Sherman Brothers

It was the, it was the figuring out the lanes up ahead, up above.

It was not Disney, but it was Sherman Brothers, so there you go.

Close enough.

Yeah.

this was actually the last film that Walt Disney approved and the last released by Roy Disney.

And it was also the last film that the Sherman Brothers, who had written all the songs.

Oh, they wrote so

many Disney songs.

She didn't care for the musical aspects of the film at all.

She actively despised the original songs that were written for the movie by the Sherman Brothers.

Songs that are now considered masterpieces of American musical theater.

Instead of a spoonful of sugar or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, she had aggressively pushed for older, authentic music from the Edwardian period to be used.

He needed a hit.

He needed joy.

He needed the Sherman Brothers earworms.

So he sanded down the edges to create a product he knew the world desperately wanted.

I just looked it up.

It says, "The music for It's a Small World holiday overlay at Disneyland blends the classic Sherman Brothers theme It's a Small World with traditional holiday carols like Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls." So I think-

Hey.

What? Yes, they do.

Iconic.

It has the groundbreaking special effects, the live action and animation sequences with the dancing penguins, and the unforgettable Sherman Brothers' score.

But looking beneath the surface, Mary Poppins isn't really there for the kids, is she?

Not entirely, no.

it?He felt it was far too oppressive.

He tossed out Pete's treatment and brought in the Sherman Brothers

To write that jazz infused breezy soundtrack

Right.

But yeah, it was cool to see him talk about it.

One I'm excited to hear what it was about was the Sherman Brothers.

[laughs]

I went to the Sherman Brothers one.

Um, I went there.

I was supposed to, like, media-wise, like, take notes and stuff, and literally just completely screwed it up.

Because I'm sitting there over in the media section, and it starts, and I'm taking a few notes, and then I realized that I stopped taking notes because I was just enthralled with what they were saying.

And like, liter- I cannot remember the gentleman's name right now, but he worked for the Walt Disney archives, uh, Dis- no, mu- music archives, and he was the guy that was to archive, um, music, put everything on CD.

I landed a job called Victory Canteen at the Ivar Theater at the time, a replacement job.

And, um, [smacks lips] the Sherman Brothers wrote the music, and Milt Larson wrote, wrote the script.

He, you remember, do you remember Milt?

No, I don't.

Oh, he owned-

Sherman Brothers, yes, but Milt, no

...

he, he owned, um, um, oh gosh, the, um, Magic Castle.

But the real hook of this movie was supposed to be the music.

It was written by the legendary Richard and Robert Sherman, the Sherman brothers.

They wrote Mary Poppins.

They wrote The Jungle Book.

If you strip away the nostalgia, the source argues the film doesn't totally hold up on its own cinematic merits, and that is the ultimate danger of the zeitgeist adaptation.

Yeah.

When you dress Cinderella in the trendiest intellectual or fashion fads of the moment, whether that's 1950s Freudian analysis, 1960s Sherman Brothers pastiche or 2000s flip phones, those trends inevitably fade.

And when the trends fade, the movie has nothing left to stand on.

Yeah.

Eric, I don't know if you knew this, if you've heard this yet, but when the 70th anniversary stuff finished at Disneyland month or two ago, they took the Sherman Brothers thing, show out of the little cinema on Main Street, and now-

Mm-hmm

... they're showing some of the newer Minnie Mouse shorts in there instead of the old ones.