What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?

"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" is a song with lyrics written by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman and original music written by Michel Legrand for the 1969 film The Happy Ending, performed by Michael Dees.^[1] The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song but lost out to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head".^[2]

The same title was used 25 years earlier by Ted Koehler and Burton Lane for their song for the 1944 film Hollywood Canteen. A Ted Weems recording of 1938 also has an identical title.^[3]

Alan Bergman would recall that after Michel Legrand had written eight melodies which were somehow not viable for the film, Marilyn Bergman suggested the opening line "What are you doing the rest of your life?", and Legrand then completed the song's melody based on that phrase.^[4] Marilyn Bergman would later comment on the dual meanings of the phrase "What are you doing the rest of your life?" to the film: its title alludes to the marriage proposal Mary Spencer (played by Jean Simmons) received and accepted sixteen years earlier but in the context of Mary's present-day angst, the question is now one Mary must ask herself.^[5]

• In 1972 Sarah Vaughan recorded "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" for the album Sarah Vaughan with Michel Legrand on which Legrand acted as arranger and conductor. The track would win Legrand the 1972 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist.^[6] More than thirty years later, Billy Childs, Gil Goldstein, and Heitor Pereira won the 2006 Grammy Award for the same category for a version performed by trumpeter Chris Botti and vocalist Sting on Botti's 2005 album To Love Again.^[7]

• "Alan and Marilyn Bergman Keep the Music Playing", interview (10:12) with the Bergmans about the song on NPR, August 21, 2007
• Michael Legrand sings "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" on YouTube, from Playboy After Dark, May 5, 1970