David Shire

David Lee Shire (born July 3, 1937) is an American songwriter and composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtracks to the 1976 film The Big Bus, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Conversation and All the President's Men, and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as "Manhattan Skyline", are some of his best-known works. His other work includes the score of the 1985 film Return to Oz (the "sequel-in-part" of The Wizard of Oz), and the stage musical scores of Baby, Big, Closer Than Ever, and Starting Here, Starting Now. Shire is married to actress Didi Conn. Education and early career Shire was born in Buffalo, New York, to Esther Miriam (née Sheinberg) and Buffalo society band leader and piano teacher Irving Daniel Shire. His family was Jewish. His secondary education was at the Nichols School. He met his long-time theater collaborator lyricist/director Richard Maltby, Jr. at Yale University, where they wrote two musicals, Cyrano and Grand Tour, which were produced by the Yale Dramatic Association. Shire also co-fronted a jazz ensemble at Yale, the Shire-Fogg Quintet, and was a Phi Beta Kappa honors student, with a double major in English and music. He was a member of the Pundits and Elihu and he graduated magna cum laude in 1959. After a semester of graduate work at Brandeis University (where he was the first Eddie Fisher Fellow) and six months in the National Guard infantry, Shire took up residence in New York City, working as a dance class pianist, theater rehearsal and pit pianist, and society band musician while constantly working with Maltby on musicals. Their first off-Broadway show, The Sap of Life, was produced in 1961 at One Sheridan Square Theater in Greenwich Village. He co-wrote The Village Stompers' "Washington Square" with Bob Goldstein in 1963. Film and television scoring Shire began scoring for television in the 1960s and made the leap to scoring feature films in the early 1970s. He was then married to actress Talia Shire, for whose brother Francis Ford Coppola he scored The Conversation, perhaps his best known score, in 1974. Additional screen credits include Two People, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Hindenburg, Farewell, My Lovely, All The President's Men, The Big Bus, 2010, Return to Oz, Short Circuit, Max Dugan Returns, and Zodiac.