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Tony Award‑winning composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman has worked with a lot of impressive artists throughout his career. His collaborations, which span Hollywood, Broadway, and more, have included Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Trey Parker, and more. But, to a young Shaiman, one star was at the top of his list.
“All I wanted to do was work with Bette Midler,” Shaiman said while promoting his new memoir, Never Mind the Happy, on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “Just by sheer luck, [one of] the first people I met when I moved to New York when I was 16… was Scott Wittman,” he said, noting that he lived across from one of Midler’s backup singers at the time.
“They were starting their own group when they weren’t on the road with Bette Midler, and because I was right there and I knew the harmonies they wanted to do because of my love for Bette Midler, I became their musical director.” His dream was soon fulfilled when he was flown to Los Angeles and accompanied the legendary performer on the song “No Jestering.” He has since worked with Midler on numerous projects, including albums, concerts, television and more. Watch the full interview now.
In “Never Mind the Happy”, Shaiman chronicles five decades of Broadway triumphs, Hollywood hijinks, and unforgettable collaborations. Along the way, he charts the personal highs and heartbreaks that have shaped him, spending his teenage years in community theatre, starting a long collaboration with Bette Midler in the ’70s, surviving the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, his award-winning film music career in the Hollywood of the ’90s, right up to the peaks (and valleys) of creating Broadway musicals from 2000 on.
Marc Shaiman is an award-winning composer and lyricist of the stage and screen. A frequent collaborator with lyricist Scott Wittman, his Broadway credits include Hairspray, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Catch Me If You Can, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Some Like It Hot, and Smash.
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, and original songs for Mary Poppins Returns.
Shaiman has earned seven Academy Award nominations, a Tony Award and a Grammy Award for his work on the musical Hairspray, and an Emmy Award for co-writing Billy Crystal’s Academy Award performances. He also received an Emmy Award for co-writing “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It” for the Hulu hit Only Murders in the Building.
He and Wittman also wrote original songs for the musical TV show 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.
