Chasing Back for Sweet Success’ Scent

More than 20 years have passed since Marvin Hamlisch was one of the hottest composers for movies and musicals, but he is bidding to become ubiquitous again. In Southern California this weekend he’ll appear on two stages at once. More about that in a bit.

Hamlisch sizzled in the ‘70s. He won three Oscars in 1974 for his scores to “The Sting” and “The Way We Were.” On Broadway, he triumphed as the composer of “A Chorus Line” and “They’re Playing Our Song.” But through the 1980s and 1990s, only two shows by Hamlisch opened on Broadway: “Smile,” which closed after 48 performances in 1986, and “The Goodbye Girl,” which lasted five months in 1993.

“It’s not like I’ve said no to any show,” he said in a phone interview from Pittsburgh, where he was leading the Pittsburgh Symphony in his role as its principal pops conductor (Hamlisch holds the same title with the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.) “It’s that my opportunities have come very far between.”

Now he’s back on Broadway as the composer of “Sweet Smell of Success,” in which John Lithgow stars as a power-mad 1950s gossip columnist modeled after Walter Winchell. The show took a critical torpedoing when it opened in mid-March, but Hamlisch--who insists he would “not change a note”--says its seven Tony Award nominations, including best musical and best score, give him hope that the production can stay afloat.

On June 2, Hamlisch will spend his 58th birthday at the Tony ceremonies in New York. He plans to kick off the evening by playing “With a Song in My Heart” on the piano in a tribute to Richard Rodgers. Then he will take his seat and hope to be called back to collect a trophy or two.

Even if all goes sour for “Sweet Smell of Success,” Hamlisch and the show’s lyricist, Craig Carnelia, have other projects lined up with high-profile collaborators. They’ve written the songs for “Imaginary Friends,” a play-with-music by screenwriter-director Nora Ephron (“When Harry Met Sally ... ,” “Sleepless in Seattle”). The premise is a fictional friendship between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy, writer-activists who in real life became enemies embroiled in a slander suit. It is scheduled to make its world premiere Sept. 28 at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.

Hamlisch and Carnelia also are booked to write the score for a stage adaptation of Woody Allen’s film “Bullets Over Broadway.” But that job is on hold until Allen resolves his lawsuit against his former producer, Jean Doumanian. “Bullets Over Broadway” is tied up in the case--one of eight movies for which Allen alleges he was underpaid.

Meanwhile, as he has for the last two decades, Hamlisch continues to be a regular on the concert circuit. The real Marvin Hamlisch will stand up at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday and Saturday and entertain as he usually does, backed by the Pacific Symphony in a pops concert built around his own hits and humorous asides, plus nuggets from other Broadway composers.

The Hamlisch appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse on the same nights is an impostor whose acquaintance the real one does not care to make. “A Class Act,” tells the story of Edward Kleban, the lyricist-composer who put words to Hamlisch’s music for “A Chorus Line.” Hamlisch is a character in the show, and the reviews say he does not cut an endearing figure. Hamlisch and Michael Bennett, the director-choreographer of “A Chorus Line,” come off as “nasty cartoons,” The Times’ Lewis Segal wrote. The New York Times’ review of last year’s Broadway production said it painted a “not entirely flattering” picture of Hamlisch.

Hamlisch says he read the script of “A Class Act” while it was in development and saw that it might be troublesome. He suggested changes in its depiction of how he and Kleban worked together.

“But trying to stop them would have been a mistake,” he said. Hamlisch had no wish to suppress a show devoted to the music of Kleban, who died of cancer in 1987 at age 48. “I think it’s always important for Ed’s work to be out there. The best I could do was put in my two cents, then walk away.” Hamlisch has kept his resolution not to see “A Class Act,” which plays in Pasadena through June 16. But he has read the reviews.

“I have enough faith in myself and what the public perceives of me to know a caricature is a caricature,” he said. “I don’t worry about, ‘What is this going to do to your reputation?’”

Hamlisch also has faith that “Sweet Smell of Success” and the music he wrote for it are quality goods, regardless of the mostly damning notices.

“Does it hurt? Sure it hurts,” Hamlisch concedes. “You gulp for about three days, then you dust yourself off and keep going.” There was a time when bad reviews and failed shows really threw him. “Since the age of 7, I had believed that success with music was the key ingredient to my happiness. I am praised; therefore, I am happy,” he wrote in his 1992 memoir, “The Way I Was.” After “Smile” tanked, Hamlisch wrote, his life turned into a prolonged frown--a period of depression during which “all I could do was eat myself up alive.” Hamlisch credits Terre Blair, whom he married in 1989, with dispelling his illusion that only applause could bring happiness.

Even so, after his long absence from the stage, Hamlisch relishes each new chance to hear the applause and risk critics’ brickbats.

“lf it were up to me, I would do a show every year,” he said. “The problem is first you have to find somebody who wants you to do the music, then somebody to put up the money to do the show. I understand the process, and that I’m chained to this process, and it’s OK. My love of theater is so great that there’s not much that could stop me.”

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Marvin Hamlisch with the Pacific Symphony, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa. Friday and

Saturday, 8 p.m. $25-$77. (714) 755-5799.