Alan Bergman, Oscar-winning lyricist, dies at 99
Bergman died late on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, family spokesperson Ken Sunshine said in a statement on Friday. The statement said Bergman had, in recent months, suffered from respiratory issues 'but continued to write songs till the very end'.
The Bergmans married in 1958 and remained together until her death, in 2022. With collaborators ranging from Marvin Hamlisch and Quincy Jones to Michel Legrand and Cy Coleman, they were among the most successful and prolific partnerships of their time, providing words and occasional music for hundreds of songs, including movie themes that became as famous as the films themselves. Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett and many other artists performed their material, and Barbra Streisand became a frequent collaborator and close friend.
Blending Tin Pan Alley sentiment and contemporary pop, the Bergmans crafted lyrics known by millions, many of whom would not have recognized the writers had they walked right past them. Among their most famous works: the Streisand-Neil Diamond duet You Don't Bring Me Flowers, the well-named Sinatra favorite Nice 'n' Easy and the topical themes to the 1970s sitcoms Maude and Good Times.
Their film compositions included Ray Charles's In the Heat of the Night from the movie of the same name; Noel Harrison's The Windmills of Your Mind, from The Thomas Crown Affair; and Stephen Bishop's It Might Be You, from Tootsie.
The whole world seemed to sing and cry along to The Way We Were, an instant favorite recorded by Streisand for the 1973 romantic drama of the same name that co-starred Streisand and Robert Redford.
Set to Hamlisch's tender, bittersweet melody, it was essentially a song about itself – a nostalgic ballad about nostalgia, an indelible ode to the uncertainty of the past, starting with one of history's most famous 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 song of 1974 and brought the Bergmans one of their three Oscars, the others coming for Windmills of Your Mind and the soundtrack to Yentl, the Streisand-directed movie from 1983. At times, the Academy Awards could be mistaken for a Bergman showcase. In 1983, three of the nominees for best song featured lyrics by the Bergmans, who received 16 nominations in all.
The Bergmans also won two Grammys, four Emmys, were presented numerous lifetime achievement honors and received tributes from individual artists, including Streisand's 2011 album of Bergman songs, What Matters Most. On Lyrically, Alan Bergman, Bergman handled the vocals himself. Although best known for their movie work, the Bergmans also wrote the Broadway musical Ballroom and provided lyrics for the symphony Visions of America.
Their very lives seemed to rhyme. They didn't meet until they were adults, but were born in the same Brooklyn hospital, four years apart; raised in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, attended the same children's concerts at Carnegie Hall and moved to California in the same year, 1950. They were introduced in Los Angeles while working for the same composer, but at different times of the day.
Their actual courtship was in part a story of music. Fred Astaire was Marilyn's favorite singer at the time and Alan Bergman co-wrote a song, That Face, which Astaire agreed to record. Acetate in hand, Bergman rushed home to tell Marilyn the news, then proposed.
Bergman is survived by a daughter, Julie Bergman, and granddaughter.
Bergman had wanted to be a songwriter since he was a boy. He majored in music and theater at the University of North Carolina, and received a master's from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he befriended Johnny Mercer and became a protege. He and Marilyn at first wrote children's songs together, and broke through commercially in the late 1950s with the calypso hit Yellowbird.
Their friendship with Streisand began soon after, when they visited her backstage during one of her early New York club appearances. 'Do you know how wonderful you are?' was how Marilyn Bergman greeted the young singer.
The Bergmans worked so closely together that they often found themselves coming up with the same word at the same time. Alan likened their partnership to housework: one washes, one dries, the title of a song they eventually devised for a Hamlisch melody. Bergman was reluctant to name a favorite song, but cited A Love Like Ours as among their most personal:
'When love like ours arrives / We guard it with our lives / Whatever goes astray / When a rainy day comes around / A love like ours will keep us safe and sound.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
Arnold Schwarzenegger makes ‘cameo' return to popular movie franchise
Arnold Schwarzenegger 's likeness has been used in an epilogue scene for Predator: Killer of Killers, marking his return to the franchise after almost 40 years. The actor, 77, gave his permission for his character, Major Alan 'Dutch' Schaefer, to be featured in the new scene, which is canon to the series. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the epilogue shows predator warriors carrying coffins of several human characters, including Dutch, Lt Mike Harrigan, and Naru. Schwarzenegger previously provided voice work for the Predator: Hunting Grounds video game five years ago. Separately, Schwarzenegger identified Terminator: Salvation as the worst film in The Terminator franchise, citing his absence from the movie as the reason.
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart review – is this the future for America?
Gary Shteyngart is the observational standup of American letters, a puckish, playful Russian-born author who views the US through the eyes of an inquisitive tourist. The immigrant melting pot of New York is his stage; the intricate English language his prop. Shteyngart's characters, typically lightly veiled alter egos, are always getting lost, tripping up and mangling basic social interactions. It's the missed connections and short circuits that give his fictions their spark. Shteyngart's sixth novel is a lively, skittish Bildungsroman, shading towards darkness as it tracks the journey – literal, educational, emotional – of 10-year-old Vera Bradford-Shmulkin, an overanxious, over-watchful academic high achiever whose run of straight As has just been blighted by a B. 'Being smart is one of the few things I have to be proud of,' laments Vera, who diligently maintains a 'Things I Still Need to Know Diary' in which she makes note of difficult words and intriguing figures of speech. The girl is articulate and precocious, bent on self-improvement, and never mind the fact that she confuses 'facile' with 'futile' and 'hollowed' with 'hallowed' and is wont to wax lyrical about the 'she-she' districts of Manhattan. Her vocabulary is almost – but crucially not quite – sufficient to give us the whole story and explain what it means. Always happy to show his workings, Shteyngart cites Henry James's 1897 novel What Maisie Knew as the prompt for Vera, or Faith's child's-eye account of complicated adult affairs, although his gauche heroine bears a passing resemblance to the author himself as portrayed in his 2014 memoir, Little Failure. Friendless Vera lives with her rackety Russian-Jewish father, Igor (Shteyngart's name at birth), who edits a floundering liberal arts magazine, her harried Wasp stepmother, Anne (who added the 'e' in tribute to Anne Frank), and a boisterous younger half-brother, Dylan, who likes exposing himself to houseguests. But she also has (or possibly had) a Korean-born mother, long since vanished from the scene. Invisible Iris Choi plays the tale's white whale or MacGuffin; the elusive hidden figure that Vera is determined to locate. The eccentric Bradford-Shmulkins are lurching towards crisis, but they seem a model of stability when compared with the rest of the country, which reveals itself in unflattering flashes in the corners of the narrative. Shteyngart's novel, we come to realise, plays out a decade from now, in a 'post-democracy' USA where red state officials monitor menstrual cycles, self-driving cars shop their owners to the feds and the news platforms are abuzz with Russian disinformation. Desperate to redeem herself at school, Vera prepares to debate in support of the proposed 'Five-Three Amendment', a piece of racist legislation that would grant added voting weight to those 'exceptional Americans' whose ancestors arrived before the revolutionary war, 'but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains'. In so doing, of course, she's arguing against her own interests. Blond, blue-eyed Dylan would count as an 'exceptional American'. Dark‑haired, brown-eyed Vera would not. Henry James provides the prompt but his involvement begins and ends there, because Vera, or Faith isn't Jamesian at all. The prose is simple, breezy and conversational, even when it's stumbling artfully over its words. If Shteyngart's novel possesses anything so fixed as a north star or a patron saint, it's surely not James but Vladimir Nabokov. The title references Ada, or Ardor, while its protagonist comes styled in the manner of a pint-sized Timofey Pnin: a dogged innocent caught between cultures and half-lost in translation. In the course of her adventures, Vera learns that she was named after Nabokov's wife, 'a woman who was a genius herself but in the olden days she had to serve her husband'. Vera Nabokov's 21st-century namesake – driven and decent and at the top of her class – similarly risks being dismissed as a second-class citizen. The novel is busy and ingratiating, almost to a fault, which is to say that it feels distracted, unsettled; a cultural code-switcher itself. Vera, or Faith was reputedly drafted at speed in a little under two months, incorporating elements from a spy novel that the author had recently abandoned. That accounts for its messy vitality and its frequent, perturbing shifts of gear. Shteyngart's ode to a good American in a bad America conspires to be, by turns, a rueful human comedy and a coming-of-age caper, a dystopian chiller and an espionage yarn. The colourful tale never satisfyingly hangs together; its component pieces tend to jar more than gel. But Shteyngart sets about his material with abundant energy and charm. He sketches a convincing caricature of a near-future USA and provides a stoical heroine that we can uncomplicatedly root for. Even in a degraded, compromised, up-is-down social climate, that has to be deserving of a solid B grade at least. Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart is published by Atlantic (£16.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Sun
16 minutes ago
- The Sun
My ex-husband of 12 years left for my SISTER after I couldn't have kids – now I'm babysitting their kid at the wedding
A WOMAN has revealed the jaw-dropping reason she's spending the day babysitting, while her ex-husband marries her sister. In a viral TikTok, content creator Chloe Cotterell recounted the explosive story, but made clear she's telling someone else's tale, not her own. 2 And it's one that's left viewers completely stunned. The anonymous woman, whose identity Chloe keeps private, opens up about her 12-year marriage to her now ex, who she refers to simply as Mark. The couple had been together for over a decade and were desperate for children. But after struggling to conceive, things started to unravel. She said: 'I'd like to think that was the breaking point in our marriage, because we both wanted kids so badly.' She believed, aside from that pain, their relationship was solid. But one ordinary Tuesday, Mark came home from work and asked for a divorce out of the blue. Heartbroken and confused, she turned to her sister, her closest confidante, for support. But that, she now says, was a 'big mistake.' Although she still doesn't know if her sister and husband had been secretly involved before the divorce, what happened next made things crystal clear. Coldplay fan who filmed CEO 'cheating' with HR chief at gig takes swipe at couple As the divorce dragged on, partly because she earned significantly more than Mark and he was, according to her, 'trying to take the majority of my money'. She discovered her sister and ex were in fact officially seeing each other. Before the papers were even signed. 'It was such a shock,' she said. 'I was absolutely distraught.' But now, some time has passed and with her ex and sister tying the knot, she's able to see it in a very different light. She revealed the couple now have a child together and she would be on auntie duty, babysitting their love child through the wedding ceremony. Despite the shocking betrayal, she says she's not bitter. In fact, she's surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. She said: 'I've escaped a lifetime of hurt with that man. And honestly, I think it's hilarious my sister's so desperate, she ended up with my ex.' Now, with a new chapter ahead, she's hoping the wedding brings at least one silver lining. 'Let's hope there's some hot single men at the wedding,' she laughed. 'Because I need one.' The TikTok has gone viral, racking up thousands of comments from viewers urging her to get revenge smartly. One user said: "Whoever's story this is, is stronger than me. I would never see or speak to them ever again". Another added: "I am gobsmacked, I would never speak to my sister again". While a third fan revealed a similar situation: "My Mum divorced my Dad and then married his identical twin brother 3 months later". It seems betrayal within the family is more common than you might think. Recently, a woman ran to TikTok begging for help after discovering her husband had cheated on her with her little sister. After finding out her little sister had gone through a difficult break-up and lost her job, she let her come and stay with her and her husband, trusting her sister completely. But that trust was shattered after she walked into the kitchen one afternoon and saw something that left her sick to her stomach. Meanwhile, not everyone handles cheating so calmly. A mum has got the ultimate revenge on her cheating ex after he threatened to rob the home she lives in with his kid. The furious woman has gone viral after destroying her partner's designer clothes in a blaze of paint-splattered glory. Four red flags your partner is cheating Private Investigator Aaron Bond from BondRees revealed four warning signs your partner might be cheating. They start to take their phone everywhere with them In close relationships, it's normal to know each other's passwords and use each other's phones, if their phone habits change then they may be hiding something. Aaron says: "If your partner starts changing their passwords, starts taking their phone everywhere with them, even around the house or they become defensive when you ask to use their phone it could be a sign of them not being faithful." "You should also look at how they place their phone down when not in use. If they face the phone with the screen facing down, then they could be hiding something." They start telling you less about their day When partners cheat they can start to avoid you, this could be down to them feeling guilty or because it makes it easier for them to lie to you. "If you feel like your partner has suddenly begun to avoid you and they don't want to do things with you any more or they stop telling you about their day then this is another red flag." "Partners often avoid their spouses or tell them less about their day because cheating can be tough, remembering all of your lies is impossible and it's an easy way to get caught out," says Aaron. Their libido changes Your partner's libido can change for a range of reasons so it may not be a sure sign of cheating but it can be a red flag according to Aaron. Aaron says: "Cheaters often have less sex at home because they are cheating, but on occasions, they may also have more sex at home, this is because they feel guilty and use this increase in sex to hide their cheating. You may also find that your partner will start to introduce new things into your sex life that weren't there before." They become negative towards you Cheaters know that cheating is wrong and to them, it will feel good, this can cause tension and anxiety within themselves which they will need to justify. "To get rid of the tension they feel inside they will try to convince themselves that you are the problem and they will become critical of you out of nowhere. Maybe you haven't walked the dog that day, put the dishes away or read a book to your children before bedtime. A small problem like this can now feel like a big deal and if you experience this your partner could be cheating," warns Aaron.
