He crafted award-winning, sentimental, unforgettable ballads and music scores. She won awards for her work as a broadcast journalist and producer for TV series and network programs. They had never met face to face, but he fell in love with her voice, falling so hard that he proposed — over the phone.
Their over-the-wire courtship culminated in a marriage made in heaven for Marvin Hamlisch and Terre Blair. Much of the love story of these two valentines played out on Long Island, in Massapequa and the Hamptons.
Like many musicians, Marvin Frederick Hamlisch came from immigrant stock. He was born in New York City to Jewish Austrians in 1944. His father was a professional accordionist and a bandleader, and his mother a protective parent who supported her son’s talent at the piano. By age 4, the boy was declared a child prodigy. Realizing that his son had an ear for music — saying “He’s got something” — his father got him an audition at The Juilliard School; he was admitted when he was 6.
Hamlisch recalled, “They expected me to play Bach or Beethoven.” Instead, he played a popular song — in every key. He was being trained to be a concert pianist but he would get nervous going to concerts; he said, “I had an ulcer at a very young age. It was too much for me.”
His family moved to Massapequa, where he attended Massapequa High School. He found his path by combining classical and pops music. In 1964, at 20, he began a long-running partnership with Barbra Streisand as rehearsal pianist for the Broadway musicalFunny Girl.He remembered thinking, “My God, you’re actually going to meet Barbra Streisand.”
Four years laterThe Swimmerhad its premiere. It was Hamlisch’s first film score, and one of his most poignant compositions. Word spread quickly and the musical genius racked up successes: He was the principal pops conductor for eight orchestras and symphonies and he composed or adapted 42 movie scores, including music forSophie’s Choice, Ordinary People, Three Men and a Baby, Ice Castles, Bananas,and many more. His hits included the Oscar-winning score and song forThe Way We Were,starring Streisand and Robert Redford, and his adaptation of Scott Joplin’s music forThe Sting, for which he received an Oscar. His awards made him an EGOT, a winner ofEmmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards.
He would later say, “The biggest thrill you can have is to tell people one of your songs, and have them be able to hum it.”
The night he won the 1974 Oscar forThe Way We Werehe realized that there was something more important than success, he toldThe Washington Post. His parents and several friends had died, and he felt isolated. Coming home to an empty house, emptying the cat litter, he felt so alone.
Then everything changed.He toldThe Postthat he credited Blair for revitalizing him. He remembered thinking, “If I had a conversation with God and said, ‘This is exactly what I need,’ He would’ve brought me this woman.”
This woman was Terre Blair, a native of Columbus, Ohio. After graduating from Otterbein College and attending Ohio State University, she became a television journalist and on-air host and worked as a correspondent and producer for theTodayshow,PM Magazine,the three major networks and PBS.
Source: LI Press
