Navigate to News section

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Shivah Stars

by
Dan Klein
March 08, 2012
Richard Sherman, Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, and Robert Sherman(Disney Enterprises)
Richard Sherman, Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, and Robert Sherman(Disney Enterprises)

Each week, we select the most interesting Jewish obituary. This week there are quite a few names: Stan Stearns, who took the iconic shot of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s coffin; Zollie Volchok, who turned professional basketball into crowd-pleasing theater; and two-time world table tennis champion Sol Schiff.

This week, though, it’s got to be songwriter Robert Sherman. With his brother Richard he wrote songs for Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, and many others. They also wrote “It’s a Small World After All.” The brothers won two academy awards, and although they claimed to share the duties, Robert was known to be “the word man” and Richard “the music man.”

Robert was born in Brooklyn in 1925; his father, Al, came to the country as a Russian refugee before becoming a Tin Pan Alley Composer; his mother was Rosa Dancis, a silent film actress. Robert enlisted in the Army at 17 and served in Europe where he was shot and was part of the first American military unit to enter Dachau after its evacuation.