{"id":20106,"date":"2025-07-18T23:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T23:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/20106\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T23:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T23:17:09","slug":"the-way-we-were-songwriter-was-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/20106\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Way We Were’ Songwriter Was 99"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAlan Bergman<\/a>, the Oscar-, Grammy- and Emmy-winning songwriter whose lyric-writing partnership with his wife Marilyn lasted more than six decades and produced such hits as \u201cThe Windmills of Your Mind,\u201d \u201cThe Way We Were\u201d and \u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d died Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99.<\/p>\n

\n\tMarilyn Bergman<\/a>, who died in January 2022, was the first woman president and chairman of the board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), a leading performing-rights society for music-makers. Alan soldiered on even after her death, continuing to put words to music. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans, who penned hundreds of songs, mostly for movies and TV, bridged the traditional Great American Songbook era of Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin with the more modern pop sensibility of the \u201960s, \u201970s and \u201980s.<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir poetic touch, combined with the melodic gifts of so many of their collaborators, elevated the films on which they worked, and made them first-call songwriters for A-list directors like Sydney Pollack, Norman Jewison and Richard Brooks.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWindmills\u201d is a modern classic (\u201cround, like a circle in spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel\u2026\u201d), as is \u201cWay We Were\u201d (\u201cmemories light the corners of my mind, misty watercolor memories\u2026\u201d), while the soulful words of \u201cHeat of the Night\u201d astonished singer Ray Charles when he learned the married couple who wrote them was white.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans\u2019 catalog, even apart from their many awards, constitutes a large portion of the truly great movie songs of the last half of the 20th century. Collaborating with such top composers as Michel Legrand, Marvin Hamlisch, John Williams, Johnny Mandel, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini, David Shire and James Newton Howard, they built a stellar reputation for clever, insightful wordplay. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans won three Academy Awards: for \u201cWindmills\u201d in 1968, with French composer Legrand, from \u201cThe Thomas Crown Affair\u201d; for the title song of \u201cThe Way We Were\u201d in 1973, with Hamlisch; and the song score for Barbra Streisand\u2019s \u201cYentl\u201d in 1983, again with Legrand.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey were nominated for 13 more Oscars, five of them with their close friend Legrand (including \u201cWhat Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?\u201d from 1969\u2019s \u201cThe Happy Ending,\u201d the title song from 1970\u2019s \u201cPieces of Dreams,\u201d \u201cHow Do You Keep the Music Playing?\u201d from 1982\u2019s \u201cBest Friends,\u201d and two songs from \u201cYentl,\u201d \u201cPapa Can You Hear Me?\u201d and \u201cThe Way He Makes Me Feel\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo more were with Hamlisch, for songs in 1978\u2019s \u201cSame Time, Next Year\u201d and 1980\u2019s \u201cShirley Valentine\u201d; two with Williams, for songs in 1982\u2019s \u201cYes, Giorgio\u201d and 1995\u2019s \u201cSabrina\u201d; and individual songs with Mancini (for 1971\u2019s \u201cSometimes a Great Notion\u201d), Maurice Jarre (for 1972\u2019s \u201cThe Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean\u201d), Shire (1979\u2019s \u201cThe Promise\u201d) and Grusin (1982\u2019s \u201cTootsie\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tFour of their 11 Grammy nominations were for Song of the Year, and they won for Streisand\u2019s recording of \u201cThe Way We Were\u201d (also winning for best soundtrack album). Their other Song of the Year nods were for \u201cNice \u2018n\u2019 Easy,\u201d a hit for Frank Sinatra in 1960; \u201cThe Summer Knows,\u201d a Streisand song from 1971; and \u201cYou Don\u2019t Bring Me Flowers,\u201d a 1978 duet by Streisand and Neil Diamond.<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir TV themes included \u201cMaude\u201d and \u201cGood Times\u201d (written with Grusin), \u201cAlice\u201d (with Shire) and \u201cBrooklyn Bridge\u201d (with Hamlisch). They won Emmys for the score of the 1975 TV musical \u201cQueen of the Stardust Ballroom\u201d (with Billy Goldenberg), a song for \u201cSybil\u201d (with Leonard Rosenman); \u201cOrdinary Miracles\u201d for Barbra Streisand\u2019s 1995 HBO special and \u201cA Ticket to Dream\u201d for the 1998 AFI \u201c100 Years, 100 Movies\u201d special (both with Hamlisch).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cQueen of the Stardust Ballroom\u201d was adapted for Broadway in 1978 as \u201cBallroom,\u201d and earned a Tony nomination as Best Musical. They later collaborated with Cy Coleman on the stage musical \u201cPortraits in Jazz: A Gallery of Songs,\u201d which led to another show, \u201cLike Jazz,\u201d that played L.A.\u2019s Mark Taper Forum in 2003.<\/p>\n

\n\tSongwriter Paul Williams, president and chairman of ASCAP, said: \u201cAlan Bergman was in a rarified class as a lyricist. Together with Marilyn, he crafted elegant rhymes and unforgettable imagery that are forever etched in our memories. I loved his songs and his generosity of spirit. When Alan offered encouragement to me as a songwriter early on\u2014as I know he did for so many others\u2014it truly meant the world. Alan, you will always be songwriting royalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlan Bergman was born Sept. 11, 1925; Marilyn Keith was, coincidentally, born three years later in the same Brooklyn hospital, but they didn\u2019t meet until the late 1950s in California when both were collaborating with songwriter Lew Spence.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlan had studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a master\u2019s in music at UCLA. Not long after, he said in a 2011 interview, he was mentored by the already well-established lyricist Johnny Mercer (\u201cJeepers Creepers,\u201d \u201cAccentuate the Positive\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tMarilyn and Alan were married in February 1958 and were professional collaborators their entire careers. Among their early hits were \u201cNice \u2018n\u2019 Easy,\u201d title track for the Sinatra album, written with Spence; and \u201cYellow Bird,\u201d a calypso number for a 1959 Norman Luboff album.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had a passion, and a joy, for writing,\u201d Alan said in that interview for the Film Music Foundation. \u201cWe loved to write. We write every day. When you love what you do, and you do it with someone you love, that helps everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe explained their collaborative process this way: \u201cOne is the creator and the other is the editor. And those roles change in seconds. It\u2019s like pitching and catching, back and forth. And when we write four bars or eight bars, I sing them, so singing is a part of the process. It\u2019s constant, back-and-forth communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d sung by Ray Charles, was their big breakthrough film, working with composer Quincy Jones in 1967; they later collaborated with Jones on songs for \u201cJohn and Mary\u201d and \u201cThe Getaway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir other films included, with Grusin, \u201cAnd Justice for All\u201d and \u201cFor the Boys\u201d; with Williams, \u201cFitzwilly\u201d and \u201cPete \u2018n\u2019 Tillie\u201d; with Johnny Mandel, \u201cSummer Wishes, Winter Dreams\u201d and \u201cHarper\u201d; with Mancini, \u201cGaily, Gaily\u201d and \u201cBack Roads\u201d; with Elmer Bernstein, \u201cFrom Noon Till Three\u201d; with Jerry Goldsmith, \u201cThe Russia House\u201d; with John Barry, \u201cOut of Africa\u201d; and with Howard, \u201cThe Prince of Tides.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSingers who performed Bergman songs \u2014 in addition to Sinatra, Streisand and Charles \u2014 included Fred Astaire, Neil Diamond, Tony Bennett, Maureen McGovern, Michael Feinstein, Patti Austin and James Ingram.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bergmans were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980 and received its Johnny Mercer Award in 1997. They received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Songwriters in 1995. The National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) gave them a governor\u2019s award in 2002, and its trustees\u2019 award in 2013.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors include a daughter, Julie, and a granddaughter. A previously scheduled 100th-birthday celebration on Sept. 11 at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, Calif. (with such guests as Seth MacFarlane, Michael Feinstein, Dave Grusin and Jackson Browne) will go on as scheduled, becoming a celebration of the Bergmans\u2019 work, a family spokesman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alan Bergman, the Oscar-, Grammy- and Emmy-winning songwriter whose lyric-writing partnership with his wife Marilyn lasted more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[18351,88,18352,18353],"class_list":{"0":"post-20106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alan-bergman","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-marilyn-bergman","11":"tag-music-for-screens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20106","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=20106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}