Robert Sherman, 1925–2012

At the 1965 Academy Awards ceremony, Robert and Richard Sherman had already won the Best Score Oscar for Mary Poppins when they were called back on stage to pick up the Best Song statuette for “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” Having already thanked everyone, Robert told the audience there was only one thing to add: “Supercalifragilistic...” Then, as so often happened when they spoke, Richard finished his older brother’s sentence, saying “expialidocious.”

Sherman was born in Brooklyn to a family of entertainers. His father, Al, wrote Broadway show tunes, and his mother, Rosa, was a silent-film actress. The family moved to Southern California when Sherman was still a boy, and at age 17 he enlisted in the Army. “Two years later, he led a squad of men into the Dachau concentration camp, the first Americans to stumble on the horrors there,” said the London Guardian. The experience changed Sherman forever. “My father had a lot of weight on him when he came back from the war,” said his son Jeffrey. “All he wanted to do with his life was make people happy.”

After the war, Robert started to write a novel while his younger brother set out to compose symphonies. It was their father who challenged them to pool their talents and write a pop song. The result, “Gold Can Buy Anything (But Love),” was recorded by Gene Autry in 1951, said The New York Times. It marked the start of a profitable creative partnership. In 1960 the two were hired as staff songwriters by Disney and composed songs for films including The Jungle Book and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. They also wrote “It’s a Small World (After All)” for the 1964 World’s Fair. The tune still plays virtually nonstop at Disney theme parks around the world.

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The brothers’ clashing personalities—Richard was gregarious, Robert more somber—sometimes led to fierce fights in which the two would hurl typewriters at each other, said the London Telegraph. But “as songwriters, they were a perfect combination,” said Dick Van Dyke, who starred as the chimney sweep Bert in Mary Poppins. “The emotion was Robert and the fun was Dick’s part. They were made by God for Walt Disney.”