Richard Sherman, who has died aged 95, typically mentioned that he by no means realised his youthful ambition to jot down “the good American symphony”. Nevertheless, along with his brother, Robert Sherman, he co-wrote songs that supplied the soundtrack for a technology’s childhood – upbeat numbers with a homespun philosophy typified by strains equivalent to “a spoonful of sugar helps the medication go down”.
These phrases had been written for the brothers’ biggest triumph, the Oscar-winning Mary Poppins (1964), for which they created a rating of staggering brilliance: haunting ballads, lilting lullabies, roistering marches, energetic dance numbers and knockabout vaudeville tunes. Half of the songs immediately grew to become requirements – not simply the Oscar-winning Chim Chim Cher-ee but additionally A Spoonful of Sugar, Feed the Birds, Jolly Vacation and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
They went on to jot down equally memorable songs for The Jungle E-book (1967), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
The brothers first got here to the eye of Walt Disney himself after they demoed a music for his TV sequence Walt Disney’s Great World of Color. Disney gave approval along with his normal, understated accolade (“That’ll work”) and invited them to submit songs for The Mum or dad Entice (1961). The end result was Let’s Get Collectively, sung as a duet by Hayley Mills (enjoying twin sisters), which reached the US Prime 10.
Disney subsequent tasked the Shermans with suggesting music concepts for his deliberate adaption of PL Travers’s Mary Poppins books. Deciding on numerous chapters, they proposed a cohesive storyline for the episodic adventures, relocated the Thirties narrative to Edwardian London of 1910 and composed quite a few music sketches. Their alternative of story parts coincided with Disney’s personal and, following his eager intuition for expertise, he signed the brothers – or, as he dubbed them, “the Boys” – as resident studio songwriters.
Regardless of the issues of coping with Travers, an creator with set concepts about her heroine – occasions chronicled within the movie Saving Mr Banks (2013) – Mary Poppins proved a triumph for Disney, his star, Julie Andrews, and the Shermans, who gained Oscars for finest rating and finest music.
Richard credited this success to his father’s songwriting recommendation: “Make them singable, easy and honest.” Regardless of the type and tempo, Sherman songs had hummable melodies carrying memorable refrains, intelligent rhymes and ingenious wordplay.
Richard was born in New York, the youthful son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Al Sherman and Rosa Dancis. Showbiz was within the blood: Rosa acted in silent movies and Al was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, chargeable for a string of hits for main recording stars from Eddie Cantor to Billie Vacation. Work ultimately took the Sherman household to California, the place Richard attended Beverly Hills highschool.
In 1946 he went to Bard Faculty, in New York state, to main in music, finding out the flute, piccolo and piano. His love of the good American present composers, together with British songwriters equivalent to Ivor Novello and Noël Coward, inspired an ambition to jot down for the musical stage.
In 1951, whereas Richard was sharing a flat with Robert, then an aspiring novelist and poet, their father challenged them to collaborate as songwriters. Richard recalled: “He mentioned, ‘I wager you guys couldn’t pool your skills and provide you with a music that some child would surrender his lunch cash to purchase.’” Their first collaboration to be recorded was that 12 months’s Gold Can Purchase Something (However Love) sung by Gene Autry.
Richard joined the US military reserve in 1953, serving his time in California as a army bandleader till his discharge two years later.
His brother was collaborating with the songwriter Bob Roberts when, in 1959, Richard joined them to jot down Tall Paul, a rock-and-roll quantity that was successful for Annette Funicello, the favored Mouseketeer on Disney’s TV present The Mickey Mouse Membership. One other Sherman brothers’ quantity, You’re Sixteen (1960), was a Prime 10 hit within the UK and the US for Johnny Burnette. Ringo Starr’s cowl model reached the Prime 10 within the UK in 1974.
Following the success of Mary Poppins, when Disney produced 4 sights for the 1964 New York World’s Truthful, Sherman phrases and music had been a vital part of their success, most notably their up-beat anthem to positivity, There’s a Nice Massive Stunning Tomorrow, and, for a Pepsi-sponsored tribute to Unicef, It’s a Small World. Later put in in Disneyland and the corporate’s 5 different worldwide parks, the music (carried out by dolls of kids in nationwide costumes) is completely enjoying someplace on this planet 24/7 and is among the most insidious earworms within the historical past of in style music.
The Shermans’ songs for different Disney park sights embrace a number of written in 1982 for Walt Disney World’s Epcot Middle in Florida.
For a time, the Sherman brothers used headed notepaper with fake engravings of Robert as WS Gilbert and Richard as Arthur Sullivan indicating their respective contributions, however their work was not so neatly outlined. Collaboration started not on the piano, however with dialogue (and argument) as they sought a “hook” within the characters or storyline on which to hold a music. They approached every venture collectively however from completely different angles; because of this, mentioned Richard, their songs had been “by no means too sugary and by no means too salty”.
For a decade they wrote for Disney movie, TV and animation tasks, amongst them In Search of the Castaways (1962), Summer time Magic and The Sword within the Stone (each 1963) and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), the primary of three quick movies based mostly on the tales of AA Milne.
The Happiest Millionaire (1967) featured an ingenious rating and a starry forged (Fred MacMurray, Tommy Steele, Greer Garson) however didn’t match the success of Mary Poppins. The Jungle E-book, launched the 12 months after Walt Disney’s dying, supplied Louis Prima and Phil Harris with the zany scat-duet for orangutan and bear I Wanna Be Like You, and the hypnotic Belief in Me. The Aristocats (1970) featured a Parisian title music that was Maurice Chevalier’s closing recording.
The Shermans’ profession at Disney ended with Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which earned them two extra Oscar nominations, together with finest music for Angela Lansbury’s The Age of Not Believing. The rating additionally featured The Stunning Briny, an underwater song-and-dance quantity for Lansbury and David Tomlinson, initially written for an unused sequence in Mary Poppins.
When the James Bond producer Albert R (Cubby) Broccoli requested Disney to co-produce a movie based mostly on Ian Fleming’s kids’s ebook Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Disney declined however provided to launch the Shermans from their contract so they may work on the movie. The ensuing hit British musical, starring Dick Van Dyke, featured the Oscar-nominated title music together with such numbers as Actually Delicious and Hushabye Mountain. Regardless of being a non-Disney venture, it proved the closest factor to a Poppins sequel.
In 2002, with a number of new songs by the Shermans, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang started a file three-and-a-half-year run on the London Palladium. This success was adopted in 2004 by a stage model of Mary Poppins. Each exhibits went to Broadway and loved nationwide and worldwide excursions. In 2013, Richard consulted on a theatrical interpretation of The Jungle E-book.
Their different American stage exhibits embrace Victory Canteen (1971), Over Right here! (1974), that includes Maxene and Patty Andrews (of the Andrews Sisters) and newcomer John Travolta, and Busker Alley (1995) starring Tommy Tune. Later movies embrace Snoopy, Come Dwelling! (1972), the Hanna-Barbera animated model of EB White’s Charlotte’s Net (1973) and three tasks for which the Shermans additionally wrote the screenplays: Tom Sawyer (1973), Huckleberry Finn (1974) and The Magic of Lassie (1978).
Additionally they collaborated with Bryan Forbes on The Slipper and the Rose (1976) for which their evocative title waltz obtained an Oscar nomination. In 2000, the Shermans returned to Disney for The Tigger Film. They obtained many awards together with, in 2008, the Nationwide Medal of Arts.
Following Robert’s dying in 2012, Richard contributed a quantity to the musical revue LA Now and Then, in 2016; the music, celebrating the early days of the Disney studio, was aptly titled The Whimsy Works. He additionally wrote songs for the 2018 movie Christopher Robin. Richard himself seems ultimately credit, singing and enjoying Busy Doing Nothing on the piano.
In As soon as Upon a Studio (2023), he was filmed enjoying Walt Disney’s favorite Sherman music, Feed the Birds, on the identical piano on which he had initially performed it for the boss virtually 60 years earlier than.
Richard collaborated with different songwriters however he by no means rivalled the work created along with his brother. In distinction to the happy-go-lucky songs, their private rapport was typically removed from harmonious, as painfully revealed within the 2009 documentary The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story.
With out friction, Richard maintained, there would have been no sparks of inspiration: “I used to be an extrovert and Bob was an introvert however we closed the door and it was simply us and the music.”
A lyric within the rating for Charlotte’s Net runs: “I used to assume the sum of 1 and one was two / However we add as much as extra, me and also you.” And Richard will, for ever, be related along with his brother for a songbook full of humorous, touching, romantic, optimistic, singalong numbers.
Richard was married twice. His first marriage, to Corinne Newman in 1948, resulted in divorce. In 1958, he married Elizabeth Gluck. She survives him, as do their two kids, Gregory and Victoria, and his daughter, Lynda, from his first marriage.
