What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?
song with lyrics by Marilyn Bergman performed by Michael Dees
"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. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song but lost out to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head".
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.
Background
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. 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.
Cover versions
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.
Frank Sinatra recorded his version of the song for his 1974 Reprise album, "Some Nice Things I've Missed".
In 1969 Barbra Streisand released a cover version as a promotional single in the United States, which was later issued on the album The Way We Were in 1974.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” is song with lyrics by Marilyn Bergman performed by Michael Dees. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through What, Doing and Rest, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “song with lyrics by Marilyn Bergman performed by Michael Dees” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3567625. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1944, 1938 and 1972.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.