Alex J. Berliner/Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, via Associated Press
Marvin Hamlisch in 2011.
4:50 p.m. | Updated
In a career that spanned film, television, theater and recorded music, Marvin Hamlisch won seemingly every award available in each medium. He died on Monday in Los Angeles. An obituary is here.
Mr. Hamlisch was a 12-time Academy Award nominee for his score and song contributions to films as varied as “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Sophie’s Choice” and a three-time Oscar winner for the score of “The Sting” as well as the score from “The Way We Were” and its title song (with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman). He won four Emmy Awards, four Grammy Awards and a Tony Award for his score to the musical “A Chorus Line.” That musical, which blended bouncy, brassy songs like “One” and “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” with melancholy numbers like “At the Ballet,” also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976.
(A video gallery of trailers and excerpts from some of the films and musicals featuring Mr. Hamlisch’s music is here.)
As recently as last month, Mr. Hamlisch was working on a musical adaptation of the Jerry Lewis comedy “The Nutty Professor,” for which he wrote the score. His press representatives said he was also working on a new Broadway musical called “Gotta Dance,” and had written the score for a coming HBO movie, “Behind the Candelabra,” about the life of Liberace.
According to his biography at his official Web site, Mr. Hamlisch held the title of principal pops conductor for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Pasadena Symphony and Pops, the Seattle Symphony and the San Diego Symphony.
In an interview in July, Mr. Hamlisch discussed the emotional investment he put into each piece of music he composed.
“I’m not one of those people who says, ‘I never read reviews,’ because I don’t believe those people,” Mr. Hamlisch said. “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.”
Barbra Streisand, who worked closely with Mr. Hamlisch throughout his career and performed many of his songs, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon:
I’m devastated. He was my dear friend. He’s been in my life ever since the first day I met him in 1963, when he was my rehearsal pianist for ‘Funny Girl.’ He played at my wedding in 1998 … and recently for me at a benefit for women’s heart disease. The world will remember Marvin for his brilliant musical accomplishments, from ‘A Chorus Line’ to ‘The Way We Were,’ and so many others, but when I think of him now, it was his brilliantly quick mind, his generosity, and delicious sense of humor that made him a delight to be around. Just last night, I was trying to reach him, to tell him how much I loved him, and that I wanted to use an old song of his, that I had just heard for the first time. He was a true musical genius, but above all that, he was a beautiful human being. I will truly miss him.
Mr. and Mrs. Bergman said of Mr. Hamlisch in a statement: “He was more than our collaborator. He was our beloved friend. He was family. The world will miss his music, his humor, his genius. We will miss him every day for the rest of our lives.”