SCORE OF THE YEAR. One of the brightest original movie scores for this or any other season was the lilting music to the Walt Disney fantasy called “Mary Poppins.” The score contained 13 songs, including the delightful “Chim-Chim Cheree.” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and “A Spoonful of Sugar Makes The Medicine Go Down.”
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THE BROTHERS SHERMAN. The song-writers who composed the score to “Mary Poppins” are the hitmaking brothers Bob and Dick Sherman. Two weeks ago when Dick was in town with Bob to pick up the BMI award for the score of “Mary Poppins,” he told how it all happened.
“We first started working on ‘Mary Poppins’ about four years ago,” said Dick. “Walt Disney gave us the ‘Mary Poppins’ books and asked us to come back in few weeks and tell him what we thought about it for a motion picture. We took the books, read them all, and came back with a complete story outline. ‘We made the outline because that was the only way we could show Disney what sort of songs we would write for the picture. We suggested that it be treated as a musical fantasy. Disney liked our suggestions, and signed us as exclusive writers for his music publishing firm, Wonderland Music.
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The great success of the music for “Mary Poppins,” has made the Sherman Boys much sought after in the music trade. “Many publishers and producers have asked us about the possibility of our doing a Broadway show but we work exclusively for Walt Disney so we can’t. Disney has a lot of exciting projects in the works so we are very happy about our future with him. I'll never be able to explain how much we both dig Walt, and what a tremendous part he has played in our musical career.”
Actually the Sherman Boys don’t have to. The success of “Mary Poppins” is explanation enough.
