Richard Sherman, co-writer with his brother of a string of memorable Disney film songs – obituary
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Richard Sherman, who has died aged 95, partnered his brother Robert to write some of Disney’s most popular songs, including Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and I Wan’na Be Like You.
The Shermans spent 42 years at Disney and wrote some 200 songs, collaborating on the scores of 27 films – more than anyone else in the entertainment industry. These included Aristocats (1970), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977); among their work outside the Disney organisation was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968); The Magic of Lassie (1978); Tom Sawyer (1973); The Slipper and the Rose (1976); and Charlotte’s Web (1973).
Their first major collaboration with Walt Disney was in 1961, for The Parent Trap. But critical success came with Mary Poppins, three years later. The great pioneer of animation presented the brothers with P L Travers’s novel, charging them to go away and make something of the story.
They selected six chapters for the central focus and changed the time period to the 1930s, “which gave it a lot of colour and sort of took away that veil of disbelief,” Richard recalled, “so you could actually start believing that a nanny would fly in on a west wind.”
Walt Disney’s reaction, when the brothers reported back to him, secured their future with the corporation: “He pulled out his copy of the book and he had underlined the same six chapters that we had. That’s when he said, ‘How’d you like to work here?’ And we found ourselves under contract.”
It’s a Small World After All, the Shermans’ composition for Disney’s Unicef pavilion at the 1964 World Fair, is now the musical theme for a boat ride at Disneyland attractions around the world, where it plays on a loop for 16 hours a day. Sherman described it as “the song [people] either want to kiss us or kill us for having written”, heard by millions every year and seldom forgotten: “I’m told it’s the world’s greatest earworm.”
As with all their work, he shared both the credit and the opprobrium with his elder brother, who predeceased him in 2012. “Their standard line,” Robert’s son Jeffrey said, “was, ‘I write the words and music and he writes the music and words.’ ”
Though it proved a prolific and successful partnership, the brothers’ personal differences sometimes threatened to create a permanent rift. While Robert Sherman was more introverted, a decorated Second World War soldier who had witnessed the horrors of Dachau concentration camp, Richard was a live wire, brimming with energy and ideas.
Richard’s son Gregory expressed their disparate outlooks as a Disney metaphor: “If you think about the characters of Tigger and Eeyore, if you’re Eeyore and you’re trapped in a room with Tigger for 60 years, you want to kill him.” Despite their physical proximity, the younger generation of Shermans saw little of each other as children.
Richard Morton Sherman was born on June 12 1928 in New York City, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. His brother, Robert Bernard Sherman, had been born three years previously. His father, the Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman, had left school at 13 and worked as a bit-part actor and musician for silent films before marrying Rosa Dancis, a silent film actress.
After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1946, Sherman set his sights on a career in music, enrolling at Bard College. He played the flute, piano and piccolo, and harboured ambitions to write the “great American musical”. His brother, meanwhile, wanted to be a novelist; but, as Richard wryly put it, they were both “digging the Great American hole in the ground”.
They joined forces at their father’s suggestion, when he challenged the brothers to write a popular song according to his principle of the three S’s – it had to be simple, singable and sincere. The result was Gold Can Buy Anything but Love, which the cowboy singer Gene Autry turned into a record in 1951.
The brothers continued to write popular songs together until 1960, though the Korean War intervened; Sherman was drafted into the US Army for two years from 1953, conducting the Army band and glee club. So it was not until 1958 that they had their first Top 10 single, with Annette Funicello’s rendition of Tall Paul.
There followed a string of successful collaborations, with Pineapple Princess, Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy, and Wild Willie. Annette Funicello had been a child performer with Walt Disney’s “Mousketeers”, and the success of her singing career soon attracted Walt Disney’s attention. He brought the Shermans in for The Parent Trap, and they remained on contract until Disney’s death in 1966.
That year they were called in at the last minute for Walt Disney’s final film before his death, The Jungle Book, after he scrapped most of Terry Gilkyson’s original songs, other than The Bare Necessities, finding them too dark. He told the brothers to do a rewrite and “find scary places and write fun songs” which would advance rather than interrupt the plot.
They turned the terrifying King of the Apes into a “king of the swingers”, created a barbershop quartet of vultures with Liverpool accents, and included I Wan’na Be Like You, a scat duet between the King of the Apes (Louis Prima) and Baloo the Bear (Phil Harris).
Going freelance, Richard and his brother worked on such productions as Snoopy, Come Home! (1972) and wrote a Tony-nominated play, Over Here! (1974). They returned to Disney in 2000 for the score of The Tigger Movie. When Robert moved to London in 2002, they continued to work together long-distance.
The stage musical of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, featuring several Sherman hits, premiered in 2002. The opening night was a moment of reconciliation for Gregory and Jeffrey Sherman, and the encounter gave rise to their 2009 documentary film, The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story.
A London stage musical of Mary Poppins opened to critical acclaim in December 2004, augmented by new compositions from George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. The Broadway production followed two years later. When Sherman met Drewe and Stiles in London to hear the restructured score, he was moved to tears. “I said, ‘Great – some of the best songs I ever wrote.’ And they loved that.”
Richard and Robert Sherman received the National Medal of Arts in 2008 and won two Oscars for Mary Poppins (for best song and best score). Over his 65-year career Richard won three Grammy awards and 24 gold and platinum albums.
In 2010 Richard collaborated with the composer John Debney on the song Make Way for Tomorrow Today for the Marvel Studios film Iron Man 2. For Disney again, he contributed new lyrics to the live-action version of The Jungle Book in 2016, and two years later wrote three new songs for the live-action/CGI film Christopher Robin.
Richard Sherman married, in 1957, Elizabeth Gluck. She survives him with their son and daughter, and a daughter from a previous marriage.
Richard Sherman, born June 12 1928, died May 25 2024
