Alan Bergman, winner of Oscar, Grammy and Emmy songwriter, who collaborated on lyric writing with his wife Marilyn for more than six decades and created the hits “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “The Way We Were” and “In the Heat of the Night,” died Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99 years old.

Marilyn Bergman, who died in January 2022, was the first woman chair of the board of directors of the American Society of Composers, Songwriters and Publishers (ASCAP). Alan Bergman continued to struggle even after her death, writing song lyrics.

Bergman wrote hundreds of songs, mostly for films and television series, and collaborated with leading composers, including John Williams, Quincy Jones, Hendry Mancini, and David Shire.

They won three Academy Awards: for the 1968 film Windmills, with French composer Michel Legrand, from the film The Thomas Crown Affair, for the title song of The Way We Were in 1973, with Marvin Hamliss, and for the soundtrack to Barbra Streisand’s Yentl in 1983, again with Legrand.

Alan Bergman was born on 11 September 1925. Marilyn Keith was born, coincidentally, three years later in the same Brooklyn hospital, but they didn’t meet until the late 1950s in California, when both were working with singer-songwriter Lew Spence.

Alan had studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a master’s degree in music from UCLA.

Marilyn and Alan were married in February 1958 and were professional partners throughout their careers. Among their first hits was “Nice ‘n’ Easy,” the title song for Frank Sinatra’s album, which they wrote with Spence.

The song “In the Heat of the Night”, performed by Ray Charles for the film of the same name, was their big hit in collaboration with composer Quincy Jones in 1967.

Among the singers who performed Bergman songs were Fred Astaire, Neil Diamond, Tony Bennett, Maureen McGovern, Michael Feinstein, Patty Austin and James Ingram.