Art & Creativity Quote by Marvin Hamlisch

There is something almost disarmingly casual in the way Marvin Hamlisch drops “obviously” into that sentence, as if the canon of Broadway should be as self-evident as gravity. It’s a small word that does big work: it signals membership. Hamlisch isn’t name-checking Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, and Porter to impress you; he’s placing himself in a lineage where those names are the air you breathe if you’re serious about American musical storytelling.

The intent is partly autobiographical - a map of taste - but the subtext is professional. Hamlisch is explaining how craft becomes identity. “Drawn to Broadway musicals” isn’t just fandom; it’s a declaration that he was shaped by a form where melody has to carry character, joke, romance, and plot at once. When he calls their writing “wildly impressive,” the adjective isn’t ornamental. It hints at the controlled chaos of those composers: the way Gershwin could swing between sophistication and street, or Porter could make cynicism rhyme with desire, all while sounding effortless.

Context matters: Hamlisch arrived after Broadway’s so-called golden age, when rock, concept musicals, and film scoring had scrambled the old rules. His reverence reads as both gratitude and strategy - a composer anchoring himself to standards of wit, harmonic muscle, and theatrical clarity, even as the culture moved on. He’s telling you what kind of musician he wants to be measured against, and daring himself to earn the comparison.