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Marvin Hamlisch, Acclaimed (And EGOT-Winning) Composer, Dies At 68
By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 7, 2012
Modified Aug 7, 2012
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By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 7, 2012
Modified Aug 7, 2012
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, who composed scores for A Chorus Line, The Way We Were, Sophie's Choice and many more Broadway musicals and films and won three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, and a Tony—plus three Golden Globe awards and a Pulitzer Prize—passed away yesterday in Los Angeles. According to the AP, "Family spokesman Jason Lee said Hamlisch died Monday after a brief illness. Other details aren't being released."
Hamlisch was born in New York City in 1944, and attended Juilliard and Queens College. At age 6 1/2, he auditioned for Juilliard—by playing popular songs of the day, instead of the classical music they were expecting. Even though his father was a classically trained musician from Vienna, Hamlisch loved popular music and he soared to fame with his work on stage and screen. His collaboration with Carole Bayer Sager yielded the Carly Simon hit, "Nobody Does It Better," from James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, while he composed the music—Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote the lyrics—for Barbra Streisand's hit, "The Way We Were," from the movie of the same name.
His re-working of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" for The Sting also brought him an Oscar and last week, he posted an appreciation of Joplin on his official website, looking at Joplin's contributions, "The syncopated melodies and richness of his lyrical ragtime tunes were so well respected technically that they influenced even classical composers such as Stravinsky and Debussy."
Recently, he was working on the musical adaptation of The Nutty Professor as well as music for the Librace movie starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. Hamlisch was a famous workaholic and told People in 1992, "Three Oscars in my hands, and I come home and empty the cat litter. I had thought that success would make me happy, but it didn't. ... I had put all my eggs in the success basket, and when success went, there was nothing left."
ArtsBeat notes a recent interview where he said, "I’m not one of those people who says, ‘I never read reviews,’ because I don’t believe those people. I think they read ‘em. These songs are my babies. And I always say, it’s like having a baby in a hospital, taking a Polaroid and going up to someone and saying, ‘What do you think?’ And he goes, ‘I give you a 3.’ That’s what criticism is like. You’ve worked on this thing forever - ‘I give you a 3.’ And it’s part of you. That’s the bargain you’ve made."
Tagged
a chorus line
barbra streisand
juilliard
marvin hamlisch
movie music
piano
queens collage
the sting
the way we were
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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