Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein, May 2, 1946 -- February 16, 2015) was an American singer.

At the age of 16, in 1963, she recorded the pop hit "It's My Party", and followed it up with other hits including "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me". She also worked as an actress, and composed songs with her brother Michael Gore for the 1980 film Fame.

Early life

Gore was born in New York City. She was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, in a Jewish family. Her father, Leo Gore, was a wealthy manufacturer of children's clothes and swimwear.

Lesley was a junior at the Dwight School for Girls in nearby Englewood when "It's My Party" became a #1 hit. It was later nominated for a Grammy Award for rock and roll recording. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.

1960s career

"It's My Party" was followed by many other hits, including the sequel "Judy's Turn to Cry" (US #5); "She's a Fool" (US #5); the protofeminist million-selling "You Don't Own Me",[5] which held at #2 for three weeks behind the Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand"; "That's the Way Boys Are" (US #12); "Maybe I Know" (US #14/UK #20); "Look of Love" (US #27); and Grammy-nominated "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" (US #13), from the 1965 movie Ski Party. In 1965, she appeared in the beach party film The Girls on the Beach in which she performed three songs: "Leave Me Alone", "It's Gotta Be You" and "I Don't Want to Be a Loser". Her record producer Quincy Jones, who worked with Gore from 1963 to 1965, would later become one of the most famous producers in American music.

Gore was given first shot at recording "A Groovy Kind of Love" by songwritersCarole Bayer and Toni Wine, but Shelby Singleton, a producer for Smash Records, a Mercury subsidiary, refused to let her record a song with the word "groovy" in it. The Mindbenders went on to record the song, and it went to #2 on the Billboard charts.

Gore recorded composer Marvin Hamlisch's first hit composition, "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" on May 21, 1963, as "It's My Party" was bounding up the charts. Quincy Jones' dentist was Marvin Hamlisch's uncle, and Hamlisch asked his uncle to get several songs to Jones. "Sunshine, Lollipops, & Rainbows" sat in the Mercury vaults for two years, when someone at Mercury saw the hit potential, and Mercury released it in June 1965. Hamlisch authored three additional Gore tracks, one of which was "California Nights". Other Hamlisch tracks recorded by Gore were "That's the Way the Ball Bounces", recorded September 21, 1963 at A&R Studios, New York, NY, released as the B-side of "That's the Way Boys Are" and appearing on the LP "Boys Boys Boys"; and "One by One", an unreleased track recorded on July 31, 1969 in New York, produced by Paul Leka, first appearing on the Bear Family five-CD anthology of Gore's Mercury work titled, It's My Party (1994).

Gore performed on two consecutive episodes of the Batman TV series (January 19 and 25, 1967), in which she guest-starred as Pussycat, one of Catwoman's minions. In the January 19 episode "That Darn Catwoman", she lip-synched to the Bob Crewe-produced "California Nights", and in the January 25 episode "Scat! Darn Catwoman" to "Maybe Now". "California Nights", which Gore recorded for her 1967 hit album of the same name, returned her to the upper reaches of the Hot 100. The single peaked at number 16 in March 1967 (14 weeks on the chart) – her first top 40 hit since "My Town, My Guy and Me" in late 1965 and her first top 20 since "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows", which, like "California Nights", was co-written by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Liebling.

Gore also performed the single "We Know We're in Love" ten months earlier on the final episode of The Donna Reed Show, which aired on March 19, 1966.

After high school, while continuing to work, Gore attended Sarah Lawrence College and studied English and American literature. At college folk music was considered chic and pop music was uncool. "Had I been tall with blond hair, had I been Mary Travers, I would have gotten along fine." She graduated in 1968.

Later career

Gore composed songs for the soundtrack of the 1980 film Fame, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for "Out Here on My Own", written with her brother Michael. Michael won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the theme song of the same film.

Gore played concerts and appeared on television throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2005, Gore recorded Ever Since (her first album of new material since Love Me By Name in 1976), with producer/songwriterBlake Morgan, for the small independent label Engine Company Records. In addition to extensive national radio coverage and critical acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard Magazine, and other national press, three songs from Ever Since have been used in television shows and films: "Better Angels", in CSI: Miami's fourth season premiere episode; "Words We Don't Say", in an episode of The L Word; and "It's Gone", in the Jeff Lipsky-directed film Flannel Pajamas.

In 2009, "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" was featured in the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" was also used in the Simpsons episode "Marge on the Lam", for the Butlins Company TV advertisements in 2008 and for the Target Australia homewares TV advertisement in 2010.

Personal life

Beginning in 2004, Gore hosted the PBS television series In the Life, which focused on LGBT issues. She stated in a 2005 interview that she was a lesbian. At the time of the interview, Gore had been living with her partner for more than 23 years.

Death

According to her partner of 33 years, Lois Sasson, Gore died Monday, February 16, 2015, at the NYU Langone Medical Centerin Manhattan, New York City of lung cancer.