Film Music Reporter

Marvin Hamlisch has passed away at age 68. The composer died Monday in Los Angeles after a brief illness. During his career, he received twelve Academy Award nominations and was honored with the award three times for the title song and score for Sidney Pollack’s The Way We Were starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford and the original score for the Paul Newman- and Redford-starring The Sting in 1973. He also received multiple Golden Globes, Emmy Awards and Grammy Awards over almost four decades. Among the composer’s other film music projects are the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, for which wrote the score and the song Nobody Does It Better, the sports drama Ice Castle, 1982’s Sophie’s Choice starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, 1980’s Oscar-winning drama Ordinary People directed by Robert Redford and Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run and Bananas. He was equally well known for his work on Broadway, including the hit musical A Chorus Line, which was also turned into a movie in 1985. His last film scoring project was 2009’s The Informant! directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, for which he received another Golden Globe nomination. Hamlisch was working on a new musical Gotta Dance at the time of his death and was attached to reunite with Soderbergh on his Liberace HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra.