She wrote songs along with her husband, Alan Bergman, for greater than a half-century and for legends like Astaire, Sinatra and Streisand.
Lyricist Marilyn Bergman, who teamed along with her husband, Alan Bergman, to win three Academy Awards as one of the revered writing tandems within the annals of film music historical past, has died. She was 93.
Bergman, whose work contains such classics as “The Windmills of Your Thoughts,” “Good ’n’ Simple,” “You Don’t Carry Me Flowers” and “The Approach We Have been,” died peacefully early Saturday morning in her Los Angeles house, based on household rep Ken Sunshine. The reason for demise was respiratory failure (non-COVID associated). Her husband, 96, survives her.
They received Academy Awards for the perfect authentic songs “The Approach We Have been” (shared with Marvin Hamlisch) from the 1973 Barbra Streisand movie of that identify and “Windmills of Your Thoughts” (shared with Michel Legrand) from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). (Watch them settle for their Oscar right here). They acquired one other trophy for his or her rating for Streisand’sYentl (1983).
The prolific lyric crew labored extensively for the films, writing the lyrics for 3 of the 5 songs nominated for the perfect music Academy Award in 1983 — “How Do You Hold the Music Taking part in?” (from Finest Pals), “If We Have been in Love” (from Sure, Giorgio), and “It May Be You” (from Tootsie).
They netted three extra noms the next yr, all for his or her work with Legrand on Yentl.
In all, the Bergmans acquired 16 Oscar nominations. Throughout the interval from 1969-74, they acquired one Academy Award nom annually, which they shared with their composing companions: “Windmills of Your Thoughts,” “What Are You Doing the Remainder of Your Life?” “Items of Desires,” “All His Youngsters,” “Marmalade, Molasses and Honey” and “The Approach We Have been.”
They teamed with an array of composers: Legrand (“Windmills of Your Thoughts”), Neil Diamond (“You Don’t Carry Me Flowers”), Quincy Jones (“The World Goes On), Sergio Mendes (“Look Round”) and Hamlisch (“The Approach We Have been”), amongst others.
Their collaborations with Hamlisch had been notably wealthy. Along with an Oscar and a Grammy for The Approach We Have been, they garnered an Oscar nom with Hamlisch on “The Final Time I Felt Like This” from Similar Time Subsequent Yr.
The Bergmans additionally received three Emmy Awards, two shared with Hamlisch for Barbra: The Live performance and AFI’s 100 Years … 100 Motion pictures and one for Sybil, shared with composer Leonard Rosenman.
That they had a luminous affiliation with Streisand, assembly the singer (and fellow Brooklynite) when she was nonetheless a young person after they watched her carry out at a membership in New York. Their work along with her included “On Wet Afternoons,” “After the Rain,” “One Day” and “Evergreen.”
“Marilyn and Alan Bergman had been like household, in addition to sensible lyricists,” Streisand mentioned in a press release posted to her Twitter Saturday. “We met over 60 years in the past backstage at a bit evening membership, and by no means stopped loving one another and dealing collectively. Their songs are timeless, and so is our love. Might she relaxation in peace.”
They had been voted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1980.
In 1985, Marilyn grew to become the primary girl elected to the board of administrators of ASCAP and served as president and chairman of the performance-rights group for 15 years via 2009.
“It's with deep disappointment that I personally, and all of ASCAP, mourn the passing of Marilyn Bergman, one of many biggest lyricists who ever lived and actually ASCAP royalty,” ASCAP president, chairman and Oscar-winning songwriter Paul Williams mentioned in a press release.
“She was an excellent songwriter who collectively along with her husband gave us a few of the most stunning and enduring lyrics of all time. She was a tireless and fierce advocate for music creators not solely throughout her time period as president and chairman of ASCAP however all through her life. Our neighborhood will miss her intelligence, her wit and her knowledge. Alan — we mourn with you.”
The couple additionally had been the lyricists for the theme songs for such reveals as Bracken’s World, Good Instances, Maude, Alice and Brooklyn Bridge.
“We’ve had sufficient expertise to know that a compromise goes to be labored out,” Marilyn mentioned in a 1980 interview with Individuals journal. “If one in all us feels strongly about one thing, we’ll let it go for the second, come again to it the subsequent day and search for a 3rd solution to do it.”
Legendary TV producer Norman Lear, whose short-lived sequence All That Glitters was initially slated to characteristic the duo’s hit “You Don’t Carry Me Flowers,” mentioned “there was just one Marilyn Bergman” in a press release posted to Twitter.
“Nobody knew that greater than her husband and companion in music, Alan,” Lear continued. “To these of us who liked the Bergman’s lyrics, Marilyn takes a little bit of our hearts and souls along with her right now.”
Music icon Tony Bennett additionally remembered the duo’s work and Marilyn on Saturday, writing, “Marilyn and Alan Bergman with Michele Legrand wrote my favourite music, ‘How Do You Hold The Music Taking part in?’ We misplaced Marilyn right now, however her music retains enjoying.”
The Bergmans had been born in the identical Brooklyn hospital (she three years after him; Streisand was born on the Jewish Hospital, too) and grew up close to one another, however they didn't meet till that they had moved west.
The daughter of a clothes producer, she was born Marilyn Keith on Nov. 10, 1928. She studied live performance piano at New York’s Excessive Faculty of Music and Artwork after which psychology and English at NYU. Whereas in faculty, she broke each shoulders when she fell down a flight of stairs; whereas recuperating at her mother and father’ house in L.A. and unable to jot down, she started talking music lyrics right into a tape recorder.
She was launched to Alan at a celebration in 1956 by composer Lew Spence. That first day, they wrote a music collectively: “I By no means Knew What Hit Me,” which they mentioned was terrible) and married two years later.
They and Spence teamed on Fred Astaire’s “That Face” in 1957, Dean Martin’s “Sleep Heat” in 1958 and Frank Sinatra’s “Good ’n’ Simple” in 1960. (“That Face” additionally served as Alan’s engagement current to her.)
They not too long ago wrote two extra movie songs, one with Legrand for the discharge “Hurry Dwelling” for Jerry Lewis’ Max Rose (2013) and one with Dave Grusin, “Simply Getting Began,” for the documentary If You’re Not within the Obit, Eat Breakfast (2017).
In 1974, the AFI created the Ladies’s Directing Workshop, and Marilyn, together with Anne Bancroft, Dyan Cannon and Randa Haines, had been invited to take part within the class of ’75.
She and 10 different girls based The Hollywood Ladies’s Political Committee, which raised thousands and thousands of dollars for Democratic candidates and was described because the “single strongest leisure group in politics.”
Survivors embody their daughter, producer Julie Bergman Sender (Main League, G.I. Jane, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Six Days Seven Nights), son-in-law iLan Azoulai and granddaughter Emily Sender.