Mary Poppins Songwriter Dies

Robert B. Sherman, half of the team of songwriting brothers who created the scores for Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, together with numerous other film songs and scores has died at the age of 86.

Together with his brother, Richard M. Sherman, Robert Sherman won two Oscars — for the song Chim Chim Cher-ee from Mary Poppins, and for the score of the same film, created with Walt Disney, whose studios they worked at as staff composers from 1960 to 1973.

While both brothers shared credit for their songs, the collaboration was primarily words by Robert and music by Richard.

According to the New York Times, their jovial songs were written against a strongly contrasting background.

“All the while they were immersed in a sibling rivalry and personality clash that eventually divided them and their families. Richard, the younger brother by two and a half years, was the more single-minded of the two, devoted to songwriting and little else; he was also known to have a blustery temper. Robert, who survived a harrowing war experience, had more of a wide-ranging curiosity, more of a poet’s probing mind. … In “The Boys” — a 2009 documentary about the brothers made by Jeffrey Sherman and Gregg Sherman, Richard’s son — Walt Disney’s nephew Roy, a former top executive at the Walt Disney Company, said that the difference could be seen in two of their songs from “Mary Poppins”: Richard was more “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Robert more “Feed the Birds.”

The Times continued. “In any case, though they continued to work together off and on and feigned closeness in public, they rarely spoke, their families did not socialize and the broken relationship was barely ever mentioned, even in private.

Mary Poppins was adapted for the stage, and is currently being produced in Australia, following successful West End and Broadway productions. The stage version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which played in the West End for three years from 2002, and features additional Sherman Brothers songs, has also been announced for Australia.

Image: The Sherman Brothers with Walt Disney (Robert standing on the left).