earned a degree from Queens College.
During adolescence his concert-hall promise appeared strong, yet severe performance anxiety blocked a career as a recital pianist. He therefore redirected his energies toward composition, which he had already explored on his own. While still enrolled at Juilliard he served as a music counselor at a summer camp upstate, where several of his pieces received performances; one of those camp songs, “Travelin’ Man,” later appeared on Liza Minnelli’s debut album. His first commercial success arrived at twenty-one when Lesley Gore recorded “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows,” a single that spent eleven weeks on the Billboard charts in 1965 and reached number thirteen. Gore’s version of the track later featured in a Simpsons episode that parodied Thelma & Louise, with the police chief selecting it as chase music.
Minnelli also helped secure Hamlisch’s initial Broadway assignments as arranger for Funny Girl and Fade In—Fade Out. He continued in that role on Henry, Sweet Henry and Golden Rainbow, where he arranged dance music, and he additionally worked as rehearsal pianist for the television program The Bell Telephone Hour.
Entry into motion pictures came after he attended a party at which producer Sam Speigel mentioned needing a score for the film version of John Cheever’s The Swimmer. Hamlisch composed a main theme on spec, presented it, and received the assignment. Shortly afterward he entered Woody Allen’s early filmmaking circle, scoring Allen’s first feature, Take the Money and Run (1969), and his second, Bananas (1971). Additional early film scores included The April Fools, Save the Tiger, Move, Kotch, and Fat City; the Kotch song “Life Is What You Make It” earned an Academy Award nomination in 1971. Concurrently he supplied incidental music and dance arrangements for the Marx Brothers–inspired musical Minnie’s Boys. His association with the family deepened when Groucho Marx selected him as pianist and straight man for nightclub and college dates.
The mid-1970s marked the height of his influence. In 1973 he composed the score for The Way We Were, the Streisand–Redford romantic drama. Although Streisand initially resisted the title song written with Marilyn and Alan Bergman, it became one of her largest chart successes, her first million-selling single, and one of her most enduring recordings; both the song and the full score received Oscars.
The following year he achieved an even larger coup with the music for The Sting. Drawing on Scott Joplin’s compositions, the soundtrack ignited a broad revival of interest in Joplin that produced not only Hamlisch’s own hit album The Entertainer but also strong sales for competing Joplin recordings, among them those by Joshua Rifkin. A second Oscar followed for The Sting.
Hamlisch also composed for television in 1975, creating themes for the series Beacon Hill, modeled on the British drama Upstairs, Downstairs, and the socially pointed sitcom The Hot L Baltimore. Neither program endured, yet he contributed more substantially to the medium in 1976 with the score for the NBC telefilm of John Osborne’s The Entertainer starring Jack Lemmon.
That same year he achieved perhaps his greatest popular triumph with A Chorus Line, his first Broadway musical, written with lyricist Edward Kleban. The show opened in May 1975, became the decade’s most successful musical, collected numerous awards, and ran into the 1990s. One of its numbers, “What I Did for Love,” has since been recorded by Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers, Jim Nabors, and the Three Degrees, among hundreds of others. At this juncture Hamlisch also launched a cabaret act that toured successfully and began appearing as soloist with major American orchestras.
Between stage, screen, and concert work he contributed to recordings by Aretha Franklin, the Carpenters, and Peter Allen. He scored another Broadway success, though smaller than A Chorus Line, with They’re Playing Our Song, written with his wife Carole Bayer Sager; the semi-autobiographical show about a songwriting couple yielded a hit cast album. The pair also received an Oscar nomination for “Nobody Does It Better,” the theme for the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), a Top Five single for Carly Simon.
Throughout the early 1980s Hamlisch composed for Neil Simon comedies Chapter Two, Seems Like Old Times, and I Ought to Be in Pictures, supplied the score for Pennies from Heaven, and played on his wife’s albums. Additional Academy Award nominations arrived for Sophie's Choice, Ice Castles (“Through the Eyes of Love”), Same Time Next Year (“The Last Time I Felt Like This”), and Shirley Valentine (“The Girl Who Used to Be Me”). After the early 1980s his output of new scores lessened, yet he served as producer and arranger for projects involving John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Liza Minnelli, and Barbra Streisand. He remained active with theatrical productions and as a conductor of American symphony orchestras until his death on August 6, 2012, one week before he was scheduled to become Principal Pops Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Born in New York in 1944, he spent his childhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His father, an accordionist and bandleader focused on dance repertoire, watched his son display an early absorption with music. By age five Hamlisch was replicating radio melodies on the piano; formal lessons followed a year later. At seven he auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music by spontaneously transposing the then-current hit “Goodnight Irene” into varied keys at the judges’ request. Accepted as the institution’s youngest pupil ever, he eventually earned a degree from Queens College.
During adolescence his concert-hall promise appeared strong, yet severe performance anxiety blocked a career as a recital pianist. He therefore redirected his energies toward composition, which he had already explored on his own. While still enrolled at Juilliard he served as a music counselor at a summer camp upstate, where several of his pieces received performances; one of those camp songs, “Travelin’ Man,” later appeared on Liza Minnelli’s debut album. His first commercial success arrived at twenty-one when Lesley Gore recorded “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows,” a single that spent eleven weeks on the Billboard charts in 1965 and reached number thirteen. Gore’s version of the track later featured in a Simpsons episode that parodied Thelma & Louise, with the police chief selecting it as chase music.
Minnelli also helped secure Hamlisch’s initial Broadway assignments as arranger for Funny Girl and Fade In—Fade Out. He continued in that role on Henry, Sweet Henry and Golden Rainbow, where he arranged dance music, and he additionally worked as rehearsal pianist for the television program The Bell Telephone Hour.
Entry into motion pictures came after he attended a party at which producer Sam Speigel mentioned needing a score for the film version of John Cheever’s The Swimmer. Hamlisch composed a main theme on spec, presented it, and received the assignment. Shortly afterward he entered Woody Allen’s early filmmaking circle, scoring Allen’s first feature, Take the Money and Run (1969), and his second, Bananas (1971). Additional early film scores included The April Fools, Save the Tiger, Move, Kotch, and Fat City; the Kotch song “Life Is What You Make It” earned an Academy Award nomination in 1971. Concurrently he supplied incidental music and dance arrangements for the Marx Brothers–inspired musical Minnie’s Boys. His association with the family deepened when Groucho Marx selected him as pianist and straight man for nightclub and college dates.
The mid-1970s marked the height of his influence. In 1973 he composed the score for The Way We Were, the Streisand–Redford romantic drama. Although Streisand initially resisted the title song written with Marilyn and Alan Bergman, it became one of her largest chart successes, her first million-selling single, and one of her most enduring recordings; both the song and the full score received Oscars.
The following year he achieved an even larger coup with the music for The Sting. Drawing on Scott Joplin’s compositions, the soundtrack ignited a broad revival of interest in Joplin that produced not only Hamlisch’s own hit album The Entertainer but also strong sales for competing Joplin recordings, among them those by Joshua Rifkin. A second Oscar followed for The Sting.
Hamlisch also composed for television in 1975, creating themes for the series Beacon Hill, modeled on the British drama Upstairs, Downstairs, and the socially pointed sitcom The Hot L Baltimore. Neither program endured, yet he contributed more substantially to the medium in 1976 with the score for the NBC telefilm of John Osborne’s The Entertainer starring Jack Lemmon.
That same year he achieved perhaps his greatest popular triumph with A Chorus Line, his first Broadway musical, written with lyricist Edward Kleban. The show opened in May 1975, became the decade’s most successful musical, collected numerous awards, and ran into the 1990s. One of its numbers, “What I Did for Love,” has since been recorded by Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers, Jim Nabors, and the Three Degrees, among hundreds of others. At this juncture Hamlisch also launched a cabaret act that toured successfully and began appearing as soloist with major American orchestras.
Between stage, screen, and concert work he contributed to recordings by Aretha Franklin, the Carpenters, and Peter Allen. He scored another Broadway success, though smaller than A Chorus Line, with They’re Playing Our Song, written with his wife Carole Bayer Sager; the semi-autobiographical show about a songwriting couple yielded a hit cast album. The pair also received an Oscar nomination for “Nobody Does It Better,” the theme for the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), a Top Five single for Carly Simon.
Throughout the early 1980s Hamlisch composed for Neil Simon comedies Chapter Two, Seems Like Old Times, and I Ought to Be in Pictures, supplied the score for Pennies from Heaven, and played on his wife’s albums. Additional Academy Award nominations arrived for Sophie's Choice, Ice Castles (“Through the Eyes of Love”), Same Time Next Year (“The Last Time I Felt Like This”), and Shirley Valentine (“The Girl Who Used to Be Me”). After the early 1980s his output of new scores lessened, yet he served as producer and arranger for projects involving John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Liza Minnelli, and Barbra Streisand. He remained active with theatrical productions and as a conductor of American symphony orchestras until his death on August 6, 2012, one week before he was scheduled to become Principal Pops Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Albums
