Marvin Hamlisch And Anna Piaggi Have Passed Away

Well, here’s a double dose of sadness to go with your late afternoon cup of Red Bull and Mountain Dew. Musical theater composer Marvin Hamlisch died yesterday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, and former Hot Slut of the Day and fashion icon Anna Piaggi died in Milan today. Marvin was was 68 and Anna was 81.

If you find yourself drunkenly singing “The Way We Were” and “Nobody Does It Better” to an empty bottle of gin at the end of a long night, then you can thank Marvin Hamlisch for that. Marvin won a Best Song Oscar for “The Way We Were” and got another Oscar for writing the score for the movie. Marvin also won an Oscar for writing the musical notes that made up the score for The Sting. But Marvin is probably best known to theater queens like myself for writing the scores for the Broadway musicals A Chorus Line, The Goodbye Girl and Smile. Marvin got himself a Pulitzer and a Tony for A Chorus Line. Marvin is one of only 11 people who won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. AN EGOT! Marvin was working up to his death and recently finished the score for HBO’s Liberace biopic starring Michael Douglas as Roy Orbison as Liberace.

Amy Poehler might think she can work a tiny hat like nobody else, but Anna Piaggi was working a tiny hat long before Amy was born. Anna was a fashion journalist and wrote several pieces for Vogue Italia. Anna was known for throwing a whole lot of multi-colored WTF on her body and making it work. Kunty Karl once called Anna one of his muses.

I’m sure that somewhere between here and heaven, Anna is lifting up her top hat and kicking while Marvin plays this song on an angel’s harp:

And I’ve look at that picture of Anna for a hundred seconds and I don’t know whether that fluffy animal in her arms is a dog, a baby Ewok or an unwaxed Snooki.