Marvin Hamlisch was a remarkable man. The son of Jewish New Yorkers, he was studying music in Julliard before he was seven years old. He grew up to become one of only two people to have won the Emmy Award, Grammy Award, Academy Award and Tony Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in his lifetime. The other one who also bagged all those trophies was the esteemed Richard Rodgers, a giant of stage musicals who wrote the music for breakthrough successes like The Sound of Music, The King And I, Oklahoma, Carousel and others. Rodgers got the Pulitzer for South Pacific in 1950. Hamlisch got his for A Chorus Line in 1976.
With lyrics written by Edward Kleban, A Chorus Line is considered one of the best and also one of the longest-running musicals of all time. A wonderful fusion of music, dance and drama, it tells the tale of dancers during auditions for a Broadway director’s new show, its soundtrack includes the timeless and moving song What I Did For Love. As used in the musical, it was about an artist’s dedication to his art and was about all the pain, mental and emotional stage people go through for love of the medium. At the end of a failed audition, a sprained ankle, or at having to choose a show over a lover, the artist tells himself, look, no regrets, this is what I did for love.
A lot of things, good or bad, sane or mad, have been done and will continue to be done in the name of love in this world of ours. As long as these happen, What I Did For Love by Hamlisch, will always come to mind. Hamlisch died after a brief illness last Aug. 6 at his home in Los Angeles. He was only 68 years old and music lovers felt a great loss. But then, Hamlisch is not really lost because his music will live on, even unconsciously in the hearts of everyone.
A young girl learning how to sing will invariably come across Fallin’, that was written for the musical, They’re Playing Our Song by Hamlisch and Carol Bayer-Sager. A musician in need of a perky tune tinkers The Entertainer, on the piano, the old Scott Joplin rag that Hamlisch turned into an Oscar-winning hit for the motion picture The Sting. I am sure that you have also seen several brides walk down the aisle to the sound of Looking Through The Eyes Of Love, Hamlisch’s inspiring theme for the ice-skating drama Ice Castles.
Then, with heart beating fast, have you ever smiled into someone’s eyes and wondered, “The last time I felt like this, I was falling in love…” like that song from Same Time Next Year. And don’t tell me, this thing does not happen to you. You meet an ex after several years and instantly, Barbra Streisand starts singing inside your head, “Mem’ries light the corners of my mind/ misty water colored mem’ries of the way we were/ scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind/ smiles too painful to remember for the way we were…” That is Hamlisch again with assist from Alan and Marilyn Bergman with another Academy award-winning song, the beautiful theme from The Way We Were.
There are other memorable works. Songs like I Finally Found Someone from The Mirror Has Two Faces or Nobody Does It Better from The Spy Who Loved Me; film scores like Sophie’s Choice and Three Men And A Baby; music for plays like for Imaginary Friends that was written by the now also late Norah Ephron; or other musicals like the Tony-nominated, The Goodbye Girl, and his latest The Nutty Professor, that opened a day before his death.
I love A Chorus Line. That is a show you can only describe as awesome. But I love They’re Playing Our Song even more. Written while composer Hamlisch and lyricist Bayer-Sager were in a romantic relationship, the two-character musical is about what goes on in the heads of a composer and a lyricist on the verge of falling in love. It has one of the best pop soundtracks ever composed. And how the songs, though so simple, hit emotions head on.
One of these must have been what Carole was thinking of Marvin at the time. “Does the man make the music/or does the music make the man...” I think Hamlisch made great music.