Marvin Hamlisch

Biography

Hamlisch was an extraordinary composer for both Broadway musicals and Hollywood scores. His first big job in the movie industry was scoring the 1968 movie The Swimmer, an adaptation of a short story by John Cheever. He created music that fit neatly into an unusual movie that was described by critic Vincent Canby as “an open-ended hallucination.” Perhaps Hamlisch’s greatest success came not through composing original material but through the adaptation of the works of Scott Joplin into the score of the huge 1973 hit movie, The Sting. The theme to that music was Joplin’s The Entertainer, which was released as a single from this soundtrack and made it into the top ten charts. Four years later Hamlisch wrote a disco-tinged score for a James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, which included the hit song Nobody Does it Better. Hamlisch shared the work and credit on NDIB with his then-girlfriend Carole Bauer Sager.