Alan Bergman, the Oscar-winning lyricist who teamed along with his spouse, Marilyn, for a permanent and loving partnership that produced such old style hits as “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?,” “It Might Be You” and the traditional “The Way We Were,” has died at 99.
Bergman died late Thursday at his residence in Los Angeles, household spokesperson Ken Sunshine stated in a press release Friday. The assertion stated Bergman had, in current months, suffered from respiratory points “but continued to write songs till the very end.”
The Bergmans married in 1958 and remained collectively till her dying, in 2022. With collaborators starting from Marvin Hamlisch and Quincy Jones to Michel Legrand and Cy Coleman, they had been among the many most profitable and prolific partnerships of their time, offering phrases and occasional music for a whole lot of songs, together with film themes that turned as well-known because the movies themselves. Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett and plenty of different artists carried out their materials, and Barbra Streisand turned a frequent collaborator and shut pal.
Mixing Tin Pan Alley sentiment and modern pop, the Bergmans crafted lyrics identified by hundreds of thousands, a lot of whom wouldn’t have acknowledged the writers had they walked proper previous them. Amongst their most well-known works: the Streisand-Neil Diamond duet “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” the well-named Sinatra favourite “Nice ’n’ Easy” and the topical themes to the Seventies sitcoms “Maude” and “Good Times.” Their movie compositions included Ray Charles’ “In the Heat of the Night” from the film of the identical identify; Noel Harrison’s “The Windmills of Your Mind,” from “The Thomas Crown Affair”; and Stephen Bishop’s “It Might Be You,” from “Tootsie.”
Leah Puttkammer through Getty Photos
The entire world appeared to sing and cry alongside to “The Way We Were,” an prompt favourite recorded by Streisand for the 1973 romantic drama of the identical identify that co-starred Streisand and Robert Redford. Set to Hamlisch’s tender, bittersweet melody, it was primarily a track about itself — a nostalgic ballad about nostalgia, an indelible ode to the uncertainty of the previous, beginning with one among historical past’s most well-known opening stanzas: “Memories / light the corners of my mind / misty watercolor memories / of the way we were.”
“The Way We Were” was the top-selling track of 1974 and introduced the Bergmans one among their three Oscars, the others coming for “Windmills of Your Mind” and the soundtrack to “Yentl,” the Streisand-directed film from 1983. At instances, the Academy Awards could possibly be mistaken for a Bergman showcase. In 1983, three of the nominees for greatest track featured lyrics by the Bergmans, who acquired 16 nominations in all.
The Bergmans additionally gained two Grammys, 4 Emmys, had been offered quite a few lifetime achievement honors and acquired tributes from particular person artists, together with Streisand’s 2011 album of Bergman songs, “What Matters Most.” On “Lyrically, Alan Bergman,” Bergman dealt with the vocals himself. Though greatest identified for his or her film work, the Bergmans additionally wrote the Broadway musical “Ballroom” and supplied lyrics for the symphony “Visions of America.”
