(CelebrityAccess) — Steve Lawrence, the pop singer and actor who formed the iconic singing duet Steve & Eydie with his wife Eydie Gormé, has died. He was 88.
A rep for the Grammy-winning recording artist told ABC News that he died on Thursday from complications of due to Alzheimer’s disease.
Born Sidney Liebowitz in New York in 1935, Lawrence began his professional career as a singer while still in his teens, earning money after school by singing for songwriters at the famed Brill Building in New York.
When he was 18, he was hired by Steve Allen to be a singer on Allen’s late-night show on WNBC-TV along with his future wife, Eydie Gormé. Lawrence stayed with the show after it got picked up by national networks, eventually becoming The Tonight Show.
After a stint in the army where he served as the official vocal soloist with the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” in Washington, D.C., Lawrence returned to his musical career, scoring hits such as “Go Away Little Girl,” “Pretty Blue Eyes,” and “Footsteps” which all cracked the top ten.
In 1957, he married Eydie Gormé, and the two performed together throughout the late 1950s and 1960s as Steve & Eydie. Their collaborations included appearing together in the Broadway musical Golden Rainbow, which ran from 1968 to 1969. While the show was not a major commercial success, it spawned the now-classic song “I’ve Gotta Be Me.”
His other acting roles including portraying concert promoter Maury Sline in the classic 1980 musical comedy, The Blues Brothers, and Steve Martin’s romantic rival in the 1984 comedy “Lonely Guy,” among numerous others.
Lawrence received a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and a Tony Award nomination for his performance in the 1964 Broadway production “What Makes Sammy Run?”
With Gormé, he won two Emmys in 1975 for Steve and Eydie: Our Love Is Here to Stay A Tribute To George Gershwin along with a Grammy in 1990 for We Got Us, a tribute to Cole Porter.
The duo also won a Las Vegas Entertainment Award for “Musical Variety Act of the Year” on four separate occasions as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Gormé passed away in 2013, and the eldest of their two sons, Michael, died suddenly in 1986 from ventricular fibrillation related to an undiagnosed heart condition.
