Alan Bergman

Alan Bergman (born September 11, 1925) and Marilyn Bergman (née Keith), born November 10, 1929) are American lyricists and songwriters. The pair have been married since 1958 and have written the music and lyrics for numerous celebrated television shows, films, and stage musicals. The Bergmans have won three Academy Awards for Best Original Song and have been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Alan Bergman was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York, in 1925, and studied at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned his master's degree in music at UCLA. Marilyn Bergman was born in 1929, coincidentally at the same Brooklyn hospital where Alan had been born four years earlier, and studied music at The High School of Music & Art in New York before studying psychology and English at New York University. Alan worked as a television director and songwriter at Philadelphia's WCAU-TV in the early 1950s. Johnny Mercer encouraged Alan to move to Los Angeles and become a professional songwriter. Despite the geographical proximity of their upbringing in New York, the Bergmans did not meet until they had both moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Marilyn had moved to California and was friends with songwriter Bob Russell and his wife, Anna, and later described "drif[ing] into songwriting really by accident because I had a fall and broke my shoulder and couldn't play piano so I started writing lyrics". Marilyn also felt that she lacked the discipline or talent required to become a concert pianist. The Bergmans had both become collaborators with composer Lew Spence, and only met when Spence suggested they all work together. The Bergmans married in 1958, and have a daughter, Julie Bergman Sender, who works as an independent film producer.

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