Oscar-Winning songwriter Alan Bergman passes away

TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains mention of death.
Veteran songwriter Alan Bergman has passed away. He was 99. As per Variety, Alan Bergman, the Oscar-, Grammy- and Emmy-winning songwriter whose lyric-writing partnership with his wife Marilyn lasted more than six decades and produced such hits as 'The Windmills of Your Mind,' 'The Way We Were' and 'In the Heat of the Night,' breathed his last on Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles.

The Bergmans, who penned hundreds of songs, mostly for movies and TV, bridged the traditional Great American Songbook era of Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin with the more modern pop sensibility of the '60s, '70s and '80s.

Alan's wife Marilyn Bergman died in January 2022. She was the first woman president and chairman of the board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), a leading performing-rights society for music-makers.

The Bergmans won three Academy Awards: for 'Windmills' in 1968, with French composer Legrand, from 'The Thomas Crown Affair;' for the title song of 'The Way We Were' in 1973, with Hamlisch; and the song score for Barbra Streisand's 'Yentl' in 1983, again with Legrand.

They were nominated for 13 more Oscars, five of them with their close friend Legrand (including 'What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?' from 1969's 'The Happy Ending,' the title song from 1970's 'Pieces of Dreams,' 'How Do You Keep the Music Playing?' from 1982's 'Best Friends,' and two songs from 'Yentl,' 'Papa Can You Hear Me?' and 'The Way He Makes Me Feel'), as per Variety.

Two more were with Hamlisch, for songs in 1978's 'Same Time, Next Year' and 1980's 'Shirley Valentine;' two with Williams, for songs in 1982's 'Yes, Giorgio' and 1995's 'Sabrina;' and individual songs with Mancini (for 1971's 'Sometimes a Great Notion'), Maurice Jarre (for 1972's 'The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean'), Shire (1979's 'The Promise') and Grusin (1982's 'Tootsie').