Half of the husband (Alan Bergman) and wife team, lyricist Marilyn Bergman, passed away today at the age of 93. Alan Bergman is now 96. She died peacefully in their Los Angeles home from respiratory failure. They were the iconic writers in movie history. Their work includes the classics “Nice n’ Easy,” “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “The Way We Were.”
They wrote lyrics for 3 of the 5 songs nominated for best song Academy Awards in 1983 – – “How Do you Keep the Music Playing?” (Best Friends), “If We Were in Love” (Yse, Giorgio and “It Might Be You” (Tootsie). The following year saw 3 more nominations with Michel Legrand on Yentl.
The Bergmans wrote songs for so many icons: Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Barbra Streisand.
They received a total of 16 Oscar Nominations along with multiple Emmy Awards and were voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980.
Mailyn Bergman was the first woman elected to the Board of ASCAP in 1985 where she served for 15 years.
The Bergmans were born in the same Brooklyn hospital (she three years after him; Streisand was born at the Jewish Hospital, too) and grew up near each other, but they did not meet until they had moved west.
Their daughter Julie Bergman Sender, a producer, survives together with husband and a granddaughter.
Photo: Maryann Lopinto – Alan Bergman, Karen Mason, Marilyn Bergman at The Algonquin
