Last chorus
Composer a genius behind string of Broadway and Hollywood hits
Composer extraordinaire Marvin Hamlisch dies
LOS ANGELES: Marvin Hamlisch, the composer behind a string of Broadway and Hollywood hits including A Chorus Line, The Way We Were and The Sting, has died, his publicist said. He was 68.
“He died last night (Monday) in Los Angeles,” Ray Costa said, adding that Hamlisch had been admitted to hospital in suburban Burbank last week. He did not disclose the cause of death.
“I’m devastated,” wrote his longtime friend and collaborator, singer Barbra Streisand, on her website.
“He was a true musical genius, but above all that, he was a beautiful human being. I will truly miss him.”
“Today, we lost a world class virtuoso and native New Yorker whose music brought stages and screens to life from Broadway to Hollywood and all points in between,” added New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a statement.
“As a child of immigrants, Marvin’s life was a great New York success story,” he said.
Broadway theatres said they would dim their marquees for one minute in Hamlisch’s memory.
Born in New York in 1944, Hamlisch studied music at the city’s prestigious Juilliard School as its youngest-ever student, then played piano on Broadway before embarking on a successful career writing music for stage and screen.
He was one of only a handful of entertainment artists to collect all the most coveted prizes in American popular culture, including three Oscars, two Golden Globes, four Grammys, four Emmys and a Tony.
In 1974, he picked up three Academy Awards on a single night – for best original dramatic score and best original song for Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were and best musical adaptation for George Roy Hill’s The Sting.
He also won a Tony and a Pulitzer for A Chorus Line in 1975 – just one of many Broadway productions he composed, others including They’re Playing Our Song in 1978, The Goodbye Girl in 1993 and Sweet Smell of Success in 2002.
In Hollywood, Hamlisch scored more than 40 films, including The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, Sophie’s Choice in 1982, Three Men and a Baby in 1987 and Frankie and Johnny in 1991.
Most recently, he teamed up with Steven Soderbergh in 2009 for the soundtrack of The Informant!
Hamlisch was close to Streisand, who starred alongside Robert Redford in The Way We Were.
Before his death, he was at work on a new musical, Gotta Dance, and on a made-for-television film by Soderbergh, Liberace, now in production, starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas.