Marvin Hamlisch

Marvin Hamlisch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who imbued his movie and Broadway scores with pizazz and panache and often found his songs in the upper reaches of the pop charts, died in August 2012 n Los Angeles. He was 68 and lived in New York. For a few years starting in 1973, Mr. Hamlisch spent practically as much time accepting awards for his compositions as he did writing them. He is one of a handful of artists to win every major creative prize, some of them numerous times, including an Oscar for “The Way We Were” (1973, shared with the lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman), a Grammy as best new artist (1974), and a Tony and a Pulitzer for “A Chorus Line” (1975, shared with the lyricist Edward Kleban, the director Michael Bennett and the book writers James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante). All told, he won three Oscars, four Emmys and four Grammys. His omnipresence on awards and talk shows made him one of the last in a line of celebrity composers that included Henry Mancini, Burt Bacharach and Stephen Sondheim. Mr. Hamlisch, bespectacled and somewhat gawky, could often appear to be the stereotypical music school nerd — in fact, at 7 he was the youngest student to be accepted to the Juilliard School at the time — but his appearance belied his intelligence and ability to banter easily with the likes of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. His melodies were sure-footed and sometimes swashbuckling. “One,” from “A Chorus Line,” with its punchy, brassy lines, distills the essence of the Broadway showstopper. “A Chorus Line,” a backstage musical in which Broadway dancers told their personal stories, started as a series of taped workshops, then evolved into a show that opened at the Public Theater in 1975 and moved to Broadway later that year. It ran for 6,137 performances, the most of any Broadway musical until it was surpassed by “Cats.” Marvin Frederick Hamlisch was born June 2, 1944, in New York . Mr. Hamlisch is survived by Terre Blair a television broadcaster and producer, whom he married in 1989. His sister, Terry Liebling, a Hollywood casting director and the wife of his former collaborator Howard Liebling, died in 2001.