Marvin Hamlisch

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 1983

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Marvin Hamlisch got into the Juilliard School of Music at the age of seven and he has been successful ever since. His two hit musicals - Chorus Line and They're Playing our Song - and his scores for over 20 films have won him many awards, including three Academy Awards in a single night. His most recent musical, Jean Seberg, opened at the National Theatre in 1983.

In conversation with Roy Plomley, he talks about his career and chooses the eight records he would take to the mythical island.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Everything's Coming Up Roses by Rosalind Russell Book: Phone book Luxury: Picture of mother when she was 17

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krusty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1983 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. This week our castaway is a musician, composer, conductor, and pianist Marvin Hamlish.
0:36.0	Marvin, you're said never to stop working.
0:39.0	I enjoy working. I think it's something I love to do, you know, and if it's something that you love to do, you do it.
0:46.0	And I have this feeling that it's important for me to put work out that I think will touch people and will hopefully give them songs that they
0:55.7	can listen to and hum and enjoy and laugh at or cry at and that's what I like doing.
1:01.9	You have just eight discs with you. Did you have any plan in selecting them?
1:06.3	Well, you know funny enough, I've had certain favorite songs for a long time and
1:12.0	There are certain songs that always for me connote a certain way that I feel and a certain thing that this when I hear the song and it makes me either laugh or it makes me get very kind of up and things and so that's why I've picked them I mean the first one
1:24.7	that I picked is from a show she's gypsy which is my favorite all-time Broadway
1:29.4	show ever I think it was the best classic faraway show I saw this show in New York about seven times when I was at high school because a friend of mine could get house seats you know and so I used to always see this show, and when Ethel Merman would sing this
1:46.3	song, it just got you, to be honest with you, it got you crazy because the voice, the impact,
1:51.8	the orchestration, everything.
1:53.6	And I think this is just one of those songs that if you're on a desert island
1:56.6	and you need an alarm clock on a wake-up call,
1:58.5	this is exactly what you want to wake up to.
2:00.5	They think that we're through, but baby, you'll be swell, you'll be great, going to have
2:12.0	great, going to have the whole world on a plate
2:16.0	starting here start now
2:20.0	honey everything's coming up roses from Gypsy.
2:27.0	Mervyn you're a New Yorker we've gathered that.
	...

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