{"id":19500,"date":"2025-07-18T17:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T17:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/19500\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T17:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T17:46:08","slug":"alan-bergman-dead-oscar-winning-lyricist-was-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/19500\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Bergman Dead: Oscar-Winning Lyricist Was 99"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAlan Bergman, the three-time Oscar-winning lyricist who teamed with his late wife, Marilyn Bergman<\/a>, to form one of the most celebrated writing duos in the history of movie music<\/a>, has died. He was 99. <\/p>\n

\n\tBergman, whose work includes such classics as \u201cThe Windmills of Your Mind\u201d \u2014 wonderfully employed for the second-season finale of Severance<\/a> \u2014 \u201cNice \u2019n\u2019 Easy,\u201d \u201cYou Don\u2019t Bring Me Flowers\u201d and \u201cThe Way We Were,\u201d died Thursday night of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter, producer Julie Bergman Sender, told The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n

\n\tMarilyn Bergman died in January 2022\u00a0of\u00a0respiratory failure at age 93.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe husband-and-wife lyricists worked particular magic with songstress Barbra Streisand and composers Marvin Hamlisch and Michel Legrand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey won Academy Awards for the best original songs \u201cThe Way We Were\u201d<\/a> (shared with Hamlisch) from the 1973 Streisand film of that name and \u201cWindmills of Your Mind\u201d (shared with Legrand) from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). They received another trophy for their score for Streisand\u2019s Yentl (1983).<\/p>\n

\n\tThey met Streisand, a fellow Brooklynite, when she was performing in a New York club as a teenager and before she starred in her breakout 1968 movie Funny Girl. Their songs for her included \u201cYou Don\u2019t Bring Me Flowers,\u201d which they wrote with Neil Diamond. (Streisand and Diamond recorded the song separately and then, by popular demand, did it as a duet.)<\/p>\n

\n\tStreisand also recorded their songs \u201cOn Rainy Afternoons,\u201d \u201cOne Day\u201d and \u201cAfter the Rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans and Hamlisch won a Grammy Award for The Way We Were album, and the threesome shared an Oscar nom for \u201cThe Last Time I Felt Like This\u201d from Same Time, Next Year (1978).<\/p>\n

\n\tThey also received Oscar noms with Legrand for \u201cWhat Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?\u201d (from 1969\u2019s The Happy Ending) and \u201cPieces of Dreams\u201d from the 1970 film of that name; with Henry Mancini on \u201cAll His Children\u201d (from 1971\u2019s Sometimes a Great Notion); and with Maurice Jarre on \u201cMarmalade, Molasses and Honey\u201d (from 1972\u2019s The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans wrote lyrics for the Ray Charles song that opens In the Heat of the Night (1967), with music by Quincy Jones<\/a>. And they penned several songs for Sergio Mendes, including the lyrics to \u201cLook Around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans received an Oscar nom in every year from 1969-74 and collected three in 1983 and then three more the following year. They were nominated 16 times in all and entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey also wrote the lyrics for the opening theme songs for such TV series as\u00a0Bracken\u2019s World, Maude, Good Times, Alice and Brooklyn Bridge and received three career Emmy Awards.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you\u2019re creating something, you sometimes have to go through a lot of stupid or silly things to spark your collaboration,\u201d Alan said in a 1980 interview with People magazine. \u201cYou learn to say what comes into your head.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBergman met Marilyn Katz in 1956 (they wrote a song together that first day, \u201cI Never Knew What Hit Me,\u201d which they said was terrible) and married two years later. They were born in the same Brooklyn hospital (he three years before her; Streisand was born at the Jewish Hospital, too) and grew up near each other, but they did not meet until they had moved west.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter they wrote a song, it was Alan who would usually sing the number to the artist they were pitching, and he recorded an album of their tunes (Lyrically, Alan Bergman) in 2007.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlan Bergman was born on Sept. 11, 1925. The son of a salesman, he studied at the University of North Carolina, graduating in music and theater arts, and at UCLA, where he earned his masters. He served in World War II, writing and directing Special Services programs.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing the war, Bergman worked at CBS in Philadelphia as a TV director. While there, he met the famed lyricist, singer and songwriter Johnny Mercer, who encouraged him to write songs. Bergman then wrote for Marge Champion<\/a> and Gower Champion and staged shows for Jo Stafford.<\/p>\n

\n\tMercer encouraged Bergman to move back to L.A., and the lyricist was introduced to Marilyn at a party by composer Lew Spence. All three teamed on Fred Astaire\u2019s \u201cThat Face\u201d in 1957, Dean Martin<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSleep Warm\u201d in 1958 and Frank Sinatra<\/a>\u2019s \u201cNice \u2019n\u2019 Easy\u201d in 1960. (\u201cThat Face\u201d also served as Alan\u2019s engagement present to Marilyn.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBergman served four terms as president of the Academy Foundation, the educational and cultural arm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to his daughter, a producer on films including Major League, G.I. Jane, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Six Days Seven Nights, Bergman is survived by his granddaughter, Emily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alan Bergman, the three-time Oscar-winning lyricist who teamed with his late wife, Marilyn Bergman, to form one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[12774,17933,88,17934,216,10756,17935],"class_list":["post-19500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-barbra-streisand","tag-dean-martin","tag-entertainment","tag-frank-sinatra","tag-music","tag-obituaries","tag-quincy-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}