(26 April 1932 - 7 November 2018)
The French composer Francis Lai, who has died age 86, began playing in regional orchestras in his teens and then moved from Nice to Marseilles in the 1950s where he found jazz. He subsequently moved to Montmartre and wrote a hundred songs with Bernard Dimey before becoming a pianist for Édith Piaf. Meeting film director Claude Lelouch in 1985 he wrote the score for Un homme et une femme – remember shaba-daba-da, shaba daba da…?, winning Lai a Golden Globe. For Lelouch he wrote Vivre pour vivre, Un homme qui me plait, Le voyou and La bonne année. His biggest success in films was Love Story and the film’s theme song ‘Where Do I Begin?’ was a chart hit for Andy Williams. Other films Lai worked on include Mayerling, Three Into Two Won’t Go, International Velvet, three films for Michael Winner: I’ll Never Forget What’s’is Name, Hannibal Brooks and The Games, Bilitis, Passion Flower Hotel, Édith et Marcel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later, Dark Eyes and many French films that never reached the UK. Composer of some 130 film scores, Lai completed his last film work on Lelouch’s Les plus belles années which is due for release in 2019. Francis Lai married Dagmar Puetz in 1968. They have two sons and a daughter.
MICHAEL DARVELL
