The Walt Disney Family Album - The Sherman Bros (1984)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This third episode focuses on Walt Disney's right hand songwriting team Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, better known as the Sherman Bros.

The Sherman Bros were the sons of Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman. Tin Pan Alley was where the musical publishing industry was located in New York City at the turn of through the mid the 20th century. Al was a very popular songwriter at the time working with many of the greatest performers of the era. Some of his biggest hits were for such artists as Bing Crosby and Eddie Cantor. In 1938, Al relocated to Hollywood with his family to take a job composing for films. Bob Sherman wrote how billboards for Walt Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs greeted them all along the way on the family's cross country trip as if Walt was always watching over them. When Al got the Hollywood, the executive who'd hired him had suddenly died. Overcoming a career setback was one of the first lessons he'd taught his songs by example.

In the 1950's the Sherman Bros started out as rock and roll composers and composed a handful of hits. Eventually this brought them to writing several songs for Walt's first teen star, Annette Funicello. After writing several hit songs for the former Mouseketeer, they were asked to write a song for her next film, The Horesmasters. When they had to present the song to Walt, he started talking to them about a different film he had the works about two twin girls separated at birth getting their parents back together. After liking their new Annette song, Walt offered them the Parent Trap. From there the Shermans contributed songs to many Walt Disney films and albums.

Among their Disney output include the animated features and featurettes The Sword in the Stone, the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book, A Symposium of Popular Songs, and The Aristocats. They sometimes wrote songs for Walt's live action films such as The Absent Minded Professor, That Darn Cat, In Search of the Castaways, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, The Gnome Mobile, Follow Me, Boys!, and many others. For Disneyland they composed songs for The Enchanted Tiki Room, The Golden Horseshoe Revue, The Carousel of Progress, Small World, and others. They wrote songs for Walt's TV show including a new show theme, the 10th Anniversary song for Disneyland, and songs for Professor Ludwig von Drake.

The Shermans proved to have a fantastic story sense with the songs they'd written for The Parent Trap and little did they know that Walt was looking for staff composers after the disastrous results of Babes in Toyland. When Walt assigned them to another film, it became the musical Summer Magic. Seeing their story skill, Walt asked them to work on Mary Poppins, a project he'd hoped to make for over twenty years. Their initial work on that film earned them their position of studio composers and when the film was released their score won them Oscars. Walt came to refer to them as "the Boys" and a documentary about them used that title.

Mary Poppins is perhaps the project they're most known for, but the Shermans wrote several other musicals for Walt as well. These included The Happiest Millionaire, Bedknobs & Broomsticks, and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.

After Walt died, the Shermans stopped getting called for assignments. The studio became heavily political with different factions after Walt was gone and because the Shermans were among his favorite collaborators there was a lot of resentment toward them. This led to their finally leaving the Studio.

On their own the Sherman Bros worked on such films as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Snoopy, Come Home, Charlotte's Web, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Slipper & the Rose, and many others. They also wrote a few stage musicals such as Busker Alley, Over Here!, and Dogs, They continued being nominated and winning awards for their work.

In the early 1980's, the Shermans were asked to write some songs for many of the attractions for the soon to be opened EPCOT Center in hopes of giving the new park a Disney feel. Many of these songs defined the park for a generation but their stand out song from the collection was One Little Spark for the Journey Into the Imagination attraction with Figment and Dreamfinder.

The Shermans continued working for the Walt Disney Company off and on over the next two decades. They worked on such projects as Welcome to Pooh Corner and and The Tigger Movie. In fact, it was because of their songs that this film went from a direct to video to a theatrical release.

After Bob's wife Joyce passed away he relocated to the UK in 2002 and the Sherman Bros partnership slowly came to an end. Their final major project was expanding the score to their film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for an elaborate stage production. Dick continued to write songs alone for such projects as Christopher Robin and Iron Man 2.

Bob passed away in 2012 at age 86. Dick followed in 2024 at age 95. He was one of the final surviving connections to Walt.

In 1990 the Sherman Bros were named a Disney Legend. They also received dozens of other honors and awards throughout their careers.

A lot of people ask about the Shermans and to wade through the urban legends we suggest the following. Their joint autobiography Walt's Time is their story, Bob's autobiography Moose is his story, the documentary The Boys is Dick's version, and the Walt Disney Pictures film Saving Mr Banks is the fictional Disney version.

Original air date August 1, 1984

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.