Marc Shaiman recently celebrated his birthday on October 22. A video was posted on TikTok from the composer’s birthday celebrations, featuring Shaiman on piano accompanied by stars Bette Midler, Martin Short, and Billy Crystal. The group all performed the Frank Sinatra song, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”
Check out the video!
Shaiman started his career as a theatre/cabaret musical director. He started working at Saturday Night Live as an arranger/writer.
His film credits include Broadcast News, Beaches, When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers, The Addams Family, Sister Act, Sleepless in Seattle, A Few Good Men, The American President, The First Wives Club, George of the Jungle, In & Out, Patch Adams, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Team America: World Police, Hairspray, Flipped, Mary Poppins Returns and HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon and 61*. On television, he worked on the final performances for Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show (with Bette Midler), Conan O’Brien’s Late Night (with Nathan Lane), both of Jay Leno’s final Tonight Show broadcasts, and Nathan Lane’s farewell to David Letterman called “Dead Inside.”
Shaiman has earned seven Academy Award nominations, a Tony Award and a Grammy Award for his work on the musicalHairspray, and an Emmy Award for co-writing Billy Crystal’s Academy Award performances. He has also been Grammy-nominated for his arrangements for Harry Connick Jr.’s recordings When Harry Met Sally… and We Are in Love as well as Hairspray and Smash and Emmy-nominated for his work on Saturday Night Live and Smash. In 2002, he was honored with the “Outstanding Achievement in Music-In-Film” award at The Hollywood Film Festival, and in 2007 he was honored with ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Award in recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions to the music of film and television. He is the first recipient of the Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for a Comedy Feature Film. He wrote and sang the song “Yes” for his agent’s film Finding Kraftland, and co-wrote (with partner Scott Wittman) songs for Neil Patrick Harris when Harris hosted the 63rd Tony Awards (2009) and the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards (2009), and was Emmy-nominated for musical directing and co-writing the 82nd Academy Awards (2010).
Shaiman co-produced and co-wrote cuts on Mariah Carey’s 2010 Christmas album Merry Christmas II You. He and Wittman wrote original songs for the musical-based television show for NBC, Smash, which ran from 2012 to 2013, and served as executive producers. For their song “Let Me Be Your Star,” Shaiman and co-lyricist Wittman were nominated for both an Emmy Award and a Grammy Award, and as executive producers they were nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Comedy or Musical.
Shaiman and Wittman were honored on April 28, 2014, by The New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The following year, Jennifer Hudson sang the Smash song “I Can’t Let Go” at the 87th Academy Awards during the in memoriam tribute, featuring revised lyrics. The duo’s Broadway musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ran on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, after finishing a four-year run on London’s West End at The Royal Drury Lane Theater. Shaiman was Tony-nominated for his orchestrations for their previous Broadway musical Catch Me If You Can. In 2021, they wrote a song titled “Save the City” for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in-universe Broadway production titled Rogers: The Musical featured in the first episode of Hawkeye, “Never Meet Your Heroes”. It was released as a single on November 24, the day the episode became available on Disney+.
In February 2021, it was announced that Shaiman and Wittman were writing songs for a new musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot, which premiered on Broadway in 2022 with a book by Amber Ruffin and Matthew Lopez.
