By Courtney Potter
Throughout D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, Disney Legend Richard M. Sherman—who passed away earlier this summer—was honored for his decades-long contribution to The Walt Disney Company. Listening to his friends and family speak of the iconic songwriter over the course of the weekend, one can only think to paraphrase a certain song from 1964’s Mary Poppins: “When the day is gray and ordinary, Richard makes the sun shine bright…”
On Saturday, August 9, Disney historian Tim O’Day hosted “Magic Journeys: Memories of the Sherman Brothers,” featuring stories from Richard’s son Gregg and Robert’s son Jeff—both of whom followed their fathers into show business, and who also co-directed the 2009 documentary The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story.
In fact, many people might not realize that the Sherman brothers followed their own father into the business too: “Our grandfather Al Sherman was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter,” explained Gregg. “He came over in 1909 [from what’s now Ukraine] and had an amazing life as a real musician… One of his first gigs as a pianist was playing in Herald Square [in New York City]. They were raising war bonds—it was 1917, World War I. And this impresario handed him sheet music. Our grandfather wasn’t very conversant in English yet, but he played the song—‘Over There.’ And George M. Cohan sang it right there in Herald Square for the very first time, with our grandpa behind the keys.” Al Sherman also helped discover Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald, to name a few!
Richard wanted to be a serious composer, and Robert a novelist—but at the suggestion of their father, they combined their talents… and the rest, as they say, is history. Their early successes, including the song “Tall Paul” (recorded by Disney Legend Annette Funicello) is what helped them attract the attention of Walt Disney, and they became the first staff songwriters hired by the company.
Greg continued, “If you have two people that think alike and have the same piece of ideas, you’re not going to get a very good piece of content. But they came from stereo-optic places. My uncle was a little more of a ‘doer’ and sort of thoughtful. And my dad was jumping off of buildings, so to speak. The joke around the Disney lot was that they were Tigger and Eeyore [from Winnie the Pooh]—and that was kind of accurate… but it worked in the creative process, because they came from different points of view. And they always agreed when the song was ready, that it was right.”
Added Jeff, “They were originally Vine Street writers. You’ve heard probably of the Brill Building in New York—but when the 1950s came, all the music business started becoming kind of centered in Hollywood. So you’d have to go up and down Vine Street and say [to the writers who worked there], ‘We need a Latin song here’ or ‘We need something in French’—so they got really used to writing whatever it was. It was kind of a perfect combination. When they got to Disney, Walt saw they could write all these different styles. He had Disneyland; he had this TV show; he had all these things going on. He said, ‘As staff songwriters, you guys can write all my stuff.’ And they shared a story similarity. They were all great storytellers. Walt understood they could tell part of the story in a narrative way through their talents.”
The Shermans were prolific writers, and often wrote many songs for a project—which meant some would inevitably, and for many reasons, not be used. But occasionally, the story surrounding the song that was included is particularly memorable: “It was 1960, 1961, and I was at school—and they were giving out the polio vaccine that day,” explained Jeff. “I come home—and my dad usually was at work with Richard until about 5 or 6 o’clock. This day, he was there when I got home from school. The shades were down. He looked really depressed. He said, ‘How was your day?’ I said, ‘Oh, well, I got the polio vaccine at school today.’ And he looked at me. What I didn’t know is that day they had had Julie Andrews at the studio and they played all the songs from Mary Poppins. Their favorite song was a song called ‘Through the Eyes of Love.’ They thought this was the best—their magnum opus. And so Julie listened to all the songs. She loved them. And then they play ‘Through the Eyes of Love,’ and she says, ‘Ah, I don’t know.’ She told Walt she wasn’t really completely happy with that song—and they were crestfallen.”
He continued, “So they worked for a little while trying to think, “Hmm… ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ or something like that—they couldn’t come up with anything that was more Mary Poppins-like. It was the day I came home from having taken the vaccine. And I told my dad, and he goes, ‘Wait a minute. You let somebody give you a shot at school?’—knowing how much I hate getting shots. I said, ‘No, they took out this cup and put sugar in it, and they put the medicine on that. I just ate it.’ My dad looked at me kind of funny—and he went over to the phone and called Richard. And the next morning they wrote, ‘A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…”
At Sunday’s “Jolly Holiday: A D23 Musical Celebration of Richard M. Sherman,” host John Stamos welcomed a gaggle of notables—all of whom shared heartfelt stories and songs dedicated to the memory of the legendary tunesmith. The show started off with a truly moving short film dedicated to Richard, featuring a brand-new verse for “It’s a Small World” that he wrote only last year. Disney CEO Bob Iger then took to the stage to also debut a special short video of Richard sharing said lyrics with him at his office on the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California.
Next, Disney on Broadway’s Ashley Brown and Michael James Scott, along with the MeloD23 Singers, warmed up the crowd with a fantastic rendition of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” before Disney Legend Don Hahn moderated a panel including Brown (who also sang a beautiful rendition of Sherman’s “A Kiss Goodnight”); Disney Legends Floyd Norman and Tony Baxter; and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.
Baxter told the large Premiere Stage crowd how much Disneyland—and by extension, the Sherman Brothers music—meant to him, years before he worked for the company himself, and became close friends with Richard as well. “With my ‘trusty tape transport’—that’s for you, Richard—I would make treks to Disneyland, where it was illegal to tape anything. You had to put [the recorder] in a Disneyland bag, then go to the Monorail station, and then go back into the park like you bought something earlier in the day,” he explained, to laughter from the audience. “So the Tiki Room was the grand prize—no one had ever recorded that… but if you had ever told me that I’d go from that level of loving these people and their music, to where they were friends, I wouldn’t have believed you. These guys were real people who just happened to be able to create incredible, fantastic things.”
Between so many more incredible stories, more songs were shared… including Darrin Criss and Stamos offering up a delightful rendition of “I Wanna Be Like You” from The Jungle Book; a surprise rendition of “Let’s Get Together” by Disney Legend Hayley Mills—who sang the original version of the song in 1961’s The Parent Trap—and Lesley Ann Warren; Richard’s granddaughter, Mandy Rose Wolf, singing the Sherman brothers’ Oscar®-nominated “The Age of Not Believing” from Bedknobs and Broomsticks; and the entire cast (and crowd) singing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins.
