Alan BergmanOscar, Grammy and Emmy winning songwriters whose lyric-writing partnership with his wife Marilyn lasted for more than six decades and produced such hits as “The Windmills of Your Mind”, “The Way We Were” and “In The Heat of the Night”, have died. He was 99.
Bergman died on Thursday night at home in Los Angeles, according to New York Times.
Marilyn Bergmanwho died in January 2022, was the first female president and chairman of the Board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), a leading social society for music creators. Alan soldier even after her death and continued to put words into music.
Bergmans, who imprisoned hundreds of songs, mostly for movies and television, bridged the traditional big American song book Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin with the more modern pop sensitivity in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Their poetic touch, combined with the melodic gifts from so many of their collaborators, raised the films they worked and made them the first call writer for A-list directors such as Sydney Pollack, Norman Jewison and Richard Brooks.
“Windmills” is a modern classic (“Round, like a circle in spiral, like a wheel in a wheel that never ended or started on a constantly spinning roll …”), which is “way we were” (“Memories teeth the corners of my mind, foggy watercolor memories …”), while the soulful pares of the night “Astoned singer ray ray ray ray ray ray ray ray ray ray ray the soul of the night.
Bergman’s catalog, even apart from their many prizes, is a large part of the really fantastic film songs in the last half of the 1900s. Collaborates with such top composers such as Michel Legrand, Marvin Hamlisch, John Williams, Johnny Mandel, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini, David Shire and James Newton Howard, they built a star reputation for smart, insightful word play.
Bergmans won the Three Academy Awards: for “Windmills” in 1968, with French composer Legrand, from “The Thomas Crown Affair”; for the title song “The Way We Were” 1973, with Hamlisch; And the song points for Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” in 1983, again with Legrand.
They were nominated for another 13 Oscars, five of them with their close friend Legrand (including “What do you do the rest of your life?” From 1969’s “The Happy Ending”, the title song from the 1970s “Pieces of Dreams”, “How do you keep the music on playing?” Daddy ” Make Make Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Meing Mear “,”
Two more were with Hamlisch, for songs in 1978’s “The same time, next year” and the 1980s “Shirley Valentine”; Two with Williams, for songs in 1982’s “Yes, Giorgio” and 1995’s “Sabrina”; and individual songs with Mancini (for 1971’s “sometimes a great view”), Maurice Jarre (for 1972’s “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”), Shire (1979’s “The Promise”) and Gravel (1982’s “Tootsie”).
Four of their 11 Grammy nominations were for Song of the Year, and they won for Streisand’s recording of “The Way We Were” (also won for best soundtrack album). Their second year’s song was for “Nice ‘n’ Easy”, a hit for Frank Sinatra in 1960; “Summer knows”, a Streisand song from 1971; And “you don’t bring me flowers”, a duet from 1978 by Streisand and Neil Diamond.
Their TV themes included “Maude” and “Good Times” (written with gravel), “Alice” (with Shire) and “Brooklyn Bridge” (with Hamlisch). They won Emmys for the point for TV music 1975 “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” (with Billy Goldenberg), a song for “Sybil” (with Leonard Rosenman); “Common Miracles” for Barbra Streisand’s HBO special and “A Ticket to Dream” 1998 for 1998 AFI “100 years, 100 movies” Special (both with Hamlisch).
“Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” was adapted to Broadway 1978 as “Ballroom” and received a Tony nomination as the best musical. They later collaborated with Cy Coleman on stage Musical “Portraits in Jazz: A Gallery of Songs”, which led to another show, “Like Jazz”, which played LA’s Mark Taper Forum 2003.
Alan Bergman was born on September 11, 1925; Marilyn Keith was born the occasion three years later at the same Brooklyn hospital, but they did not meet until the late 1950s in California when both collaborated with songwriter Lew Specce.
Alan had studied at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and got a master in music at UCLA. Not long after, he said in an interview in 2011, he mentored by the already well -established lyricist Johnny Mercer (“Jeepers Creepers”, “Accentuate the Positive”).
Marilyn and Alan married in February 1958 and were professional collaborators all their careers. Among their early hits was “nice ‘n’ easy”, title track for the Sinatra album, written with Spece; And “Yellow Bird”, a Calypso number for a Norman Luboff album from 1959.
“We had a passion and a pleasure for writing,” Alan said in that interview for the Film Music Foundation. “We loved writing. We write every day. When you love what you do and you do it with someone you love, it helps everything.”
He explained their collaboration process in this way: “One is the Creator and the other is the editor. And these roles change in a few seconds. It’s like beating up and catching, back and forth. And when we write four bars or eight bars, I sing them, so sing is part of the process. It is constant, back and forth.”
“In The Heat of the Night,” Sung by Ray Charles, was their big breakthrough film and worked with composer Quincy Jones in 1967; They later collaborated with Jones on songs for “John and Mary” and “The Getaway.”
Their other films included, with gravel, “and justice for everyone” and “for the boys”; with Williams, “Fitzwilly” and “Pete ‘N’ Tillie”; With Johnny Mandel, “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams” and “Harper”; with Mancini, “Gily, Gily” and “Back Roads”; with Elmer Bernstein, “from dinner to three”; with Jerry Goldsmith, “Russia House”; with John Barry, “Out of Africa”; And with Howard, “The Prince of Tides.”
Singer who played Bergman songs – besides Sinatra, Streisand and Charles – included Fred Astaire, Neil Diamond, Tony Bennett, Maureen McGovern, Michael Feinstein, Patti Austin and James Ingram.
Bergmans was included in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980 and received their Johnny Mercer Award in 1997. They received a life award from the National Academy of Songwriters in 1995.
The survivors include a daughter, Julie and a grandchild.