MARVIN — The Graphic Novel Biography of Marvin Hamlisch, Adapted, Written and Illustrated by Ian David Marsden
MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch is the first published graphic novel I adapted, wrote and illustrated. Released by Schiffer Publishing Ltd. in 2020, the book tells the early life story of composer, pianist and conductor Marvin Hamlisch — from his parents’ escape from Nazi-occupied Austria to his childhood at Juilliard, his early encounters with show business, and the first remarkable steps of a career that would eventually place him among the most decorated figures in American music.
The book is based on Hamlisch’s autobiography The Way I Was, written with Gerald Gardner. My task was not simply to illustrate that memoir, but to adapt it as a graphic novel, a work of comic art and sequential storytelling: selecting, restructuring and scripting the material for a 64-page graphic novel, then drawing the complete book in a visual language that could carry biography, family history, comedy, music, anxiety, ambition and a certain amount of old-fashioned show-business improbability. A task not unlike writing a screenplay before putting pen to paper.
Front and back covers of MARVIN, published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd., with endorsement quotes from Lucie Arnaz and Joel Grey.
A graphic novel about Marvin Hamlisch — before the Oscars, Tonys and Broadway legend
Marvin Hamlisch later became one of only two people in history, alongside Richard Rodgers, to achieve PEGOT status: winning a Pulitzer Prize, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. His credits would eventually include A Chorus Line, The Way We Were, The Sting, Nobody Does It Better, major film scores, Broadway musicals and a long career as a conductor and musical director.
MARVIN, however, begins earlier. The book is interested in the making of Marvin Hamlisch before the public triumphs become inevitable in retrospect. It follows the son of Viennese Jewish immigrants, a gifted child admitted to Juilliard at the age of six, a boy whose musical ability was real and obvious but whose confidence was far less dependable. Hamlisch’s autobiography is often very funny, but it is also candid about stage fright, self-doubt, embarrassment, family pressure and the strange early bargain between talent and expectation.
That combination made the story unusually well suited to comics. It has a strong central character, vivid supporting figures, sharply remembered scenes, and a natural movement between private anxiety and public performance. The young Marvin is brilliant, observant, theatrical, often terrified, and very funny about all of it after the fact. One could ask for less generous material. I did not.
Adapted from The Way I Was — written as a graphic novel, not merely illustrated
The source text for MARVIN was Marvin Hamlisch’s autobiography The Way I Was, written with Gerald Gardner. In adapting it, I approached the material much as one would approach a screenplay adaptation: identifying the dramatic spine, choosing which scenes carry the story, deciding where a page turn matters, compressing anecdotes into sequences, and finding visual ways to preserve Hamlisch’s voice without burying the artwork under narration.
I wrote the graphic novel script, structured the scenes, designed the pages, developed the visual likenesses and character acting, drew every panel and carried the book through as a complete work of sequential art. The finished volume is therefore not simply an “illustrated edition” of an existing memoir. It is a graphic novel adaptation — a new narrative form built from Hamlisch’s life and words, with its own pacing, panel rhythm and visual point of view.
The project was represented by Anna Olswanger of Olswanger Literary LLC in New York. Her editorial intelligence and publishing experience were important throughout the development of the book.
Three pages from MARVIN, adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden, including a key rooftop conversation between young Marvin Hamlisch and his father.
The family history behind the composer
One of the parts of Hamlisch’s story that mattered most to me while adapting the book was the history that precedes his birth. His parents, Max and Lilly Hamlisch, were Austrian Jews who escaped the tightening grip of Nazism and made their way to the United States. The book returns to their story in extended flashbacks: the pressure closing in around them in Vienna, Max’s precarious escape route to Switzerland, out through work in Liechtenstein, Lilly’s desperate preparations to leave, and the improvised courage required simply to get away.
This material gives MARVIN an emotional foundation that is easy to overlook if one thinks of Hamlisch only in terms of awards, Broadway and Hollywood. His life begins inside a family shaped by escape, displacement and reinvention. The Jewish Book Council later singled out this aspect of the graphic novel, noting that the parents’ flight from Nazi Europe gives the book a deeper understanding of Hamlisch’s heritage and the circumstances that made his American life possible.
A tense pre-Marvin family-history spread: Max and Lilly Hamlisch leave Austria, and a suspicious officer on the train finds not contraband but a saxophone — to his own embarrassment.
Visually, I treated these sequences differently from the more brightly colored New York and show-business episodes. The earlier family-history pages use a quieter, more restrained palette, allowing the tone to shift without changing the essential graphic language of the book.
Juilliard at six, schoolroom calamities and a child prodigy who was still a child
Marvin Hamlisch entered Juilliard at an age when most children are still negotiating shoelaces and the moral consequences of not sharing crayons. In the book, that extraordinary early training sits beside the ordinary and less dignified business of being a young boy in New York: school, hunger, stickball, television, disobedience, embarrassment, teachers who loom larger than life, and a musical education pursued with seriousness while childhood continues making its own demands.
These scenes were essential to the adaptation. They prevent the book from becoming a tidy recital of achievements. Marvin is not presented as a miniature monument. He is a child with talent, nerves, appetite, curiosity, strong feelings and a tendency to turn an inconvenience into a full dramatic situation. Hamlisch remembered these moments with humor, and the graphic novel keeps that humor intact.
A page from MARVIN in which the famous stopwatch solution works, Marvin returns to school, cookies become medically defensible, and a classroom piano changes everything.
Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand and the first improbable turns of a career
As Hamlisch grows older, MARVIN begins to acquire a cast list that would look suspiciously overqualified if it had been invented. While still very young, he helped create a Christmas recording for Liza Minnelli to give to her mother, Judy Garland. He later worked as a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand during Funny Girl. These are not retrospective celebrity ornaments added for sparkle; they are simply part of what happened astonishingly early in Hamlisch’s life.
A holiday scene from MARVIN: young Liza Minnelli gives her mother Judy Garland a carefully wrapped Christmas gift, and Judy is not quite prepared for what she finds inside.
The graphic novel also includes the more eccentric side roads of his early career: being summoned to play piano at a party hosted by producer Sam Spiegel; observing Bobby Kennedy among the guests; seeking practical advice from Quincy Jones over a job offer that looked distinctly underpriced; and then stepping into film scoring with The Swimmer, the 1968 Burt Lancaster film that became Hamlisch’s first feature score.
These scenes gave the book a particular pleasure. They allow the reader to watch Hamlisch approaching the threshold of a professional life while still not quite believing the door has opened. They also make the story valuable for readers interested in film music, Broadway, musical theatre, Hollywood history and the apprenticeship years of a major composer.
A graphic novel about music, timing and learning how scenes work
Comics cannot reproduce music directly, which is both a difficulty and an invitation. In adapting Hamlisch’s life, I was especially interested in the practical work around music: counting seconds, shaping emotional cues, arguing with time, watching pictures while imagining what sound should do, and trying to understand how a few bars can alter the temperature of an entire scene.
The book’s sequences around The Swimmer gave me a way to show this visually. Hamlisch is not simply “becoming successful”; he is learning a craft. He is timing film, looking at movement, asking how fear works in music, and discovering that composition for picture is a form of storytelling with its own exacting logic. That subject interested me enormously as an illustrator and visual storyteller. The page had to make the reader feel the thinking process, not merely report that it occurred.
A sequence from MARVIN about the unexpected chain of events that led producer Sam Spiegel to hire Marvin Hamlisch for his first feature-film score, The Swimmer.
Selected pages from MARVIN
Each image belongs to the published MARVIN project and reflects my role in adapting, scripting, drawing and shaping the book as a complete graphic narrative.
Interior pages from MARVIN about the practical terror of an early film-scoring assignment: not enough money, too little time, and no obvious way to write fifty-eight seconds of fear.
Recognition and reviews
MARVIN received 1st Place in the Graphic Novel category of the 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards. I wrote more fully about that recognition in a separate post:
The Jewish Book Council reviewed the book in 2020, drawing attention to the family-history strand, the Hollywood and musical-theatre material, and the way the graphic novel makes Hamlisch’s story accessible to readers interested in film, music and comics. The review also noted the “celebrity cameos and behind-the-scenes looks at Hollywood” woven through the book — a fair description of a life that had a habit of becoming improbable in excellent company.
There was also a less conventional response. During the pandemic, I sent a copy of MARVIN to Robert Crumb, who lives not far from me in southern France. He read the book closely and replied with a full-page handwritten critique: thoughts on color, research, steamships, and a magnificently unsparing dislike of Marvin Hamlisch’s music. His final verdict, however, was generous: “That said, it’s still a good book.” I wrote about the entire exchange — and the unexpected history behind it — in Sending a Comic Book to Robert Crumb Is Like Sending a Mixtape to Mozart.
Book details
Title:Marvin: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch
Adaptation, script and illustration: Ian David Marsden
Based on:The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch with Gerald Gardner
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing Ltd.
Publication year: 2020
Format: Paperback / softback, fully illustrated in color
Length: 64 pages
Dimensions: 6 × 9 in / 152 × 229 mm
ISBN: 9780764359040
Award: 1st Place — 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, Graphic Novel category
MARVIN remains one of the projects I am proudest to have completed. It was my first published graphic novel, but it also drew on decades of work that had come before it: cartooning, editorial illustration, character acting, dialogue compression, page rhythm, book design and the slightly unnatural pleasure of deciding exactly how much can happen in one panel before the reader revolts.
More importantly, it gave me the chance to adapt a genuinely remarkable life. Marvin Hamlisch’s story contains major cultural history, but also family memory, private insecurity, comic timing and the practical labor behind artistic achievement. That combination is what made it worth turning into a graphic novel.
For enquiries involving graphic novel adaptation, illustrated biography, comics, book illustration or other long-form visual narrative projects, I can be reached at [email protected].
Selected pages, artwork and publication material from MARVIN
The gallery below brings together a wider selection of pages, excerpts, promotional visuals and publication material from the graphic novel. It includes family-history flashbacks, childhood scenes, Juilliard episodes, film-scoring passages, moments involving Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Quincy Jones, Sam Spiegel and Bobby Kennedy, as well as interior book photographs, cover presentations and award material.
Each image belongs to the published MARVIN project and reflects my role in adapting, scripting, drawing and shaping the book as a complete graphic narrative.
Front and back covers of MARVIN, published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd., with endorsement quotes from Lucie Arnaz and Joel Grey.
Cover of MARVIN, the graphic novel adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden, winner of 1st Place in the 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards Graphic Novel category.
A holiday scene from MARVIN: young Liza Minnelli gives her mother Judy Garland a carefully wrapped Christmas gift, and Judy is not quite prepared for what she finds inside.
Interior comic pages from MARVIN, showing the young Marvin Hamlisch moving between music practice, school life and the affectionate pressure of a very ambitious household.
A sepia-toned flashback from MARVIN recounting how Max and Lilly Hamlisch, Marvin’s parents, navigated mounting danger in Austria before escaping toward safety.
A family-history spread from MARVIN: Lilly Schachter keeps her Jewish identity close in Vienna, later becomes a New Yorker, and learns during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that American crowds require “elbows.”
Promotional image for MARVIN, showing Ian David Marsden with the published graphic novel and the finished cover artwork for the 2020 Schiffer Publishing edition.
Interior pages from MARVIN about the practical terror of an early film-scoring assignment: not enough money, too little time, and no obvious way to write fifty-eight seconds of fear.
The printed MARVIN graphic novel, showing selected interior pages, the closing epilogue on Frances S. Goldstein and the book’s “About the Illustrator” section.
The published edition of MARVIN, photographed with its cover and several interior spreads from the Schiffer Publishing graphic novel.
Robert Crumb’s full-page handwritten critique of Ian David Marsden’s graphic novel Marvin: Based on The Way I Was. Sent from Sauve in 2021, the letter offers detailed artistic feedback as well as humorous commentary on music, color choices, and steamship research.
From a promotional MARVIN sequence: Quincy Jones visits Dr. Lester Coleman, who uses the appointment to make a sixty-second pitch for Marvin Hamlisch.
A young Marvin Hamlisch reaches the limit of polite humiliation, tears up the song he has brought to a producer, and walks out. The emotional consequences arrive a few panels later.
A sequence from MARVIN about the unexpected chain of events that led producer Sam Spiegel to hire Marvin Hamlisch for his first feature-film score, The Swimmer.
A page from MARVIN in which the famous stopwatch solution works, Marvin returns to school, cookies become medically defensible, and a classroom piano changes everything.
A tense pre-Marvin family-history spread: Max and Lilly Hamlisch leave Austria, and a suspicious officer on the train finds not contraband but a saxophone — to his own embarrassment.
A comic page from MARVIN recounting one of Hamlisch’s childhood misadventures: a baseball mishap, a spectacular black eye and, naturally, a piano performance the next day.
A family escape sequence from MARVIN: Max gets out first, Lilly is forced to leave the apartment, and the house money survives only because she hides it inside a bathroom light socket.
A childhood page from MARVIN: piano lessons with Edgar Roberts, long days split between school and Juilliard, stickball with friends, and, when possible, Hopalong Cassidy on television.
A childhood disaster from MARVIN: denied his emergency cookies before snack time, young Marvin kicks Miss Morrison and instantly imagines the scandal reaching the front page of The New York Times.
A pre-Marvin family-history page from MARVIN: his father’s original plan to continue to Chicago changes in New York, where the family’s American life begins.
Endpaper artwork for MARVIN, built from small black-line vignettes drawn from scenes across Marvin Hamlisch’s childhood, family life and musical career.
A page from MARVIN moving briskly from songwriting fury to theatrical rescue mission, then back to a childhood memory of an urgent call from the rabbi.
Award announcement image for MARVIN, winner of 1st Place in the Graphic Novel category of the 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards.
MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch, published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd., received 1st Place in the 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards Graphic Novel category.
Ian David Marsden with MARVIN, the graphic novel he adapted, wrote and illustrated, published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd. and awarded 1st Place in the 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards Graphic Novel category.
Ian David Marsden with MARVIN, the graphic novel he adapted, wrote and illustrated, published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd. and awarded 1st Place in the 2020 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards Graphic Novel category.
A promotional MARVIN image from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade sequence, where Lilly Hamlisch’s encounter with the phrase “make elbows” marks another small step in becoming American.
The finished printed edition of MARVIN, showing interior comic pages, the published cover and the “About the Illustrator” page from the Schiffer Publishing edition.
A wryly compressed career moment from MARVIN: one producer encounter ends badly, the ulcers begin queuing up, and then David Merrick appears, begging him to write a show.
Promotional announcement for the release of MARVIN, using a comic excerpt from the graphic novel alongside the book cover and bookseller references.
Marvin Hamlisch works against the clock, composing music to picture with a stopwatch, piano and Moviola — an early lesson in the precise mechanics of film scoring.
Promotional artwork for MARVIN, using a theatrical scene of young Hamlisch at the piano during a stage production — the music came early, and very publicly.
A promotional MARVIN scene from the Hamlisch family’s early New York years: Lilly beams over the new baby; Max performs the traditional fatherly ritual of worrying about money.
A scene from MARVIN recalling Robert F. Kennedy’s appearance at a party where the young Marvin Hamlisch was playing piano.
Young Marvin’s schedule was not entirely Juilliard and piano lessons. He also found time for Hopalong Cassidy on television and stickball in the street.
Promotional collage for MARVIN, combining the finished book, interior comic pages and the cover artwork of Ian David Marsden’s graphic novel about Marvin Hamlisch.
MARVIN featured in Schiffer Kids’ 2020 catalog, alongside a full comic page from the graphic novel and the publisher’s seasonal children’s-book presentation.
A promotional MARVIN comic built around a childhood New York misreading: Grant’s Tomb becomes, in Marvin’s imagination, the final resting place of a failed Juilliard student named Grant.
A promotional MARVIN comic built around musical timing: fifty-eight seconds can feel radically different depending on whether they are shaped like Chopin, Jaws or Cary Grant running from a crop-duster.
A comic scene from MARVIN: stranded on the roof after an ill-considered experiment, young Marvin attracts help from the street below — and eventually the superintendent with the keys.
A promotional MARVIN image of Hamlisch racing toward the next deadline, having already written nearly half the picture before the producer realizes it.
A celebratory “The End” image from the MARVIN film-scoring sequence: the picture is finished, the glasses are raised, and the young composer has survived the ordeal.
A promotional image from the MARVIN film-scoring sequence, referring to The Swimmer, the 1968 Burt Lancaster film for which Marvin Hamlisch composed the score.
A promotional MARVIN image with two episodes from Hamlisch’s youth: the unexpected fact that Christopher Walken was a schoolmate, and Marvin discovering he could compose a song almost on demand.
After finishing the score, Marvin’s pains subside — a small moment of physical relief after the pressure of his early film-composing work.
A page from MARVIN recounting an early professional near-break: Marvin plays confidently for Liza Minnelli, waits six anxious weeks for news, then learns from Buster that the Carol Burnett production has been postponed.
The epilogue of MARVIN returns to Frances S. Goldstein, Marvin Hamlisch’s formidable Juilliard teacher — a woman whose approval he wanted badly, and whose importance he understood more fully years later.
The published edition of MARVIN, shown open to several interior spreads and the book’s “About the Illustrator” page.
Portfolio spread for MARVIN, pairing the published cover with a childhood page in which young Hamlisch moves between piano lessons, Juilliard, Hopalong Cassidy and stickball.
Cover presentation for MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch, adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden and published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd.
From MARVIN: six weeks of silence after a promising audition, followed by the least consoling professional update imaginable.
A wonderfully lopsided weekend in MARVIN: Judy Garland’s limousine delivers the teenage songwriter home, his mother buys him blue silk sheets, and by Monday he is back on the bus to school — already writing songs in earnest.
A page from MARVIN recounting an absurdly rapid rise in social altitude: a mysterious call, Sam Spiegel’s suite at the St. Moritz Hotel, Hollywood guests, Harold Rome, Betty Comden, Adolph Green — and Bobby Kennedy making an appearance.
A reflective moment from Marvin: Based on “The Way I Was”, as Marvin visits the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant with his father — from Ian David Marsden’s graphic novel.
The closing page of MARVIN, returning to Frances S. Goldstein — the formidable Juilliard teacher whose approval Marvin once badly wanted, and whom he later visited near the end of her life.
A film-music joke created for the promotion of MARVIN, using Jaws and North by Northwest to explain how much emotion a short stretch of music can carry.
After the “mad kicker” incident, things improve. Marvin receives a stopwatch, is allowed to eat when hungry, returns to class with confidence, and discovers that a piano has materialized at school.
A promotional MARVIN image about film scoring: the practical objection, the Jaws example, and the deceptively difficult business of writing music that mirrors fear on screen.
Young Marvin considers Grant’s Tomb and arrives at an entirely plausible explanation, at least by the standards of a child attending Juilliard.
Three pages from MARVIN, adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden, including a key rooftop conversation between young Marvin Hamlisch and his father.
Sample interior pages from MARVIN, moving through childhood pressure, comic mischief and the brief liberty of summer.
Marvin Hamlisch composes to picture with stopwatch, piano and Moviola — learning that film music is measured not only in emotion, but in seconds.
Marvin hails a Checker cab and heads off to play the music he has already written — rather more of it than the producer expected.
Marvin Hamlisch asks his friend Quincy Jones for advice after producer Sam Spiegel offers him $2,500 to compose the score for a feature film. Quincy’s verdict is admirably direct.
Cover of MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch, adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden.
A page from MARVIN covering Marvin Hamlisch’s first serious film-scoring opportunity: Sam Spiegel’s underwhelming offer, Quincy Jones’s firm advice, a better deal, and the arrival of a rented Moviola in the apartment.
The main cover artwork for MARVIN, the graphic novel about Marvin Hamlisch adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden.
Full book cover for MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch, published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd.
A page from MARVIN about the crowded architecture of a gifted child’s week: piano lessons, public school, Juilliard, Hopalong Cassidy, and whatever stickball could still be rescued from the schedule.
Cover illustration for Marvin, a graphic novel by Ian David Marsden based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch — published by Schiffer Publishing.
Waterstones retail listing for MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch, the graphic novel adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden.
Barnes & Noble listing for MARVIN: Based on The Way I Was by Marvin Hamlisch, the graphic novel adapted, written and illustrated by Ian David Marsden.
