Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Robert Sherman has died aged 86
MamasDoin'Fine
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/28/08
MamasDoin'Fine
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/28/08
#4Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/6/12 at 6:05am
Um, that is not really the right thing to say today POL. Im not gonna be saying that when my mum leaves and she's 89 at the moment.
Updated On: 3/6/12 at 06:05 AM
#5Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/6/12 at 6:25am
I found the article a bit short, so took my encyclopedia of stage and film musicals to refresh my memory.
I didn't realise he wrote so many songs.
What an impressive career
Updated On: 3/6/12 at 06:25 AM
#6Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/6/12 at 6:57am
Okay, your mum is very personal to you, like mine is to me and would be very sad day for both of us, when they move on. I would be sad for you if your mum did move on to new pastures as I know you well through this board as it is personal to you. We only knew Robert Sherman through the work he did and not on a personal level of family or friendship and he did go on to the age of 86 and was very wealthy, which enabled him to lead a very full and I hope a happy life.
When I think it is sad when someone dies, is when they have died prematurely, before their time, e.g. Gary Coleman, Steve Jobs, Heath Ledger, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson and David Carroll, or anyone elso who has died young. But when someone reaches a certain age, it ceases to be sad and there life then becomes a cause of celebration.
But if what I said came across as callous I whole heartly apologise.
MamasDoin'Fine
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/28/08
#7Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/6/12 at 8:58am
Songwriter Robert Sherman, who composed classic Disney tunes including 'It’s a Small World' and 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious', died in London yesterday at the age of 86.
Robert Bernard Sherman, who was born in New York on 19 December 1925, won two Oscars, a Grammy and was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1976.
He co-wrote for most of his life with brother Richard, 83, who were both graduates of Bard College in New York. They were the sons of Russian-Jewish immigrants and their father, Al, was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter who wrote hits for Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. Their grandfather had been a court musician to Emperor Franz Joseph.
The Sherman Brothers were challenged to write songs by their father, who told them: "Look at you two college graduates. I'll bet you can't write a song that kids would be willing to spend their lunch money on."
They took up the gauntlet and had a first top 10 hit in 1958 with Tall Paul (He's My All).
Robert later joked: "If it weren't for our father's challenge, we would have had a great big hole in the ground!"
After forming the Wonderland Music Company, they took a stream of commissions to write for Disney and other film companies and among their famous compositions, from more than 200 in all, are 'Chim Chim Cher-ee', which won an Oscar, 'Feed The Birds', and 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'.
They wrote major scores for the films 'Mary Poppins', 'The Sword In The Stone', 'The Jungle Book', 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', 'The Aristocrats', 'Bednobs and Broomsticks', 'Charlotte's Web', 'The Slipper And The Rose', 'Winnie The Pooh And A Day For Eeyore' and 'Little Nemo'.
The brothers also co-wrote the music for Disney Parks.
The brothers won two Oscars and were nominated a further seven times.
President George Bush presented them with the National Medal Of Arts in 2008.
Their autobiography, called Walt's Time: From Before To Beyond was published in 1998.
Robert Sherman's son Jeff - along with cousin Gregory - produced a documentary film about the father/uncle and their unfortunate estrangement in later life.
Robert was once asked the secret of his songwriting and replied simply: "Your sensitivity is based on your experiences. When you're writing a song, your sensitivity and your experiences dictate how you think and how you write."
His son Jeff posted a note on Facebook last night saying: "Hello to family and friends, I have very sad news to convey. My Dad, Robert B. Sherman, passed away tonight in London. He went peacefully after months of truly valiantly fending off death. He loved life and his dear heart finally slowed to a stop when he could fight no more. He wanted to bring happiness to the world and, unquestionably, he succeeded. His love and his prayers, his philosophy and his poetry will live on forever. Forever his songs and his genius will bring hope, joy and love to this small, small world."
#8Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/6/12 at 11:55am
Fortuitously in tonight's Evening Standard which I read on the way home from work, the article pertains to my last post and is not on the online edition as yet. I bring it up as it is theatre related and relates to my last post poignantly, but I wouldn't want to bring this up on a separate thread.
The article is a interview with the mum of Charlotte Leadbarrow, the young girl who performed in Billy Elliot and who was sadly killed by a bus at the age of 12. This for me and I am sure for everyone also on here really pulls at my heart strings and find this so very sad.
I will post a link if or when one comes available.
MamasDoin'Fine
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/28/08
#9Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/6/12 at 6:22pm
Two full obits.
Robert Sherman obituary
Film songwriter known for Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book
by Michael Freedland
The Guardian
Robert B Sherman, who has died aged 86, was part of one of the most
unusual songwriting teams of all time. He and his younger brother
Richard may not be as well known as other pairs of composers and
lyricists, but they will for ever be remembered as the writers of Mary
Poppins, The Jungle Book and a swath of other productions from Walt
Disney Studios.
Their score for Mary Poppins (1964), the movie that introduced Julie
Andrews to filmgoers, secured them a place in popular musical history
and made them multimillionaires. Featuring songs including Jolly
Holiday, Let's Go Fly a Kite and Feed the Birds, it won them two
Oscars. It also included the classic A Spoonful of Sugar and the song
with the one-word title that they used when they accepted the Academy
awards: "All we can say is 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'."
The Shermans were the sons of a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, Al Sherman,
who, although he had written for Broadway shows including the Ziegfeld
Follies, had found it difficult to make a living. When Robert was
born, Al's biggest problem, he would say, was finding the money to pay
his doctor's bill, but as he was contemplating the problem, he opened
an envelope containing a large royalty cheque for the song Save Your
Sorrow.
The two brothers were born in New York, but the family moved to
Beverly Hills in 1937, and the boys attended the Beverly Hills high
school. There, Robert began writing and producing radio programmes
that were highly acclaimed by broadcasting professionals. At 16, he
wrote a stage play, Armistice and Dedication Day, which generated
thousands of dollars for war bonds. The US war department awarded him
a special citation in gratitude.
He joined the army in 1943, at the age of 17. Two years later, he led
a squad of men into the Dachau concentration camp, the first Americans
to stumble on the horrors there, only hours after the Nazis had fled.
During war service, in April 1945, he was shot in the knee, as a
result of which he walked with a stick for the rest of his life. He
spent much of his service in Britain, where he was stationed in
Bournemouth and Taunton. It was this experience, he would say, that
got him interested in British popular culture.
After the war, he attended Bard College in upstate New York, where he
studied English literature and painting, wrote two novels and
graduated in 1949.
The two brothers always worked as a team, sharing between them the job
of writing both music and lyrics. Their first hit was the rock'n'roll
single Tall Paul, sung by Annette Funicello, in 1959. Real success
came with the craze for teenage songs in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Their number You're Sixteen was a huge hit in 1960 for one of the
short-lived idols of the time, Johnny Burnette. The same year they
were taken on by Walt Disney as staff songwriters.
The first films they worked on were "live action" movies (as Disney
films without cartoon characters were then called) including The
Parent Trap (1961), In Search of the Castaways (1962), Summer Magic
(1963) and The Sword and the Stone (1963). They also wrote It's a
Small World After All, for the 1964 New York world's fair, which
became the Disney "national anthem" and is now played regularly at
Disney theme parks.
The Shermans were the obvious choice for scoring Mary Poppins. The
film was to be acclaimed as "the best live action film in Disney's
history" – although it did include some animation. The music was its
best publicity vehicle. The soundtrack album reached number one in the
US and stayed in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic for 18
months. The brothers won Oscars for best original soundtrack and best
song, for Chim Chim Cher-ee, with the film winning three other awards,
including Andrews for best actress.
In 1965, Robert and Richard were recruited to work on The Jungle Book
(1967), Disney's animation inspired by the Rudyard Kipling stories.
They replaced the original songwriter, Terry Gilkyson, whose songs
Walt Disney considered too close in mood to the dark tone of Kipling's
work. The Shermans produced seven new songs, written as "character
numbers" to set each creature's place in the story, including Trust in
Me (for Kaa, the serpent), That's What Friends Are For (sung by the
moptop barbershop vultures), and I Wan'na Be Like You (for King Louie,
the orangutan). Disney retained Gilkyson's The Bare Necessities, which
was nominated for an Oscar. The Jungle Book was the last film produced
by Walt Disney, who died before its release.
The Shermans stayed on with the studio for a few other projects,
including Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) which, like Mary Poppins,
combined live action with animation, and The Aristocats (1970). Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang (196
was their first non-Disney film and in 2002
also became a long-running stage show at the London Palladium, for
which the brothers wrote several new songs. The film, for the James
Bond producer Albert R Broccoli, won the pair their third Oscar
nomination. There would be six more.
They also provided scores for Charlotte's Web (1973), Tom Sawyer
(1973), The Slipper and the Rose (1976) and The Many Adventures of
Winnie the Pooh (1977), among others. In 1974, they wrote the Broadway
hit Over Here!, a show about troop entertaining, using the music
styles of the 1940s. It ran for a year, and starred the then two
surviving Andrews Sisters, Patty and Maxene. They returned to Disney
in 2000 after 28 years to score The Tigger Movie.
Sherman, who lived in London from 2002, married his childhood
sweetheart Joyce Sasner in 1953. She died in 2001. He is survived by
his four children.
Robert Bernard Sherman, songwriter, born 19 December 1925; died 5 March 2012
----------------------------
Robert Sherman
The Daily Telegraph
6 Mar 2012
Robert Sherman, who has died aged 86, co-wrote, with his brother
Richard, many of Walt Disney studios’ most unforgettable songs, from I
Wanna Be Like You in The Jungle Book to A Spoonful of Sugar and the
rest of the Mary Poppins score.
Robert Sherman
During their tenure at Disney, the Shermans wrote some 150 songs
featured in 27 films, including Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and
The Aristocats (1970). They also wrote the music to non-Disney films
such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (196; The Magic of Lassie (197;
Tom Sawyer (1973); The Slipper and the Rose (1976); and Charlotte’s
Web (1973). Their nostalgic Second World War musical Over Here!,
starring two of the Andrews Sisters, premiered on Broadway in 1974 to
enthusiastic reviews.
The Shermans were called in at the last minute to work on The Jungle
Book (1967) after Walt Disney scrapped most of Terry Gilkyson’s
original songs, other than The Bare Necessities. He told the brothers
to do a complete rewrite and to make the music “fun and upbeat”. They
came up with a barbershop quartet of vultures with Liverpool accents,
made the terrifying King of the Apes a “king of the swingers”, and
included a memorable scat “conversation” between the King of the Apes
(Louis Prima) and Baloo the Bear (Phil Harris).
It was Mary Poppins (1964), though, which established their
reputation. Robert Sherman recalled the day when Disney called them
into his office to discuss an idea he had had: “You guys know what a
nanny is?” he asked them. “We said, 'A goat!’” Disney asked them to
read PL Travers’s book and to tell him what they thought. “One of the
first things we noticed was that it was set in the Depression between
the two World Wars,” Sherman recalled. “If we were going to make this
a musical, we wanted to go back to around 1910 when the world wasn’t
quite so unglued and people still believed anything could happen. That
was a better setting for a story about a flying nanny.”
Taking their inspiration from the English music hall, the Sherman
brothers set to work composing Chim Chim Cher-ee; A Spoonful of Sugar;
Let’s Go Fly a Kite; Supercali-fragilisticexpialidocious and other
songs, including Disney’s own favourite, Feed the Birds. While the
Shermans won Oscars for best song and best score in 1965, their
irrepressibly upbeat approach was said to have infuriated the book’s
author who, according to The New Yorker, wept in frustration at the
film’s premiere. When Cameron Mackintosh subsequently persuaded her to
allow the book to be made into a stage musical, she insisted that no
Americans be part of the creative team.
The brothers always put on a united front during interviews, claiming
theirs was a “constant collaboration”. Yet according to a documentary
made by two of their sons, The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story
(2009), the two men got on so badly that, even as they composed jolly
music for Disney, they would quarrel and throw typewriters at one
another. Indeed, their relationship deteriorated to the point where
their families would sit on opposite sides of the theatre during
premieres.
The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Robert Bernard Sherman was born
in New York City on December 19 1925; his brother Richard arrived in
1928. Their father, Al Sherman, was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter who
wrote hits for Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. Their
grandfather had been a court musician to Emperor Franz Joseph. The
brothers were brought up in Beverly Hills.
Al Sherman encouraged his sons to be “always together, always one”;
but the two-and-a-half year age gap and Robert’s harrowing experiences
during the Second World War apparently created a temperamental gulf
between them that would never be bridged.
As an 18-year old soldier in the US Army, Robert was part of the first
squadron to enter the Dachau concentration camp, and he later lost a
kneecap to a Nazi bullet; his younger brother, meanwhile, would serve
in a non-combat role in Korea. As Robert put it, he “never killed
anybody”.
The brothers never intended to collaborate. After the war, as Robert
recalled: “I was trying to write the great American novel, and Dick
was trying to write the great American symphony.” In 1950, however,
their father challenged them to write a popular song. The result, Gold
Can Buy Anything (But Love), was recorded by Gene Autry in 1951.
Between films, the Shermans continued to write pop songs, including
You’re Sixteen (1959), which was recorded by Johnny Burnette and later
by Ringo Starr. It became their biggest pop hit.
These compositions brought them to Disney’s attention, and he put them
to work on The Parent Trap (1961) . Soon the Shermans were the only
songwriters Disney had under contract.
Robert and Richard Sherman worked directly for Walt Disney until
Disney’s death in 1966, after which they went freelance. As well as
their Academy Awards, they had nine Oscar nominations and won two
Grammys. They had 23 gold and platinum albums. In 2008 they received
the American National Medal of Arts.
Robert Sherman married, in 1953, Joyce Sasner, with whom he had two
daughters and two sons. After his wife’s death in 2001, he moved from
Beverly Hills to London, which he had got to know and love while
recuperating in hospital from his wartime injury.
Robert Sherman, born December 19 1925, died March 5 2012
#10Robert Sherman has died aged 86
Posted: 3/7/12 at 10:01pmOh boy, but my heart's heavy. I listened to the soundtracks to all of these films as a kid over and over again. I'm one of the biggest Disney fanatics out here; when I heard he was gone, I actually cried. We've lost one of the greats of our time.
