Oscar-winning songwriter Ray Evans, whose long collaboration with partner Jay Livingston produced such enduring standards as Mona Lisa, Buttons and Bows, Silver Bells and Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera), has died. He was 92.
Evans died late on February 15 of heart failure at a Los Angeles hospital, Frederick Nicholas, Evans’s long-time lawyer, said on Friday.
”I talked to him the day he died. He was just full of energy and excitement. When I heard last night that he died, I couldn’t believe it,” Nicholas said.
Singer Michael Feinstein, a close friend, said he spoke with Evans on his birthday, February 4.
”He said to me, ‘I lived a great life and everything now is gravy. I take it day by day,”’ Feinstein said in a telephone interview from New York. ”He was always thrilled that his work survived.”
Evans’s musical partnership with Livingston spanned more than six decades, with Livingston providing the melodies and Evans writing the lyrics.
Often called the last of the great songwriters, the duo earned seven Academy Award nominations and won three — in 1948 for Buttons and Bows in the film Paleface, in 1950 for Mona Lisa in the movie Captain Carey, USA and in 1956 for Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera) from The Man Who Knew Too Much.
They also produced the classic Christmas carol Silver Bells, and the theme songs for the television series Bonanza and Mr Ed.
Evans and Livingston wrote songs for dozens of movies, most of them when they were under contract with Paramount from 1945 to 1955. But the duo also wrote the music and lyrics for two Broadway musicals — Oh Captain! in 1958 and Let It Ride in 1961 — as well as many unproduced scores.
Livingston died in 2001 at age 86.
Evans, whose wife died in 2003, is survived by his sister. — Sapa-AP