 Marvin Hamlisch has built a musical career worthy of much respect. He was musically gifted from an early age, studied music in college in New York, worked in the trade as a pianist and arranger, and wrote some popular songs for singers such as Liza Minelli. Having worked on the movie "The Swimmer" he moved to Hollywood scoring two Woody Allen comedies "Take the Money and Run" and "Bananas", "Save the Tiger" with Jack Lemmon and earning an academy award nomination with the movie "Kotch" for his song "Life is what you make it", lyrics by Johnny Mercer and sung by Walter Matthau.
In 1974 he hit a career high in award terms with no less than 3 Oscars. Two were for the movie "The Way We Were" starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, winning Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Title Song with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The third Oscar was for the soundtrack to the movie The Sting (with Robert Redford again). For this film Hamlisch played and arranged some of Scott Joplin's piano rags such as The Entertainer (the title track) and Solace. The popularity of the resulting soundtrack was perhaps single-handedly responsible for the renewed interest in Ragtime in general which subsequently arose.
Hamlisch then went on to write his first Broadway show "A Chorus Line" (later made into a film) with lyricist Edward Kleban. Including songs such as "One" and "What We Did for Love" this was a major record-breaking success and resulted into another shower of awards. Hamlisch had a relationship with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager and together they wrote another Broadway show "They're Playing Our Song" reputed to be based upon their own relationship. That working partnership also continued on the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me" where their song "Nobody Does it Better" was a big hit for Carly Simon.
Other notable movies that he worked on in some capacity include "Ordinary People", "Three Men and A Baby" and "Pennies from Heaven" (as musical director). He worked again with Alan and Marilyn Bergman on other songs including "The Girl who Used to be Me" for "Shirley Valentine". The film version of "A Chorus Line" was Oscar-nominated for the song "Surprise, Surprise" as was the score for the Meryl Streep movie "Sophie's Choice".
It is not surprising then that Barbra Streisand chose Hamlisch as musical director for her comeback tour in 1994. He also worked with Streisand on her film "The Mirror has Two Faces" which earned yet another Oscar nomination for the song "I've Finally Found Someone". All in all, I think you could say that Hamlisch's career to date has been exceptionally successful!
As far as we know Hamlisch hasn't composed original film music for a few years, but he is still active in the world of film music, conducting Dimitri Tiomkin's music for "It's a Wonderful Life" in a series of concerts in December 2006.
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