A new documentary, The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, makes a pretty convincing case for its heroes as major cultural figures of the latter half of the twentieth century, especially in terms of their inescapable, pervasive influence: as the only songwriters Walt Disney ever put on staff at his studio, Richard and Robert Sherman were responsible for many a tune that, in the words of John Landis, "drilled" its way into the skulls of millions. The sons of a Tin Pan Alley songwriter named Al Sherman, Robert--the older, more serious one, who now looks like Robert Morse on Mad Men--and Richard--the younger, more effusive, giddier one, who in old photos looks like Oscar Levant--began dabbling in the business in the 1950s, a period when Robert, who describes himself as a frustrated novelist, did a lot of writing with other people. The brothers cemented their partnership, and found themselves on their true career path, when they scored a hit for Annette Funicello, then a teen idol as the Mouseketeer with the rack. That got them an audience with Disney, who set them to work on a movie version of the Mary Poppins books by P. L. Travers, and who was confirmed in his suspicions that they were his boys when the Shermans got ahold of a copy of one of Travers's books and unwittingly built an outline based on the same six chapters that Disney had underlined in his own copy.
Read More...
