American singer known for traditional pop, standards and ballads. She earned a reputation for being one of America’s most popular artists in a career that spans 30 years of recordings, concerts, the Broadway stage, films, television and radio, with a voice that defies categorization: from a jazzy, warm pop register she glides easily into a crystalline coloratura. She was a secretary when she was hired by Russ Regan to sing the theme from the movie “The Poseidon Adventure” in 1973. It was a No.1 hit. The following year, McGovern sang “We May Never Love Like This Again,” the theme from “The Towering Inferno.” The song won an Academy Award though it did not make the charts.
McGovern performed other movie themes and then moved to New York to appear on Broadway in “The Pirates of Penzance.” She built a reputation as a sophisticated pop singer and recording artist, able to headline at Carnegie Hall in 1989, singing show music and standards by George Gershwin and other songwriters. She appeared as Mel Torme’s special guest for the legendary Kool Jazz Festival and in the Centennial Celebrations of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Ira Gershwin as well as appearing in the ‘Oscar Hammerstein Centennial Celebration’ at Lincoln Center. McGovern also played an eight-week, 46 city, cross-country tour with the late Mercer Ellington, and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
A singer with a vocal range of unparalleled purity , Maureen has been a guest on other numerous prestigious recordings including a duet with Placido Domingo, “A Love Until the End of Time”, and she recorded Bernstein’s “Glitter and be Gay” and Faure’s “Pavane” with the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York. McGovern is a much sought after guest for symphony concerts; she has appeared with every major symphony including the Boston Pops, New York Pops, the Baltimore Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the National Symphony.
She sang in a number of TV shows, both in person and as voice-over. She wrote the music and starred in “The Bengal Tiger’s Ball”, her children’s musical. She sang the voice of ‘Rachel’, in DreamWorks upcoming animated project, “Joseph”, spring of 2000.
McGovern divorced her drummer husband in 1974. She devotes her energies to a number of charitable organizations, having a special relationship with the Muscular Dystrophy Association and as the National Chairperson for Polymyositis/Dermatomyositis of MDA. For the last nineteen years she has performed on the “Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon,” also acting as co-host for the past seven years.
Link to Wikipedia biography