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[0:09] Lauren Van Hemert: This is the Beltline to Broadway podcast.

[0:12] Lauren Van Hemert: I'm Lauren Van Hemert, your host, and on this episode, I'm chatting with Robert J. Sherman.

[0:29] Lauren Van Hemert: When you talk about a musical dynasty, it doesn't get much grander than the Sherman family. For over a century, members of this family have produced popular music that has entered our collective consciousness. In fact, Robert J. Sherman and his brother Richard became one of the most prolific songwriting teams in motion picture history, writing songs for films like Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Bang, and The Parent Trap. Robbie Sherman, a celebrated producer and songwriter in his own right, tells me that much like his father, he cares deeply about the past, but has his eyes firmly planted on the future. And that is where our conversation takes us.

[1:22] Robert J. Sherman: What is your earliest musical memory at home?

[1:25] Robert J. Sherman: My earliest memory quite literally was me dancing to an acetate record that my dad had brought home, an acetate record of a movie score that he had just finished in the studio and they just pressed that day for Snoopy Come Home. I remember I was the youngest of four children, and much younger than my siblings, so I was kind of the favorite of the family in that sense, and so I was dancing around to the thing while the songs were going, and I remember thinking at the time, you know, my dad was at the pinnacle of his career. My grandfather was alive, who's also a very famous songwriter in his day, Tim Penn Alley songwriter. And I remember thinking, this is what I want to do as well, and I will.

I mean, I couldn't put a sentence together. And I remember thinking even at the time, yeah, I don't know how you do it, but one day I want to write songs. So quite literally, my earliest memory was that I wanted to write songs, and it was specifically in the scenario of listening to the Snoopy Come Home soundtrack.

[2:34] Lauren Van Hemert: I was looking at your social media for the new company, Sherman Theatrical Entertainment, and one of the pictures is of you and your father. And the caption of that is perhaps the greatest gift of your father and uncle was their ability to give voice to Walt Disney's vision. Were those before, were you either too young or born?

[3:06] Robert J. Sherman: I wasn't even alive when Walt Disney died, about 18 months before I was born. I was born in '68; he died in December of '66. But I know the stories that my father told. And it's very clear to me when you look at my father's time with Walt Disney that a number of things are very clear. One thing is that Walt Disney had an ability to see potential in people that they themselves might not have realized that they had, and was able to tap on that. For example, my father and uncle started writing songs in the 1950s. They were writing country western songs when rock and roll came in; they were writing pop songs, rock and roll songs, and novelty songs. They wrote a song for Annette Funicello called Tall Paul, which hit, and Annette Funicello was one of the Mousketeers in the Mickey Mouse Club.

Walt Disney had a very small film; it wasn't big at all called The Horse Masters, and he needed a specialty number for Annette to sing with the other kids who were learning how to ride horses at this ranch. So they said, well, what about these guys who wrote this hit song for Annette? By the way, that song Tall Paul was the first time a single female hit the top ten chart as a solo artist. So it was kind of a momentous moment in pop music.

[3:31] Robert J. Sherman: There's a great story about how my father and uncle met with Walt. They had three songs written; they really wanted the gig, and they wrote a fast song, a slow song, and a medium tempo song. They came in, and Walt immediately started telling them the story. He said, there are these two twins; they were separated at birth, one lived on the east coast of America, one lived on the west coast of America. Finally, my dad mustered up the courage to interrupt him and he said, Mr. Disney—and Walt's smile left his face because he hated being called Mr. Disney—but my dad was a young songwriter who didn't want to offend him and obviously went the other way and said, we came in here for a song for The Horse Masters.

I said, well, I look like—and then Disney said something like, and this isn't a direct quote; I don't remember the exact words, although it's in my dad's book, which I know the reason I know the story so well is because I was the editor of his book. My dad's book, and he says, well, why didn't you stop me? I feel foolish or something to that effect. And he said, well, play me what you got. Of course, he was talking about a different movie; he was talking about what was going to become The Parent Trap. Completely accidentally, my father and uncle went over to the piano. My uncle, who's the piano player, sat down at the piano, and the performer sat down and started playing the Strumman song, and he said, and Walt said, that'll work.

That'll work. It was very matter-of-fact, and he was famously matter-of-fact about these things and didn't want to hear the other two songs. Then he said, well, since I wasted your time with that twins movie, see if you can write me a title song. Seriously, this really happened.

[4:38] Robert J. Sherman: Then my father and uncle were sort of ushered out of the office, and without looking up, Walt—and this is in the book; that's how I know these details. It's not because I'm psychic or anything. Without looking, he was looking down at a script or something; he sort of waved his hand without even looking at them. My dad thought to himself, you know, that was kind of a strange meeting. Meanwhile, Jimmy Johnson, who was the head of the music department, sort of continued ushering them down. When they were safely out of view in the path up to the building, he took an imaginary golf club and swung like he was making a hole in one. He said, boys, don't you understand what just happened? You have a two-picture deal with Walt Disney.

My dad said, but he didn't seem to like it. He said, no, he said, that'll work. When Walt Disney said that'll work, that meant he was going to put half a million dollars behind making it work. I mean, this is a big deal. That's great news. While The Horse Masters didn't go that far, and Strumman's song is a lovely song; you can find it on YouTube, but it was their song Let's Get Together from The Parent Trap and the two or three others that they wrote for that movie that really cemented their place at Disney.

[7:58] Robert J. Sherman: They came back with one song called For Now for All, which is a great song. It was supposed to sound like a 1940s favorite song of the couple of Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith. But of course, they were divorced, and so when they were brought together in the movie. But he said, that's great, but that's not the title of my picture. Then they did another one called Let's Get Together, and he said, that's a great song; that'll be terrific, but that's not the title of my movie. He says, what we think we'll do is we'll do a thing called The Parent Trap. My dad explained to Walt, he said, the problem with The Parent Trap is that you end with a T and you start with a T on the second word. If you listen to the way the song is written, The Parent Trap, there's like an eighth note rest in the middle because he said it's very—and he likes it.

He says, you know something, guys, I want to show you something. He pulled a book; he had several of this one book in his bookshelf, but he had one to share with people, and he gave it to my dad. It was the book for Mary Poppins, which is the original book by Pamela Travers. Now think about this; this is momentous because Walt Disney had spent sixteen years fighting to get the rights to this. He could have had Rogers and Hammerstein; there was interest there. Stephen Sondheim famously wrote some songs, although he wasn't quite that famous yet. He had done West Side Story and Gypsy, but he wasn't the Stephen Sondheim of legend now, but still, he was Stephen Sondheim, and he had written a couple songs and a treatment for Mary Poppins.

He could have had his pick of people, and he handed this to my father and uncle. My dad read the book cover to cover a couple of times and nonchalantly circled six chapters in the front index in the table of contents because it was a very episodic book. You know, it was one episode or another episode. My father and uncle a week later met with Walt again. So we think that these six chapters would make a good spine of a two-hour motion picture.

[10:21] Robert J. Sherman: And Walt was silent for a moment, and he went back to his personal copy of Mary Poppins, which the Sherman brothers never saw. And then he opened it up and he had circled or X'd or whatever, the same exact six chapters. And then his voice got soft apparently, and I've heard the story many times, so I can embellish when I say this, I'm it's not just me inventing new moments, but apparently that's why I know this. And his voice got soft. He says, You boys really like to work, don't you? How would you like to work for me? And then of course Mary Poppins was a very early assignment to the Sherman brothers. Like I said, he saw the potential in people, like no one saw potential. He invented an industry, the animation industry was his invention.

He reinvented it time and time again. Then he invented theme park, reinvented the idea of a theme park. I mean there were parts, you know, of course there was Kitty Land, but you know, and there was Tivoli and in Copenhagen, but you know, which were both inspirations. But Walt's completely reinvented that notion. So, you know, this is the closest we've ever come to somebody who, you know, creates I mean a complete marketplace where there was none before it was is Steve Jobs, but he doesn't even come close.

[11:41] Robert J. Sherman: Um you know, I had the privilege just a couple days ago, we're doing some more social media work, and we were able to we wanted to use a really nice place. And we happened to know the docent of the Walt Disney house where he lived from nineteen thirty-two to nineteen fifty. And he built the house and he designed the house and he and he everything he was a micromanager of Walt Disney was, so he knew every little detail had a story behind it, and so like you'd see a pane of glass in the leaded window was his family crest, and you know, so that nothing was there accidentally. And in his screening room, which was amazing to see, um and it looks exactly the same as it did, as you look out on all of Los Angeles up in Los Feliz in the hills and this magnificent view looking out on the pool and then the whole city and you can see City Hall in the background there's William Shakespeare and one of these leaded glass you know the how they're diamond shaped and like a piece of leaded glass like and uh and then another one most of the most of the leaded glass was clear there were two in this particular window that had William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Now this would have gone up in 1932 or shortly thereafter and you know Walt Disney was not the Walt Disney of great fame that we now know and him to be but he knew his own potential and I this is my argument I said this to the docent and he said you know what what Robbie I was wondering because when I first walked in there I had it was like a mystery why did he put up William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and it occurred to me these were the greatest English speaking storytellers of all time and he also wanted to be that and remember this is the Walt Disney who was at the time working on the three little pigs. He hadn't done Snow White he hadn't done uh the Pinocchio or Dumbo or Bambi or any of these things yet uh let alone Mary Poppins and the jungle book.

You know that was coming up he was still a very young man. He was early he was maybe 30 years old but he knew his place and you could easily put Walt Disney on a third diamond of the thing and and uh and uh Todd Reagan, the uh the docent said to me, He said, you know, I think you figured it out. I think you figured out the mystery why. Why are these two people here? They're the great storytellers and Walt knew what his destiny what he wanted his destiny to be, and I think it's fair to say that he fulfilled it.

[14:19] Robert J. Sherman: So let's talk about Sherman Theatrical Entertainment. This has been an incredible year when it comes to conversations around licensing and streaming and what that means for theater and what that means for film. So talk to me about forming this company now and entering this space at this point in time.

[14:46] Robert J. Sherman: I would say that it's a great time to enter the space as long as you're not planning on producing something in twenty twenty-one. That's my personal take on it. Nevertheless, it's a good time to plan, it's a good time to build, and um and so I think that this is actually an excellent time to start a company like ours.

[15:09] Robert J. Sherman: And can we talk about Bumble Scratch? This was first workshopped a few years ago, and it takes place during the plague, during the great fire. And it seems like this is more timely than ever. So is there talk about um further developing this piece?

[15:28] Robert J. Sherman: Oh yeah, absolutely. Well so in so um so our goal is to produce that show and and and uh and also uh I'd love to do something with my my father and uncle's work and my grandfather's work as well. Um and uh in fact we did a show called The Spoonful of Sherman that we had a tour of the UK and Ireland, went to twenty five cities in twenty eighteen, and um and it was uh big success. And it was about a hundred years of my family's music. It is mostly my dad and uncle's music, had a lot of songs by my grandfather as well, and uh and we tell the story of my family, but also it's sort of my family I I I I also wrote the book and my family is kind of a microcosm of the cent of the last century.

[16:19] Robert J. Sherman: So when my grandfather was travelling around the United States uh in his car and by train, he would take his family along and it was very much kind of you know, it was during the Great Depression and so you know there we would my grandfather wrote Great Depression songs, uh very optimistic songs like Potatoes Are Cheaper, Tomatoes are cheaper, now's the time to fall in love, baguette cancer hit, um and you gotta be a football hero and things like that. And so we use these songs to sort of accent the family story. When my dad and uncle were writing uh songs in the nineteen sixties, a very optimistic time, um in many ways, uh that was also uh that that also allowed you know, so so we like they wrote a song called There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. And and you know, America was heading to the moon and this was a great time for the Sherman, but it was a great time for the United States.

[17:09] Robert J. Sherman: So, you know, that kind of optimism. And then when and then when the Vietnam War took place and and uh all the terrible assassinations of the world, you know, you had the song The Age of Not Believing, which was nominated for an Oscar from Bent Dobson Broomsticks. So that's that show. But Bumble Scratch, you're right. I started writing that around two thousand six and uh it was a long process because it's a sung through musical. That's something new to my family. Um and uh and the sung through or through song however you word it, uh like a le miserab or uh, you know, a phantom of the opera is is a tricky thing to do I wanted I've always wanted to do a through sung musical and suddenly I had this great idea I was actually at Shakespeare Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London where I live and I realize and I realized there was a rack of puppets but the puppets were plague rat puppets and I was thinking only in London would you have a plague rat be uh a toy.

[18:12] Robert J. Sherman: I mean you know this idea there's these gray plague I mean it was kind of gruesome to look at actually and it was you know it's in the Shakespeare Globe theater um bookshop uh you know gift shop and I realize and I thought you know nobody's ever done this is the most significant piece of American history. It'd be like saying the Civil War or the Revolutionary War. Uh the plague and then the fire and I thought you know it starts with a plague it ends with a fire. What a great concept very dramatic concept and you know when you do through sung I think as a writer you have a responsibility to be particularly dramatic scene to scene to scene which is a hard thing to do. You know there has to be some sort of dramatic impetus to sing a song in my in my particular philosophy of songwriting.

[19:03] Robert J. Sherman: So here was an opportunity in Bumble Scratch to write something that every scene has enough drama in it that you can musicalize it. It starts with a plague and it ends with a fire. It's interesting because it wasn't a time of plague when I wrote it. Uh it was a time of um time of relative prosperity and the idea of a plague seemed kind of distant to the Western world, but but one of one of the sub themes of the story is the idea of how plague isolates people and characters and and that's why there's a certain madness that goes on in in Melbourne Bumble Scratch, the main character, but in other characters as well. And so I do think that the show hits on particularly relevant themes for our day. And that was an accident. It wasn't something that was planned at all. Of course, but it's a happy accident.

[20:01] Robert J. Sherman: You mentioned this optimism that your grandfather had in his music, your father, your uncle had in their music one thing as I was going down this uh rabbit hole of research that I do is I found an excerpt of your father's book which you narrated about your father going into Dachau as a soldier. Yeah. And I kind of wonder, you know, when you see horrors as I'm sure he saw in the war, how do you think that influenced his music?

[20:38] Robert J. Sherman: Where does this optimism that we hear in the songs and the music come from? It is amazing that the man who wrote "Feed the Birds" was one of the first people, of only eight men, to see and witness Dachau. You know, I mean, what a tremendous thing that was. To be an optimist is to be brave; it's a very brave thing to do. You know, there's every reason not to want to get out of bed in the morning. You know, it's so scary, the world, things that are going on, climate change, COVID, the disparity in classes and where that could lead to. And I think we, you know, it takes an optimist, it takes somebody to lead to think that tomorrow can be a better day than today and that we can live better lives and that this world can be a hopeful one.

My dad was very brave. He was an extremely brave man. So I would be actually, 'cause you know, he didn't have to go to war at the time that he did. He volunteered. He was seventeen years old and he had to get special permission from his parents to join the army a year early. He was a brave man. He was a brave man to his death. I remember when they were taking him into an operation and at the very end, the doctors gave him a one percent chance of surviving the operation. He did survive, by the way, and he healed from it. It was the bugs in the hospital that ended up getting him. I remember him leaning up because he wanted to see where they were taking him. I'm telling you, I mean, if you saw this, you'd say that is the bravest man you've ever seen.

They're taking him to his death and he wants to see where he's going. It was remarkable; it was just a remarkable moment and it took my breath away. And like I said, he did survive that and he pushed through, and even, you know, with his career, Hollywood is not kind to people who get older, and they don't want to hire you as much. It was a very interesting thing. He just kept on painting his paintings, writing his stories, and you know, he didn't look back. He had no interest in looking back. And I'm much more sentimental than he ever was about things. He was, you know, as AJ Carruthers, the great scriptwriter and book writer of Busker Alley and also wrote screenplays for Disney, he said, my Uncle Richard is the sentimentalist and my dad is the romantic. My dad was a romantic; he loved the past, but he's firmly got his eyes set onto the future.

[23:43] Robert J. Sherman: And you mentioned "Feed the Birds," I have to ask, was it really Walt Disney's favorite song? So basically, the story was that after "Feed the Birds" was written, many, many Fridays, most Fridays, at the end of the day, Walt would ask my father and uncle up to his office, and they would talk about the week. My dad would sit with Walt, and my uncle would go to the piano and he'd play something, and then at one point during conversation, he would look over to my uncle at the other side of the room and he'd say, "Play it." My uncle knew what it was that he wanted to hear, and it was "Feed the Birds." And at one point, one of these times, Walt said, again, very understated man, he said, "That's what it's about.

That's what it's all about." So I think that shows you the heart of Walt Disney. And you know, that he was about the idea of charity. And you know, there's a great thing about Sherman Brothers' songs. My dad was truly an original thinker. He came up with, you know, "Feed the Birds" isn't just a great song; it's an original song. There was never a pop song prior to "Feed the Birds" about the merits of giving charity to the giver, you know, and that's an amazing thought. You know, there's a lot of songs that are kind of about the same thing—love songs, beautiful weather, what a nice moon there is tonight. But, you know, the hero is a song. "It's a Small World" after all, it's a lot of times it's dismissed as a kid's song.

But think about it; it's a song that was the first time there was a world anthem, and it's not just a world anthem; it's a call to action. Sometimes people refer to it as a prayer for peace. It's not a prayer because it's not saying, "God help us." It's saying it's a plea for peace. It's saying there's so much that we share that it's time we're aware. "It's a small world after all." In other words, and my dad always told me something once. He was teaching me a lesson about lyric writing. He said, "There's a line in the song that's not sung; you won't find it anywhere, but it's a line in the song, and it's the last line of the song." So there's so much that we share that it's time we're aware, "It's a small world after all," so let's not blow it up.

And he was teaching me it's what you don't say in a song. It's the words you don't say. There were a number of times I remember I would fall in love with some song that my dad had written for a show, and he would say, "Oh, it's out of the show." And I'd say, "Why is it out of the show? It's so perfect." Yeah, it was too on the head, too on the nose, rather. That's what he said; it was too on the nose. There was a great song from Busker Alley, which you may have heard of, called "Takes a Bit of Getting Used To." Well, you wouldn't know the song because it was cut. And I love that song. And I remember I was actually in New York when they were rehearsing for Busker Alley, and I was in the cab with my dad and uncle, and they were both laughing because they cut the song.

Voluntarily, they did it themselves. You know, a lesser writer would have written a song called "Let's Clean Up the Nursery." My dad and uncle wrote "A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down." And you know, that says a lot.

[27:06] Robert J. Sherman: All of their music and yours too, which is why I'm so excited about this venture and you continuing this legacy with your own original pieces. I do want to ask you, because your family—your grandfather, your dad, your uncle—they were all in the business side of making music, not just the creation of the music. So what did they teach you as you go into this new business venture? What did they teach you about the business side of this industry?

[27:44] Robert J. Sherman: Hmm, that's a great question. I mean, I wouldn't actually think of my family as great business people. I think my dad, I think they were extremely talented. I don't think business was their crowning achievement. My dad was a man of true integrity. My dad was a guy who spoke truth to power, and it was very interesting. And if there's one thing that I think I've inherited from him, I kind of do that, and possibly to a fault. And I think it was in some ways it was to a fault with my dad as well. But he many times spoke truth to power in a way that you don't see in our business. And it was never with bitterness; it was never with anger. It was just, you know, if he felt something, he didn't let it fester. Again, he was a very brave man. He just put it out there.

[28:37] Lauren Van Hemert: Well, I've enjoyed this conversation so much. I cannot wait to hear your music because I think this is gonna just take your family's legacy into a new era.

[28:50] Robert J. Sherman: I hope so. I mean, that's really the plan. It feels like a hundred-year journey to this point, or even more, because I mean, the family goes even further back in music, and it feels kind of like here we are, you know, all of this stuff, all of this collected material, and there are pieces I would love to do in the future of Sherman Brothers' work as well that hasn't been seen or rarely seen. And I think that there's just a lot of stuff for us to do, but I can't emphasize enough though, we're really not about the past; we're about the future. You know, think of a tree. The tree with the tallest branches oftentimes has the deepest roots, and that's kind of how I think of our company. This fall, Sherman Theatrical Entertainment plans to release the Robert J. Sherman songbook.

That collection of songs will be accompanied by a series of videos featuring some of West End and Broadway's brightest young stars, including "Girl from the North Country" Rachel John and Olivier Award winner Sam Tutty.

[30:03] Lauren Van Hemert: I'll put additional information, including links to Sherman Theatrical social media pages, in the episode notes. If you like what you've heard today, please consider subscribing to this podcast. Follow us on Facebook or Instagram at Beltline to Broadway or Twitter at Beltline to Be Way, or visit us online at www.beltlinetobroadway.org. Until next time, I'll see you at the theater.