Kashenberg Ostrow Hayward
Library and Cultural Center

(916) 485-4143
2300 Sierra Blvd
Sacramento, CA, 95825


Mary Poppins. The Jungle Book. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Winnie the Pooh.
Nearly every American today has memories of watching the childhood classics listed above on rainy days, summer days, or days when they were lucky enough to be slightly ill and thus able to stay home from school. The films have two common factors: they were produced by Walt Disney and all included cheerful, unforgettable musical scores penned by Richard and Robert Sherman. The Sherman brothers truly created a soundtrack for the generation of baby boomers growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. The Shermans, who were first generation Americans of Russian Jewish immigrants, would seem like an anomaly at the Disney Studios, given the common belief that Walt Disney did not make it a practice to hire Jews. However, since Disney’s death, the facts surrounding his alleged anti-Semitism have been proven false. In his youth, Disney befriended many Jewish school mates, and as a successful adult, donated to several Jewish charities including The Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Yeshiva College, Jewish Home for the Aged, The American League for a Free Palestine [an association trying to establish a Jewish majority in Palestine] and was named "1955 Man of the Year" by the B'nai B'rith chapter in Beverly Hills. Though some who knew Disney insisted he did have difficult relationships with a number of Jewish associates, his favorite employees were the Sherman brothers. He affectionately called them “the boys.” Robert Sherman, the elder of the brothers, said of Disney, “He was just wonderful. He was a father figure to us. We really, truly loved him, and he cared about us a lot." Disney and the Shermans’ bond may have been harmonious, but the brothers’ own relationship was not as idyllic. Robert Sherman’s son stated that his father and uncle’s relationship did not turn out “like a Sherman brothers musical.” Given the brothers’ volatile relationship, it is even more amazing that they were able to produce the optimistic tunes and unaffected screenplays that continue to bring joy to both children and adults today.
The Sherman Brothers grew up in Brooklyn, New York at the height of the Depression. Their father was a writer of Tin Pan Alley songs and their mother was a silent film actress. With the family’s love of show business, it seemed only natural for them to move to Beverly Hills. Growing up, Richard and Robert put on plays for the neighborhood children in their garage and spent hours pecking out tunes on their father’s piano. The close knit but competitive brothers would never have the same relationship again after Robert, at age seventeen, enlisted in the army and served in WWII. His experiences on the battlefield would forever change his personality and outlook on the world. He became darker and more introspective, two qualities Richard did not share and could not quite comprehend. With their sibling rivalry and personality clashes, the brothers became severely divided. Bruce Weber of the New York Times described the brothers thus: “Richard, the younger brother by two and a half years, was the more single-minded of the two, devoted to songwriting and little else; he was also known to have a blustery temper. Robert, who survived a harrowing war experience, had more of a wide-ranging curiosity, more of a poet’s probing mind. Friends made parallels to Paul McCartney and John Lennon; Robert was the brooder, the Lennon of the two.” Surprisingly, the brothers shared a loft in West L.A. after Richard returned from the war. Robert explained their lifestyle during that time: “Dick was trying to write the great American musical and I was trying to write the great American novel. My dad said, “How come two bright young fellows, college graduates, can’t write a song that a kid would spend his lunch money on?” And we said, “Aw, c’mon dad, that’s too easy.” Six months later we were still trying.” Finally they wrote “Money Can Buy You Anything But Love.” Sung by Gene Autry in 1959, it was an enormous hit and kids did indeed give up a lot of money to buy the song. They would continue to give up lunch money to buy more Sherman compositions including Johnny Burnette’s “You’re Sixteen, You’re Beautiful,and You're Mine,” Annette Funicello’s “Tall Paul,” and Fabian’s “Got the Feeling.” Both brothers took credit for words and music, though Robert was mainly the word man and Richard, who would sit at the piano as they worked, was primarily the music man. “Their standard line,” Jeffrey Sherman, Robert’s son, said, “was ‘I write the words and music and he writes the music and words.’”
The brothers found their greatest success in a handful of songs they wrote for Disney films in the early 1960s. Who could forget twin Hayley Mills' singing “Let’s Get Together, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” in the The Parent Trap or Bobby Darren singing about “a sly old codger, an artful Dodger…that darn cat!” One day Walt Disney called the brothers to his office and gave them a book by P. L. Travers about a magical nanny named Mary Poppins. “He said, ‘Do you know what a nanny is?’ ” Robert Sherman recalled. “And we said, ‘Yeah, a goat.’ ” After they understood that a nanny was like babysitter, they came up with arguably the best score for any children’s movie ever made. The brothers reached the pinnacle of their career with Mary Poppins, winning two Academy Awards for “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” a chimney sweep’s theme song, and for the film’s score, which included the nonsense song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” the enthusiastic tune about child raising “A Spoonful of Sugar,” and “Feed the Birds,” a song espousing empathy for all creatures. The bird song was said to be a favorite of Walt Disney. In The Boys, a 2009 documentary about the brothers , Walt Disney’s nephew Roy, said that the difference between the brothers could be seen in two of their songs from Mary Poppins: Richard was more “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Robert more “Feed the Birds.”
The brothers went on a winning streak at Disney, writing the unforgettable songs in The Jungle Book and the theme and character songs for the beloved Disney cartoon series, Winnie the Pooh. According to the brothers, the most difficult assignment they ever had was to write a song for the 1964 World’s Fair that would be the theme for the Children of the World exhibition. The tune they composed, “It’s a Small World After All,” is still known today and cannot be heard without having it stick in one’s head for at least a week.
The golden days of the Sherman Brothers’ career ended with Disney’s death in 1966. The brothers’ rivalry and rift also deepened following the death of their beloved boss. “We’ve perpetrated a facade for 50 years,” Richard Sherman stated. However, the brothers kept on perpetuating the façade when they went on to collaborate on several more films, most of which are still beloved today. Their best post-Disney films were Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Richard’s touch is evident in the more somber, WWII undertones in this film) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The latter film included another “nonsense” song like the ones included in Mary Poppins. “Gratifaction,” a combination of gratifying and satisfaction, was a rousing tune that mischievous Tom used to convince his chums to whitewash a fence for him. The brothers continued working together on pleasant children’s films until 2012, mostly on updated Winnie the Pooh cartoons.
The film and music industry lost a legend when Robert Sherman died in 2012. Richard and Robert’s children grew up never knowing each other; only after Robert’s death did the cousins meet. Richard is still writing today and even has a new project slated for release in 2015.
Even if the Sherman Brothers’ story did not read like one of their sugary tunes, their words and music perfectly encapsulated childhood and its wonder and magic. Watching a Sherman brothers musical makes one remember the freedom of being a child while also feeling the sadness of losing that freedom. As the theme song the brothers wrote for Tom Sawyer said “You blink away a tear and the boy is gone….only once in his life is he free, only one golden time in his life is he free.”