One half of the Sherman Brothers songwriting team, the legendary Disney musicals composer died today. We look back at his greatest movie hits, including classics such as I Wanna Be Like You and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Robert B Sherman was the son of Jewish immigrants to the US, and while still in his teens he was part of the first American military unit to enter the Dachau concentration camp shortly after its evacuation in 1945. After the war, he joined with his younger brother Richard to form a songwriting partnership. It took until 1958 before they had their first top 10 hit, Tall Paul, with Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. As a result, the duo subsequently came to the notice of Walt Disney, and they became staff songwriters for the Disney studio. They composed a song for Disney’s It’s a Small World attraction at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and, as the song remained uncopyrighted at the request of Unicef, is most likely the most widely known of all their work.
The brothers were also put to work on Disney’s musicals. In 1961 The Parent Trap featured Hayley Mills in a dual role as twins, and she wowed audiences by performing the Sherman song Let’s Get Together as a duet.
Four years later, Mary Poppins became Disney’s biggest film, with the Shermans making their mark in songwriting myth by winning the 1965 Oscar for best song for Chim Chim Cher-ee, featuring Dick Van Dyke’s appalling Cockney accent.
The score remains fantastically popular to this day, with any number of hummable classics.
The Shermans did not rest on their laurels. In 1967 they did arguably their greatest work, on The Jungle Book. Can anything top I Want to Be Like You, sung into immortality by Louis Prima?
Disney himself died during the making of The Jungle Book, the end of an era in movie history. It precipitated a change for the Shermans too: they accepted their first non-Disney film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Fortunately Chitty Chitty Bang Bang turned out a firm family favourite – as did Bedknobs and Broomsticks, their 1971 film back in the Disney stable. Using the same mix of live action and animation as Mary Poppins, it got them more Oscar nominations – but unfortunately not for The Beautiful Briny, their most memorable effort on the score.
They lost at the Oscars, anyway, to the Theme from Shaft – perhaps a telling comment on the way things were going. Although The Slipper and the Rose brought an Oscar nomination in 1976, repackagings of Winnie the Pooh cartoons, for which they had penned songs in the 1960s, was the highlight of the late 70s and 80s.
