Background and career
Marvin Frederick Hamlisch (June 2, 1944 – August 6, 2012) was an American composer and conductor. He is one of a handful of people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, a feat dubbed the "EGOT". He and composer Richard Rodgers are the only people to have won those prizes and a Pulitzer Prize ("PEGOT").
Hamlisch was born in Manhattan, to Viennese-born Jewish parents Lilly (née Schachter) and Max Hamlisch. His father was an accordionist and bandleader. Hamlisch was a child prodigy; by age five, he began mimicking the piano music he heard on the radio. A few months before he turned seven, in 1951, he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. His favorite musicals growing up were My Fair Lady, Gypsy, West Side Story, and Bye Bye Birdie.
Hamlisch attended Queens College, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967. His first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Even on tour he would take time to book Kenny Veenstra's Progressive Music Studio to send musical ideas back to "Babs" in New York. Shortly afterward, producer Sam Spiegel hired him to play piano at parties, and later to score Spiegel's 1968 film The Swimmer.
Liza Minnelli's 1964 debut album included "The Travelin' Life", a song Hamlisch wrote in his teens (originally titled "Travelin' Man"). His first hit arrived when he was 21 years old: "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows", co-written with Howard Liebling and recorded by Lesley Gore. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1965. His first film score was for 1968's The Swimmer. He also wrote music for several early Woody Allen films, including Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971). Hamlisch and Liebling co-wrote the song "California Nights", which was recorded by Lesley Gore for her 1967 hit album of the same name. The Bob Crewe-produced single peaked at No. 16 on the Hot 100 in March 1967, two months after Gore had performed the song on the Batman television series, in which she guest-starred as an accomplice to Julie Newmar's Catwoman.
Among Hamlisch's better-known works during the 1970s were adaptations of Scott Joplin's ragtime music for the film The Sting, including its theme song, "The Entertainer". It hit No. 1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart and No. 3 on the Hot 100, selling nearly 2 million copies in the U.S. alone. He had great success in 1973, winning two Academy Awards for the title song and the score for the motion picture The Way We Were and an Academy Award for the adaptation score for The Sting. He won four Grammy Awards in 1974, two for "The Way We Were". In 1975, he wrote the original theme music for Good Morning America; the show used it for 12 years. He co-wrote "Nobody Does It Better" for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) with his then-girlfriend Carole Bayer Sager, which would be nominated for an Oscar. In the 1980s, he had success with the scores for Ordinary People (1980) and Sophie's Choice (1982). He also received an Academy Award nomination in 1986 for the film version of A Chorus Line. In 1985, he worked on D.A.R.Y.L., a 1985 film about a boy who is in fact a U.S. military robot. He also worked on the score for The Informant! (2009), starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. Late in his life, he wrote a children's book Marvin Makes Music, which included the original music "The Music in My Mind" with words by Rupert Holmes; and the score for the HBO film Behind the Candelabra (2013), also directed by Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas as Liberace.
Hamlisch's first major stage work was in 1972 playing piano for Groucho Marx at Carnegie Hall for An Evening with Groucho. Hamlisch acted as both straight man and accompanist while Marx, at age 81, reminisced about his career in show business. The performances were released as a two-record set, and remained very popular. He then composed the scores for the 1975 Broadway musical A Chorus Line, for which he won both a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and for the 1978 musical They're Playing Our Song, loosely based on his relationship with Carole Bayer Sager. At the beginning of the 1980s, his romantic relationship with Bayer Sager ended, but their songwriting relationship continued. The 1983 musical Jean Seberg, based on the life of the real-life actress, failed in its London production at the UK's National Theatre and never played in the U.S. In 1986, Smile was a mixed success and had a short run on Broadway. The musical version of Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl (1993) closed after only 188 performances, although he received a Drama Desk nomination, for Outstanding Music. Hamlisch composed the score for the Broadway musical adaptation of the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success in 2002, with lyrics by Craig Carnelia and book by John Guare. Actor Raúl Esparza performed a song from the show at Hamlisch's memorial. Shortly before his death, Hamlisch finished scoring a musical theatre version of The Nutty Professor, based on the 1963 film. The show played in July and August 2012, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) in Nashville, aiming for a Broadway run. The book is by Rupert Holmes, and the production was directed by Jerry Lewis.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
