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.
HE’S GOT SOMETHING
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 musical Funny Girl. He remembered thinking, “My God, you’re actually going to meet Barbra Streisand.”
Four years later The Swimmer had 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 for Sophie’s Choice, Ordinary People, Three Men and a Baby, Ice Castles, Bananas, and many more. His hits included the Oscar-winning score and song for The Way We Were, starring Streisand and Robert Redford, and his adaptation of Scott Joplin’s music for The Sting, for which he received an Oscar. His awards made him an EGOT, a winner of Emmy, 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.”
TELEPHONE COURTSHIP
The night he won the 1974 Oscar for The Way We Were he realized that there was something more important than success, he told The 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 told The Post that 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 the Today show, PM Magazine, the three major networks and PBS.
Despite the career successes, she told The Columbus Dispatch, “I’ve left a lot of pain behind me,” referring to her first marriage. Then, through mutual friends, Hamlisch and Blair began a phone conversation.
Describing their personalities, Blair said he dug into life with fearless joy and abandon; she was more cautious. “He took my hand and led me into his world of magic where even the mundane became electrified with his humor, joy, laughter, and brilliant insight.”
“We spoke for hours and hours,” she told whatsonstage.com. “He claimed he fell in love with me … through my voice.” After several months, he proposed and, knees shaking, she accepted. They married in 1989 and lived in Westhampton Beach, where he served on the honorary board of the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center and was inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2008. The couple later moved to Pond View on Captain’s Row in Sag Harbor. While living on the East End, Hamlisch composed portions of the music for A Chorus Line, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize.
FOREVER AND AFTER THAT
Blair and Hamlisch were married for 23 years. When he was 68, in 2012, he collapsed and died of respiratory arrest. Former President Bill Clinton remembered Hamlisch as a “good-hearted, humble and hilarious genius,” traits that caused the pianist to share his joy by doing things like playing the piano at nursing homes.
At Hamlisch’s eulogy, Blair said that he never talked about helping others. “He didn’t brag about it or discuss it — he just did it, and he did it all the time.”
Blair said, “From the bottom of my heart, I love you forever and after that.”
Note: I got to see Hamlisch at work in the 1960s when he was the rehearsal pianist for NBC’s Bell Telephone Hour series. My father was the show’s arranger, and he was impressed at Hamlisch’s professional manner and eagerness to contribute his talent to improve the music. My dad predicted that this young kid would go places.
