Last Saturday, the entertainment industry lost a songwriting legend. Richard M. Sherman, who created some of the world’s most-loved song scores with his brother, Robert B. Sherman, passed away at the age of 95 in Los Angeles, his older brother having passed away in 2012. The Sherman Brothers were legends, but I’d wager that most of us who loved their songs knew the tunes before we knew their names – classic hits from Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise and other releases from Disney, the studio under whose auspices they created their greatest work. Beyond the House of Mouse, the Sherman Brothers also wrote for other films like Charlotte’s Web and The Slipper and the Rose and even for the stage, augmenting their own song stack for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when it jumped from one medium to the other, for instance, and writing completely new scores for Over Here! and Busker Alley.
The Sherman Brothers were a ubiquitous force in my childhood, my earliest memory of their songs being those from Mary Poppins, one of the records my grandmother used to play for me when I visited her. (The other regular LPs in regular rotation were The Sound of Music, South Pacific and My Fair Lady.) This led to renting the film from the video store, after which my sister and I discovered Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Later, in the age of CDs, it was great to hear the songwriters reminisce about their work on Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book, which was probably when I put it all together and worked out their place in the history of film and stage musicals.
As a tribute to Richard on the event of his passing, this week’s Saturday List explores ten of the Sherman Brothers’ songs that left the greatest impression on me, each a gift to humanity in its own right.
10. “The Spectrum Song” (Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color)
Let’s kick things off with something fun: a song written for a segment of the first episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, “An Adventure in Color.” Sung by Paul Frees as Ludwig von Drake, the number is basically a tribute to all the colours of the rainbow – a fortuitous coincidence given the publication of this column on the first day of Pride Month. I first heard this song on a Disney Sing-Along Songs video and almost wore out the tape replaying it. Pop it on and you’ll have a blast before you can say ‘Ing za ri ka fo zi brun brun!’
Honourable Mentions: There are a lot of once-off Sherman Brothers songs like “The Spectrum Song” that bear a brief mention. “The Green with Envy Blues” from the same episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color is just such a number. But let’s not forget “The Monkey’s Uncle,” “The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room” and “It’s a Small World!”
9. “Scales and Arpeggios” (The Aristocats)
The Aristocats is not my favourite Disney film. It’s not even a favourite Disney film of mine. In fact, it’s probably closer to the bottom of the list than the top as far as I’m concerned. But where the film scores some points is in the songs written by the Sherman Brothers which dot the action and elevate the movie beyond its humble storytelling efforts. While it’s almost a throwaway number in the film, “Scales and Arpeggios” is a number that left its mark on me. As many kids did and still do today, I took piano lessons and this little song brought what I was learning to life. It was one of the first songs I learned to play by ear and I often wonder how many other creative sparks were lit by this gratifying little diversion.
Honourable Mentions: There is great fun to be had in the charming title song, which was sung by the great Maurice Chevalier, as well as in “Ev’rybody Wants to Be a Cat,” which has found more than nine lives in cover versions by artists like Charles Perry and Jamie Cullum.
8. “The Good-Time Girl” (Over Here!)
If anyone doubted the Sherman Brothers’ ability to be sassy, “The Good Time Girl” is enough to banish any such suspicion. It’s alternative title, “The V.D. Polka,” is enough to tell you why. The song is a bold and humorous take on a serious issue, addressing the importance of sexual health and awareness among soldiers, which was a significant concern during World War II, during which Over Here! is set. Giving the song to (one of) The Andrews Sisters to sing was perhaps an even bolder move and the inconguity makes it even more entertaining.
Honourable Mentions: The cast of Over Here! included a number of young performers who would go on to much greater success, including John Travolta, Treat Williams, Marilu Henner, Samuel E. Wright and Ann Reinking. One of the great treats of the score is hearing Travolta croon about “Dream Drummin’.”
7. “Doll on a Music Box” (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
There’s nothing quite like the high camp of Sally Ann Howes in doll drag singing “Doll on a Music Box” in the rest of the Sherman Brothers’ repertoire. The song features a delicate melody that mimics the sound of a music box, a distinctive sound makes it particularly memorable. The lyrics hint at feelings of longing and love, which enables what could be a simple diegetic number to underline the romantic tension between Truly Scrumptious and Caractacus Potts, which will only be resolved at the film’s end. To this end, an added layer of interest is provided by Caractacus singing a reprise of “Truly Scrumptious” in counterpoint with “Doll on a Music Box,” his sincere emotion contrasting Truly’s mechanical stylings. It was great to see this song go a little bit viral on social media in the past few years.
Honourable Mentions: The wistful lullaby “Hushabye Mountain” is a great favourite of many fans of the film, as well as of its star, Dick van Dyke. If I have a choice in the matter though, I’d probably give the infectiously catchy title song a spin. It it was good enough to be played as a wake-up call for Commander Pam Melroy on NASA’s space shuttle, Discovery, then it’s good enough for me!
6. “Are We Dancing?” (The Happiest Millionaire)
Many people name The Slipper and the Rose, for which the Sherman Brothers provided the songs, as their favourite musical version of Cinderella. I went through a short, yet intense obsession with it myself! But to my mind, the Sherman Brothers wrote a perfect Cinderella waltz about a decade earlier when they wrote “Are We Dancing” for The Happiest Millionaire. In their performance of the song, Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson perfectly capture the tentative emotions and budding love between the characters in their interpretation the poetic and romantic lyrics, which are set to an elegant and melodic tune. It’s the kind of song where I catch myself waltzing around the room if I crank up the volume!
Honourable Mentions: The Sherman Brothers were well known for their wordplay and for inventing words and phrases to suit their needs. The Happiest Millionaire features a song built around a fabricated word, “Fortuosity,” tailored to the talents of Tommy Steele, and it’s one of the highlights of the film.
5. “Let’s Get Together” (The Parent Trap)
This is a song that has stood the test of time, despite being so reflective of the period in which The Parent Trap was made. If its opening rock ‘n’ roll vamp weren’t catchy enough, its upbeat tempo and cheerful tune make “Let’s Get Together” instantly appealing and memorable. The lyrics are playful and capture the spirit of togetherness and fun. It’s a standout moment in the film – taken to the next level through the gimmick of watching Hayley Mills duet with herself, thanks to the film’s clever split-screen technique – and it was fantastic to see a tiny hat tip to the number in the 1998 remake starring Lindsay Lohan.
Honourable Mentions: There aren’t many other songs from The Parent Trap, as it was not a musical, but the title song, sung by Tommy Sands and Annette Funicello, is quite amusing, and its shout-out to “Tea for Two” is genius! And every time I hear Maureen O’Hara sing “For Now, For Always,” I wish she had been cast as Anna in the film version of The King and I. Deborah Kerr arguably had more Hollywood glamour to offer, but how great would it have been to have someone in the role who could actually sing it?
4. “Winnie the Pooh” (Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree)
The title song from Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is one of those songs that can make you smile and cry all in the short span of a few minutes. As an adult, it takes you back to a time of simplicity and imagination, things we crave once we’ve left behind our childhood days. As children, the melody is inescapably playful, a joyful earworm that’s as warm and whimsical as the stories it introduces. The Winnie the Pooh franchise is very much an element of contemporary popular culture, the source of several memes and even a social-media-driven mental health reading in which the various characters represent depression, social anxiety, OCD and so on. This latter interpretation originated in a journal article titled “Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood,” which was published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal rather than being an inherently allegorical element of A. A. Milne’s work. But I digress – the song’s presence in the public consciousness transcends all that. Its theme of friendship and the world of enchantment that it represents make it timeless, whether it is sung by the Disney Studio Chorus in its original version or by more contemporary singers like Carly Simon and Zooey Deschanel.
Honourable Mentions: The Winnie the Pooh franchise is full of little songs that bop along to the rhythm of sheer glee. Who could forget tunes like “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers,” “Heffalumps and Woozles” or “Little Black Rain Cloud?”
3. “My Own Home” (The Jungle Book)
The Jungle Book is an adventurous romp of a film, but what ties it all together is Mowgli’s quest to find a place where he truly belongs. It’s like The Wizard of Oz on safari, with Bagheera, Baloo and the rest of the gang taking the place of the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. We even get a wizard with no magic in the form of King Louie and a villain as wicked as the Witch of the West in Shere Khan. There are a couple of great songs to be heard as Mowgli bounces from species to species, but it all leads up to his intimate observation of another human being, a young girl fetching water to take home to her parents, and it’s this song that convinces him to follow her into the village. Tapping into themes of belonging and identity, the song poignantly embraces Mowgli’s transition from one world into another. Its melody is soothing, gentle and beautifully crafted, fitting the reflective and tender nature of the song and its lyrics are simple yet evocative, capturing the essence of what a home means to many people. The uncontrived simplicity and sheer beauty of “My Own Home” give it a universal appeal that enables it to stand out in a film full of flashier songs.
Honourable Mentions: Is there a bad song in The Jungle Book? Whether you’re dancing along to “I Wanna Be Like You” or belting out “That’s What Friends Are For,” you’re sure to have a good time when someone in this movie starts to sing.
2. “Jolly Holiday” (Mary Poppins)
Most people would probably pick the Oscar-winning “Chim Chim Cher-ee” or the undisputed classic “Feed the Birds” as the highlight of Mary Poppins‘s score. For me, it is “Jolly Holiday.” Even if I hadn’t wasted many childhood afternoons reenacting the number in our garden at home, the song includes what I consider to be the best marriage of lyric to music in a Sherman Brothers number:
When Mary ‘olds your ‘and
You feel so grand
Your ‘eart starts beatin’ like
A big brass band!
It’s one of those moments when the intention of the words is perfectly mirrored in the score. It really feels like your heart could burst with joy when that lyric comes along. While I much prefer the film over the more recent stage adaptation, the final moments of “Jolly Holiday” in the stage show masterfully build on that emotion in its gorgeous vocal arrangement and orchestration. As for the rest of the song, its playfulness perfectly captures the essence of Mary Poppins’s transformative magic. The world is a better place when she is around, and we become better versions of ourselves.
Honourable Mentions: It is true that the aforementioned “Feed the Birds” holds a rightful place among the greatest songs of all time. It offers an outlook on life that makes it all seem so simple – so why can’t we get it right? Elsewhere, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is as giddy a delight as is the obligato in “A Spoonful of Sugar.” This is an iconic score, much of it in the hands of Julie Andrews, a singer who is just as much of a legend as the film is.
1. “The Age of Not Believing” (Bedknobs and Broomsticks)
Placing this song in the number one spot almost surprises even me. When I first watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks, this song just wasn’t in the film. Its melody was, in the sequences when the bed rocketed through the skies from one location to the other, but along with quite a bit of the rest of the movie, the song itself was missing. Over the years, the film had been shortened time and again, with more than 40 minutes of material edited out. The material was treated with so little care that even when a reconstruction of the original film was commissioned in the 1990s, the footage for one song, “A Step in the Right Direction,” along with some of the soundtrack recordings, was unsalvagable. By the time I eventually saw the song in context in the film, I had already heard “The Age of Not Believing” on a CD titled And The Winner Is… A Collection Of Honored Disney Classic Songs, where Angela Lansbury’s wistful delivery of the song caught my ear. A tune that had been catchy and thrilling suddenly had an overwhelming emotional resonance. Its reflection on the bittersweet nature of growing up, the loss of youthful innocence and the onset of the doubt and cynicism that comes with adolescence and adulthood, hits hard. For me, it’s become a paean to the power of finding those dreams we’ve lost up on a shelf, and an anthem for believing in yourself, knowing that somewhere in the hopeless circles of our busy lives, there is still something wonderful in all of us.
Honourable Mentions: There are a couple of other great songs in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, in including the haunting “Portabello Road,” the delightful “The Beautiful Briny” and a classic Sherman Brothers wordplay number, “Substitutiary Locomotion.” Many people think of this score – and indeed, the film itself – as a Mary Poppins knockoff, but I think it holds its own.
Final Thoughts
In the wake of Richard M. Sherman’s passing, reflecting on the profound impact of The Sherman Brothers’ songs is more than just a stroll down memory lane; it’s a journey through the timeless melodies and lyrics that shaped our childhoods and continue to resonate with us today. Their music wasn’t just background noise; it was the soundtrack of our lives, instilling in us a sense of wonder, joy, and, most importantly, a belief in the power of our dreams. Their ability to capture the essence of storytelling in music was second-to-none in Hollywood, and their legacy lives on in the hearts of countless fans worldwide. This is music that will continue to uplift, inspire and unite us all.
Musical Cyberspace 
The Saturday List: My Junk is SPRING AWAKENING
Get ready to journey back to the groundbreaking world of Spring Awakening, a modern musical where the show tunes are as haunting as the themes are daring! Since its debut, this Tony Award-winning musical has captivated audiences with its raw portrayal of adolescent angst, sexuality and rebellion against societal norms. But beyond the powerful storytelling and unforgettable songs lies a series of creative moments that have left an indelible mark on the landscape of musical theatre. Bold artistic choices and innovative staging ideas enabled Spring Awakening to move beyond the boundaries of the genre in ways that continue to resonate with audiences today. In today’s Saturday List, we revisit just five of the most creative ideas that helped to solidify this show’s place in musical theatre history.
1. Origin Story, or “[Frank Wedekind] who Bore Me“
The play upon which the musical adaptation of Spring Awakening is based was completed by Frank Wedekind in 1891. Frühlings Erwachen was not, however, performed until 1906, when Max Reinhardt staged it at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. Set against the backdrop of the sexually oppressive nineteenth century, the play follows a group of teenagers – primarily Melchior Gabor, Wendla Gabor and Moritz Stiefel – whose journey through puberty leads them to experiences of sexuality, physical and sexual abuse, suicide, pregnancy and abortion. The first English performance of the play was in 1917, at which time New York City’s Commissioner of Licenses through its edgy content and approach pushed the boundaries too far. Everyone headed to court, where an injunction allowed the production to be staged. While the play’s brilliance in its original German form was recognised by critics, the first English production was criticised for its poor translation. Since then, the play has been translated several times; my favourite version is the 1995 Royal Shakespeare Company-commissioned version by Ted Hughes. Almost three decades later, the Hughes translation is still a great introduction to the play for anyone who has no experience of it, or for fans of the musical who want to see just what inspired composer Duncan Sheik and librettist Steven Sater to put their own spin on the story.
2. Anticipating Expressionism, or “All That’s Known“
Frühlings Erwachen anticipated the Expressionist theatre movement that would reach the height of its popularity during World War I. I would never say that Spring Awakening is a work of Expressionism. What I would say, is that Wedekind’s foreshadowing of the movement in his work in general means that some of the movement’s conventions have their foundations in his practice. This makes a basic knowledge of Expressionism in the theatre useful to understand the play and its musical adaptation. Back in the day when the online musical theatre forums reigned supreme, the glory days of which were already in their decline when Spring Awakening made its musical theatre bow in 2006, the pearl-clutching generation of musical theatre superfans lamented what they perceived to be poorly developed characters, thematic ideas that went nowhere and emblematic characters that should have been fleshed out. I vividly remember one regular poster on the forums referring to the show as pop trash. They simply didn’t get it. Perhaps they were never going to get it. To them, Spring Awakening was innovation without substance; to those of us who loved the show, it was innovation that meant something. People who loved the show understood that musicals could be built in ways that challenged the Rodgers and Hammerstein II model, by drawing on an array of other theatrical influences, just as Stephen Sondheim had done in Company and Follies and theatre-makers of the next generation, like Sheik and Sater, were doing in Spring Awakening.
3. A Fever Dream, or “The Bitch of Living”
The musical adaptation of Spring Awakening is like a fever dream. While it is broadly linear chronologically, its episodic structure and the sometimes casual relationship between the scenes make it feel like a collage with Sater’s book carrying us from song to song. It’s the perfect structure for a play about a group of teenagers who are ‘tossing, turning without rest.’ One of the aspects of Expressionism that Wedekind prefigured was its distorted representation of reality to communicate inner feelings. Sheik and Sater picked up on these impulses: Spring Awakening is less about creating a conventional narrative journey than creating states of being. The songs are like rabbit holes that take us deep into each character’s personal Wonderland, landscapes full of beauty and horror. We learn about “The Song of Purple Summer” and “The Mirror-Blue Mind,” about “The Dark I Know Well” and “The Word of Your Body,” and every moment gives us insight into a particular character’s experience of a situation. In its avoidance of traditional character development over the show, Spring Awakening acknowledges that in life, experiences are fragmented in the context of a single life and of a community. The show proposes that we should see a story about people who are ‘broken inside’ in a broken way and in this way, delivers to us a key we can use to unlock our own souls.
4. Microphones and Stereos, or “My Junk”
One of the most controversial staging choices in the original production of Spring Awakening was the use of hand-held microphones, an anachronous prop in a nineteenth-century setting. The show’s most eager critics decried how random this appeared and chalked it up as an empty nod to pop culture and a shallow way of making the show’s issues feel relevant today. There’s just more to it than that. In Expressionist drama, the action is seen through the eyes of the characters and, therefore, seems distorted or even dreamlike. Wedekind’s use of this technique was another way he preempted the genre, evident in Spring Awakening through a narrative constructed from the collective perspectives of Melchoir, Wendla, Moritz and the gang. Combined with a bit of Freudian theory, we can then begin to understand the use of hand-held microphones as well as the mention of other contemporary objects in the show. Freud’s theory states that our psychological makeup includes the “id” (the fully unconscious part of our mind that contains the drives related to things like sex and aggression and other things repressed by consciousness), the “ego” (the mostly conscious part of our mind that allows us to deal with the world in which we exist), and the “superego” (the partly conscious part of our mind that informs our moral judgments). In Spring Awakening, we see certain songs delving into the characters’ respective ids. These moments are highlighted through the appearance of hand-held microphones and the mention of other contemporary objects. It’s not just about making the issues of “then” seem relevant “now.” There is a central and binding metaphor at work here, in which the teenagers view themselves (in their “id”) as rock stars: free and able to perform with agency. The whole point is that the microphones are incongruent with the reality of the historical period. We are caught in the middle of a fantastical imagining of a world that never was and never can be, that this group of teenagers will never fully attain.
4. Left to Their Own Devices, or “The Guilty Ones”
Teen stories, whether their creators tell them in writing, on film or television or on stage, rely on one central conceit: the adults are notably absent or superficially drawn so that the teens may be left to their own devices. Spring Awakening takes this one step further, with Wedekind in the original play (once again moulding ideas that would feature in Expressionism) and Sheik and Sater in the musical using this technique to couch their critical view of controlling societal structures like the family, education and the church. The adult characters in Spring Awakening are purposeful caricatures, subjectively seen through the eyes of the teenagers and as such, are uniformly punitive, heatless or clueless. It’s a masterstroke to have them all played by the same two actors in the musical and adds to the “us and them” opposition that informs the play’s action: “we, the teenagers are individuals; they, the adults, are all the same”.
Closing Thoughts
It’s time to whisper our way out of our all-too-brief behind-the-scenes exploration of Spring Awakening, a show that has carved out a unique place in the annals of musical theatre history. It’s clear that this musical is a force to be reckoned with as it continues to challenge and inspire audiences with its raw honesty and unapologetic creativity almost two decades after its first performances!