Alan Bergman, Half of a Prolific Lyric-Writing Team, Dies at 99

Music|Alan Bergman, Half of a Prolific Lyric-Writing Team, Dies at 99

Alan Bergman, who teamed with his wife, Marilyn, to write lyrics for the Academy Award-winning songs “The Way We Were” and “The Windmills of Your Mind” and for some of television’s most memorable theme songs, died on Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99.

His death was announced by a family spokesman, Ken Sunshine.

The Bergmans regularly collaborated with prominent composers like Marvin Hamlisch, with whom they wrote “The Way We Were,” from the 1973 Barbra Streisand-Robert Redford romance of the same name, and Michel Legrand, with whom they wrote “The Windmills of Your Mind,” from the 1968 crime movie “The Thomas Crown Affair,” starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. They also wrote the lyrics to Mr. Legrand’s score for Ms. Streisand’s 1983 film “Yentl,” for which they won their third Academy Award.

The Bergmans were among the favored lyricists of stars like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and especially Ms. Streisand, who in 2011 released the album “What Matters Most: Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman.” The album’s 10 tracks included “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “Nice ’n’ Easy,” “That Face” and the title song, none of which were among the numerous Bergman lyrics Ms. Streisand had recorded before. Promoting the album, she described the Bergmans as having “a remarkable gift for expressing affairs of the heart.”

Between 1970 and 1996, the Bergmans received a total of 16 Oscar nominations. One year, 1983, they claimed three of the five best-song nominations, for “It Might Be You” from “Tootsie,” “If We Were in Love” from “Yes, Giorgio” and “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” from “Best Friends.” (They lost to “Up Where We Belong” from “An Officer and a Gentleman.”)

They also received three Emmy Awards: for the score of the 1976 TV movie “Sybil,” for which they wrote the lyrics to Leonard Rosenman’s title song; “Ordinary Miracles,” a song they wrote with Mr. Hamlisch for a 1995 Streisand concert special; and “A Ticket to Dream,” another collaboration with Mr. Hamlisch, for a 1998 American Film Institute special.

But television audiences heard their work most often in the series theme songs for which they wrote the lyrics. These included the gospel-inflected themes for the comedy series “Maude” and “Good Times”, both with music by Dave Grusin, and the breezily upbeat “There’s a New Girl in Town,” the theme from the sitcom “Alice,” with music by David Shire.