Pianist, composer, and conductor Marvin Hamlisch died yesterday at the age of 68, after a life that saw him winning multiple Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony—one of only 11 people who can lay claim to the "EGOT." A child prodigy who studied at Juilliard before he was 7 years old, Hamlisch later broke into show business as Barbra Streisand’s rehearsal pianist on the Broadway musical Funny Girl. (Years later, having firmly established himself in Hollywood, he wrote the score and title song for one of Streisand’s biggest movie hits, The Way We Were, won Emmys for his work on two of Streisand’s TV specials, and conducted her touring orchestra.) While still in his teens, Hamlisch wrote a song that ended up on Liza Minnelli's debut album. By the age of 21, he had a No. 13 hit with a song he penned for Lesley Gore, “Sunshine, Lollipops, And Rainbows."
Hamlisch's first movie score was for the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie The Swimmer, launching a career that included composing the soundtracks to more than 50 movies and TV shows, including Woody Allen’s Take The Money And Run and Bananas, the James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me, Sophie’s Choice, and even the 1987 TV film The Return of The Six Million Dollar Man And The Bionic Woman. Hamlisch's grand slam year was 1974, when he won Oscars for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song (for The Way We Were), as well as Best Original Song Score And/Or Adaptation for his work on The Sting, which drew from Scott Joplin’s piano rags. That same year he took home the Grammy for “The Way We Were.”