One last farewell to Allan Sherman

I wanted to end my exploration of the works of Allan Sherman with two clips that I find fascinating — the first because it’s amusing, the second because it’s kinda sad (on purpose).

The first clip features one of the great comedy writer/performers of today, a certain Larry David, singing (yes, that’s right, singing) one of Allan’s more tongue-twisting lyrics, “Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max” from My Son the Folk Singer. Larry does “pretty, pretty, pretty good” in this odd public appearance with the Boston Pops in August of 2011.

Here’s something I uploaded myself: a variant version of “Sarah Jackman” sung by Allan and Christine Nelson on a 1966 TV special. For whatever reason, Allan changed the lyrics (after the first identical verse) to have Sarah rejecting Jerry Bockman, in excruciating detail. I was pretty amazed when I first saw this clip in the Nineties — this was before I had read anything about Sherman’s private life. (He was, in case you haven’t read my preceding entries, a depressive.)

Allan’s clever wordplay is still front and center, but here it’s not used to describe a large Jewish family, but instead to depict an overweight boy being mocked and rejected by the object of his affection. JFK reportedly was heard humming and singing the original “Sarah Jackman” in a hotel lobby once. I doubt he would’ve dug this version, ladies’ man that he was.

I’m not thrilled to end this series of posts about Sherman on a “downer,” but the rarity of this clip makes it a must-see (plus, it has Allan once he’d ditched the glasses and was trying to lose weight).

Too Jewish? The Allan Sherman bio ‘Overweight Sensation’

To close off my discussion of Allan Sherman, I need to review the book that set the Sherman “renaissance” in motion, Mark Cohen’s biography Overweight Sensation: the Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman. In my last entries on Sherman, I disagreed with Cohen’s verdict on Allan’s two books — his biography, however, is a fine one that addresses Sherman’s life and work from a number of different angles.

Cohen’s research is impeccable. In the first portion of the book, he successfully untangles Sherman’s quite tangled familial relationships, to the extent of charting where Allan’s family “disappeared” to when his criminal stepfather had to quickly flee Los Angeles for getting caught passing bad checks. He does a similarly excellent job conveying the relationships that fostered and cultivated Allan’s talent (most prominently, his unashamedly Jewish maternal grandparents) and those he struggled with even after the person was long dead (his mother, who did her best to assimilate, and sublimate her Jewishness).

The book clearly breaks down into three sections: Allan’s childhood and pre-fame adulthood; his sudden, massive stardom; and his sad “fall from grace” in show business. The most interesting aspect of the book is the way that Cohen analyzes Sherman’s lyrics with the sober-minded intensity of an academic, while he also displays a fanboy-like affection for this work, providing us diehard fans with a trove of previously unheard lyrics that qualify as some of Sherman’s funniest, silliest, and (not surprisingly) most Jewish songs. Cohen's unearthing of these lost gems resulted in the first “new” Sherman CD in years, There Is Nothing Like a Lox.

The childhood portion of the book finds Cohen taking on the role of storyteller, occasionally making jokes about the subject matter. When Allan becomes a sudden superstar, Cohen includes essays about Sherman’s most famous songs, discussing them in some depth as cultural artifacts and landmarks of American Jewish culture.

At these points he vaunts Sherman as perhaps the seminal Jewish humorist of the mid-20th century, studying his lyrics and designating them as important works of social satire. This could be seen as taking it a bit too far, were it not for the fact that Sherman’s lyrics (which Cohen delightfully quotes at length) were, and are, damned funny and clever.

Like any good fan, Cohen’s emotional proximity to his subject is communicated throughout the book. He seems positively outraged when he recounts the many times that Sherman showed his childish side in public. Allan declared to journalist Nora Ephron that “My parents divorced when I was 6 and I spent the rest of my life at Fred Astaire and Dick Powell movies. This caused me to lose my grip on reality.”

At times, Cohen sounds like a disappointed parent lamenting the puerile behavior of his beloved child. The thing that becomes clear, though, from a close reading of both Sherman’s autobio A Gift of Laughter and Overweight Sensation (and a close listening to his songs) is that his childish behavior was directly linked to his childlike sense of wonder at the insanity of the world. His corny pronouncements about the blissful nature of children’s innocence were the flip side of his ability to write through the eyes of a youngster (the fact that his biggest hit was “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” was not a surprise). Here Allen comments on the song (in a video posted by Cohen):

Allan’s childishly simple view of the world also seems to have allowed him to have the balls... er, chutzpah to write dozens of song parodies, perform them at parties, and then carve out a musical career, when he possessed neither a Greek physique nor a great singing voice. He was clearly a man driven by his instincts — his best albums were written in a matter of weeks before they were recorded.

Allen with the cast of I've Got a Secret.

Sherman, in fact, suffered from the classic performer’s dilemma: a mixture of self-loathing and rampant egomania. Cohen chronicles how he indulged in his addictions — gambling, smoking, and most especially eating — while he was a young man and then a producer of game shows in both NYC and LA (the most important one being I’ve Got a Secret, which he co-created).

Once he hit it big with his first LP, My Son the Folk Singer, he plunged even deeper into these addictions and was finally able to indulge in a fourth that had always been his main obsession growing up (as recounted in his autobiography A Gift of Laughter and his chronicle of the sexual revolution, The Rape of the A*P*E*), namely sex. Cohen was told by the classical pianist Leonid Hambro, a good friend of Sherman’s, about the orgies he and Allan attended (whose habituees also included George Plimpton — those lucky ladies!).

Like many comedians, Sherman was clearly a major depressive. Despite his chutzpah, he also suffered from severe self-loathing and a realistic viewpoint about the vagaries of fame. He never felt comfortable with his success, noting in Daily Variety “If you can get this lucky all of a sudden, you can get that unlucky, too.” He added to a reporter at the New York Journal-American in regard to his premonitions that his fame would go away, “I'm pledged not to get desperate.”

Much of the final portion of Overweight Sensation is given over to the ways in which Sherman undermined his own efforts in show business with self-destructive and exceptionally naïve behavior. Ultimately, though, he left us a legacy of brilliant, infernally catchy comedy songs, which Cohen celebrates throughout the book.

In the final chapter, Cohen goes past Allan’s death to discuss how Sherman’s music went out of and back into popular favor. Although at points Cohen seems to be giving Sherman credit for all modern Jewish-American comedy, it is very true that Allan’s albums remain masterworks of both wordplay and ethnic “belonging.” Allan once said to an interviewer, “everyone is part Jewish.” He wasn’t wrong.

*****

Cohen devotes several pages in the book to an ongoing set of songs that Allan called “Goldeneh Moments from Broadway.” Most of the tunes are available on the There Is Nothing Like a Lox CD, but Cohen also has uploaded several to YouTube. Sherman introduced the concept at the parties he performed at in this way: “It occurred to me, what if all of the great hit songs from all of the great Broadway shows had actually been written by Jewish people? Which they were.”

On occasional, though, of course, there was a song that was easily parodied that was written by a gentile. In this case, Meredith Wilson's “Seventy-six Trombones” from the smash musical The Music Man was transformed by Allan into “Seventy-six Sol Cohens” (all of the following postings are from Cohen's YT account):

“Over the Rainbow” becomes “Overweight People”:

A parody of “Summertime” from Sherman's Porgy and Bess rewrite “Solly and Shirl”:

Another song by a gentile, “You're the Top” by Cole Porter, gets the Sherman treatment:

“There Is Nothing Like a Lox” came from Sherman's Rodgers and Hammerstein variation, “South Passaic”:

His stirring and very silly “You'll Never Walk Alone” spoof “When You Walk Through the Bronx”:

Finally, one of the best songs from Sherman's first LP, one that Cohen talks about for a few pages, Allan's tongue-twisting rewrite of the already pretty tongue-twisted Irish tune “Dear Old Donegal,” “Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max”:

Note: Some of the pictures in this blog entry come from Mark Cohen's website about Overweight Sensation, which can be found at allanshermanbiography.com.

What We Think About When We Think About Sex: the out-of-print writings of Allan Sherman (part 2 of two)

Now I move on to the moment where Allan Sherman truly became “My Son, the Author.” While his 1965 autobiography A Gift of Laughter was reportedly ghostwritten – yet many sections are clearly Sherman's own opinions and wording – his second, and sadly last, book, The Rape of A*P*E* (American Puritan Ethic), The Official History of the Sex Revolution 1945-1973, subtitled “The Obscening of America, An R*S*V*P* Document (Redeeming Social Value Pornography)” (1973), was his own work from start to finish.

The first thing that distinguishes the book is its length. Rarely does a “new” humorist come up with a nearly 500-page book that tries to both chronicle and mock the history of mankind. Toward the end of the book, Allan notes that he's been writing it for two and a half years. This isn't surprising, given that he clearly assembled (perhaps aided by interns or assistants?) mountains of info that he could use as fodder for sharp points and jokes about American hypocrisy.

By the late Sixties, Sherman's musical career was at a dead end. He had relationship and health problems, and was undergoing an identity crisis. He shed his trademark glasses and attempted to lose weight (the former worked out better than the latter). He grew a beard and was attempting to reinvent himself as a social satirist. A*P*E* indicates that he was a very talented humor writer, but his health problems got the better of him – he died two months after its publication at the age of 49.

The book charts the progress of Western civilization from the caveman (a simple, primal being that Allan calls “Sap,” short for “homo sapiens”) to the sexual revolution that Sherman dates as having occurred from 1945-'73. His introduction to the concept is terrific: 

[pp. 8-9, paperback edition] If anything is fun, Thou Shalt Not;

If anything feels good, Thou Shalt Not;

If anything is natural, or promises to give pleasure, or even relief,

Thou Shalt Not. Thou Shalt Not. Thou Shalt Not.

Thus the APE turned us all into liars and hypocrites.

The APE made us ashamed of our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings.

The APE robbed us of certain inalienable rights, and among these rights were sex, nudity and the pursuit of horniness.

The APE was always with us — in the street, in the office, in the living room; it haunted every bedroom and hovered in every toilet. The APE’s most effective work was done inside our very souls, in those dark unexplored places we still call by mystical icon-names like id and libido and superego, and other such mumbo-jumbo. Deep down there, each American came to believe that he or she was dirty and worse — that everyone else was clean and wholesome.....

[p. 12] And so in the quest of human intercourse, it became necessary to overthrow the APE.

What followed was the American Sex Revolution, certainly the most lunatic episode since man crawled out of the primeval ooze. Legions of Lolitas joined the battle with battalions of Babbitts and platoons of Portnoys. Manners and moral and great institutions bit the dust. Waterbeds splashed and vibrators jiggled. And when the air was cleared, people were calling it The Great Fire-Happening, because the world was never going to be the same again. No one knew exactly how, but Western civilization had been caught with its pants down. This book documents the whole ridiculous experience in a hurry — before we all wake up and start denying it really happened.

The youth culture of the late Sixties and early Seventies stirred Allan. He clearly responded to its honesty and also its sexual freedom (he had discussed his obsession with sex in his autobiography). The Vietnam War was so repellent to him that he felt motivated to speak directly to college students around the country (see below).

He also reveled in the fact that he was freed from the constraints that ruled his novelty-music career. A*P*E finds him discussing the sex act quite openly as “fucking.” He remained conservative in one regard, though – he clearly loathed rock music. On the other hand, he embraced the changes in comedy that were brought about by Lenny Bruce.

Two pages from A*P*E* scanned by the Enso On blog.

A*P*E isn't a “dirty book,” it's a well-structured, intelligent, and resolutely moral satire of American hypocrisy. Interestingly Mark Cohen, the author of the new Sherman bio Overweight Sensation, claims that “the middle section of the book is funny," but that the opening and closing portions are full of “hot air.”

I would argue that the sentimental and Utopian passages that Cohen dislikes are of a piece with the rest of the book – if you're imagining the world through the view of a caveman, it's not inconsistent to then be wistful about the possibility of love in sex, however corny it may sound.

The bulk of the book is concerned with sex, but Allan also tackles war, religion, education, the devaluation of women, parents putting down the youth culture, and (my favorite) the American addiction to “things”: 

[pp. 226-227] American technology produces trillions of odds and ends, curios, whatnots, gadgets, bric-a-brac, trinkets, notions, gewgaws. There is no scientific name for this incredible conglomeration of unrelated objects, except — Things. 

The Game consisted of making, buying, selling, and/or consuming Things. Things were never out of the American mind, even in the ceremonial greeting, “Hello, How are Things?”

Children were imbued from infancy with a lifetime goal: Try to get all the Things. Adults realized this was impossible; to them, it was important to be first to acquire a new Thing. If a family was successful in acquiring at least one of each Thing, its members turned to collecting the most of one Thing.

Some Americans collected only brand-new Things, discarding them at the first sign of wear. Others preferred old Things, used for 100 year or more, with enough cracks and bruises to be called “distressed.” To some Americans it was important to possess big Things; others took special pride in owning miniature Things….

A big portion of the book follows the Everyman caveman “Sap” and his mate “Lala.” This part of the book is much, much better than it sounds, since it allows Allan to ridicule our most sacred institutions by viewing them from the perspective of a simple, uncomplicated individual.

In the best section of the story of “Sap,” the caveman encounters a figured named “Dawg-muh” who outlines to him the different kinds of actions that humans undertake (“dassendooz” “shoodnadunnits” “fessups”) that require them to confess and pledge allegiance to the dubious moral code that is religion.

After he becomes acquainted with religion, “Sap” learns about the ways that countries must fight to the death over a plot of land, and how one can “own” property but there are many things one can't get away with on one's property: 

[p. 180-81] Fuck on your private front porch.

Walk around naked on your private lawn.

Plant marijuana in your private garden.

Sell or rent your private property to any of the following:

A hippie commune, an abortion clinic, a Methadone treatment center, a branch of Alcoholics Anonymous or Synanon, the Church of Satan, a black family, a mixed (black and white) family, a Spanish-speaking family.

Make a gift of your property to Fidel Castro, to do with as he wishes.

Try to give it to a friendly government like England.

When the tax assessor comes around, tell him you're starting your own country on your land and that from now he'll have to pay you taxes.

The book is a very funny one, but Sherman clearly also had a serious purpose. At one point, in talking about “the new violence” in the U.S., he discusses battered children. Here he uses his old friend from A Gift of Laughter, italics. He notes that his editor didn't like the “sudden complete change of tone. It isn't funny.” Allan's answer is that “life was still funny, but a different kind of funny. On November 22, 1963, America entered the What-the-Hell era, and real life became indistinguishable from black humor.”

A few pages earlier, before discussing the American love of guns, he offers the formula that begat the Warren Commission: “When confused, try to bring everybody else to your level of confusion. Appoint a commission and while they study the problem for a year, make sure everybody will forget the whole thing. Then, to make sure nobody gets too clear a picture of what happened, arrange for the most important evidence to be locked up for 75 years.”

The most interesting thing about the book is the way that Sherman (who was 46-49 at the time he was writing the book) indicts his age group and sides with the youth culture. Early on in A*P*E*, he coincidentally uses the later Tom Brokaw encomium about those who served in WWII by calling that same group “the greatest generation of hypocrites.” He maintains that the hypocrisy existed for the most part because “we were jealous of our own children.”

He refers to attending school as “your daily penance for being a child.” He also wryly notes how kids wise up to the lies told in advertisements: “ABSOLUTELY FREE, the coupon says – but the small print says you have to spend four dollars to get the 'free' prize. The 'giant' malts at the drugstore are served in glasses with fake bottoms. The candy bars made to look an inch longer by the cardboard inside the wrapping.” He begins the section: “By the time you're a teenager you've been had a thousand times.”

He zeroes in on one mythic figure of the post-war period, Sonny Wisecarver, a teenager who had a series of sexual affairs (and marriages) with older wives/moms who left their husbands for him. Allan includes a quote from the judge who was examining the 16-year-old Wisecarver's records before he married him to a 25-year-old who left her husband for him. The judge called him “an incorrigible sexual delinquent,” but added, “You've won your spurs as a man.”

I've been emphasizing the more serious side of Sherman's social criticism in this review, because A*P*E* does indeed stand as a fascinating reflection of the time in which it was written (and the thoughts of a comedian who was striking out in a new direction).

I noted when talking about Sherman's autobiography A Gift of Laughter that he identified with sad and lonely people. Here he discusses the honesty and strangeness of personal ads (“I am a male who is female and I want a female who is male. No men. Tom. PO Box XXX, Pasadena Calif.”). He concludes this section by declaring “Now at last we could gauge the range of the American Dirty Mind – and estimate the unfathomable depth of loneliness in America.”

I will close out with perhaps my favorite concept in the book, one that Allan calls “thinkery-fuckery.” in his first discussion of it he emphasizes “how difficult it is to stop thinking.” He asks the reader to set aside the book and try for ten seconds not to think of a zebra. He then says that that will be all we will think about, in an effort to show how impossible it is to stop thinking while having sex.

Much later in the book he returns to “thinkery-fuckery” to examine the “subtle gradations” of what we think about while we're having sex. Naturally the notion of specific tastes come into play: 

[pp. 314-315] If you are on the receiving end of one of these specialized fucks, you have to suddenly ask yourself: “Why is he/she fucking me? Is it my tits, my money, my membership in the Bel-Air Golf Club?” Whatever it is, it isn't you. Once you begin to realize that people find your tits attractive, you react in one of two ways: Either you go around pushing your tits in everybody's face, or you try to hide them, hoping that someone will see some of your other marvelous qualities. 

Unfortunately specialization has a way of becoming even more specialized. Soon people will fall in love with you because of your left nostril, or the fact that you own a 1913 Liberty-head nickel, or because you can sing “I Wish I Was in Dixie” in perfect Swahili.

He then offers a list of “specialists” who can't stop thinking about the type of people they're fucking. One of the best entries is called “statisticians”: 

[p. 316] Some people enjoy measurements; their pleasure comes from the arithmetic of fucking: the size of partner's sex organs, the precise timing, the angle of entry. I know an attractive young woman who is a member of Mensa, an organization restricted to people in the top two percent of intelligence. One night she ran in all excited and said, 'Last night I laid a man who made 302 strokes!' Another Mensa looked at her and said, 'You weren't fucking, darling. You were counting.'"

A*P*E* is both a fascinating time capsule and a very funny – and, yes, sorta wistful – history of attitudes towards sex in the post-war period. It is indeed sad that Allan kicked off just as a second career seemed to be opening up for him.
*****

Here are a few great related videos. Although Sherman's comedic songs were all “rated G,” some of them jibe perfectly with his views in A*P*E*. For instance, the tale of an ex-urbanite couple, “Harvey and Sheila” (especially the line about the moment the couple “switched to the GOP/that’s the way things go…”). The song starts at 13:49.

This is the most pertinent clip, but sadly it's also the least funny. It's audio of Allan speaking at UCLA in late 1970. He speaks about the Vietnam War and gets into a rather lengthy routine about “Agnew-grams” – short statements that reflect the narrow views of then-Vice-Pres Spiro Agnew (presumably the funny part is that Allan is switching around letters on a screen to make the words... but we can't see that...):

A much sillier and shorter clip, Sherman on a variety show doing “Secret Code” (his variation on “Secret Love”):

Even snappier, here he is on The Hollywood Palace singing “Crazy Downtown” and dueting with host Tony Randall on “One Hippopotami”:

There are a few other pertinent clips, including Sherman doing a campaign song for Lyndon Johnson at a rally – one assumes that, like many others, he felt sold out by LBJ. Also, a tune from a later album by Allan, his spoof of “Spanish Flea” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (as I noted above, he couldn't deal with rock, since he disliked it so much).

The piece of music he released that has the most to do with the opinions he expresses in A*P*E* is his variation on “Peter and the Wolf,” Peter and the Commissar. This album is not included in the big Rhino box set of Sherman's music, because it was recorded for a different label (RCA Red Seal). Recorded with the Boston Pops, the piece expresses his loathing for bureaucracy and conformity. It's a charming piece, mostly because it is so unabashedly emotional (according to his autobiography, he took its creation very seriously).

Note: this blog entry is intended as a enthusiastic review of a book that has been out of print for four decades at the time of writing. If the Sherman family or other rights holders have any objections, contact me at the Media Funhouse site.

“Hail to Thee, Fat Person”: the out-of-print writings of Allan Sherman (pt 1 of two)

Like every maniacal book collector, I have several shelves of tomes I’m dying to dig into. As I accumulate more and more books, the older “items I must read” get buried further and further back in the collection until they are obscured from sight. When I am reminded of a title and finally do read it, I’m usually delighted and wonder “Why *did* it take so long for me to get around to reading that?”

Anything can spur on these dives into “the stacks” — in the case of Allan Sherman’s out-of-print 1965 autobiography A Gift of Laughter, it was attending Hal Willner’s recent “songbook” show devoted to “My Son, the Nut.”

Sherman’s autobio is a curious item — an obvious by-product of his enormous popularity during the Kennedy era, the book could’ve been a quick “cash-in” that simply celebrated Sherman’s rise to fame and his discovery that the silly songs he performed at his friend’s parties could be enjoyed by millions of people.

The book is more than that, though. It’s a funny, sincere self-portrait that finds Sherman talking about his depression, self-pity, binge-shopping, binge-eating, and drinking (all of which cumulatively caused his early death at 49). The book contains two “voices” — one in roman type that tells the stories of Allan’s life in a straightforward manner, and another in italics finds Sherman offering his thoughts and reflections on the topic at hand.

This “schizo” approach is fascinating, in that it offers us the sad underside of the happiest moments in Sherman’s life – even at the height of his fame he remembered being unemployable in show business. It is also quite curious, given that the book was cowritten by ghostwriter Maurice Zolotow.

The participation of Zolotow is mentioned in the new Sherman biography Overweight Sensation. The author of that book, Marc Cohen, introduces the notion that Zolotow wrote the book for Allan, but he also quotes it quite liberally — each time he needs Allan's own words, he turns to Gift, introducing each quote with the phrase "Allan wrote..."

Allan's high school yearbook photo.

He also notes the inclusion in Gift of a story about how Sherman suffered a sad fate as a teen (an atrophied testicle) when he chose to ogle a sexy family cleaning girl while having the mumps. Interestingly, Cohen quotes the story and then says, “Sherman wrote,” indicating that some items in the book are indisputably Allan's (read: the all-too-honest and sad items). This and a few other teen-sex stories cost Sherman a contract with General Mills. (Cohen quotes Allan's wife at the time: “The sex scene cost us $50,000. I told him not to, but he said it's the truth and I've got to tell it.”)

As I write this, I’m nearly through Sherman’s second “adult” book (he also created a short humor tome and two kiddie books), the sharply funny 1973 study of the sexual revolution with the unwieldy title The Rape of the A*P*E* (American Puritan Ethic). This book is entirely Sherman’s work, according to Cohen, and so it’s a good guide by which to judge the authorship of Gift. [Note: Cohen learned about Zolotow's close friendship with Allan and his ghostwriting of Gift from Zolotow’s daughter, the poetically named “Crescent Dragonwagon.”]

The Shermans and the Zolotows

Comparing the two books, it’s evident that, Sherman’s “voice” is definitely present in the italicized segments of Gift, and even in some of the sections in roman type. If anything, Zolotow most definitely “cleaned up” Sherman’s prose, as A*P*E* indicates that Allan was prone to cursing a lot (or was that just a function of subject of that book, namely sex?).

In any case, being a big fan of Sherman’s albums, I found Gift fascinating, especially because of its many passages in which Sherman “preaches” about social hypocrisy (which is the raison d’etre of A*P*E*). He also dwells on the decision that changed his life — when he was asked by his mother to choose which parent he wanted to live with: 

[p. 43, paperback edition] I think all the indecision and disorganization in my character since then comes from having been asked to make such a decision so early in life. It’s absurd, it’s damaging to a child’s soul to be asked to choose between his mother and his father at the age of six…. Since that day, I can’t say no to anyone; I can’t reject another human being. 

Cohen refrains from quoting Gift, presumably because the book was ghostwritten. This happens to be one of the strangest cases of ghostwriting then, though, because if Zolotow was speaking for his good friend Allan (their friendship is mentioned in the book), he saw fit to assume the voice of Sherman discussing his “increasing withdrawal from reality” during difficult times in his life: 

[p. 49] All my life I have refused to face reality. I have lived in a Walter Mitty world of great expectations and daydreams where I could be Cary Grant or Fred Astaire for a few minutes if I wanted to, and it doesn’t really hurt anybody, does it?

Since one assumes a ghostwriter would, by necessity, “brighten” his/her subject’s autobiography, it’s both fascinating and sobering to read passages in which Sherman’s moods are discussed. Considering that the book was written in 1964, when his records were still selling, it’s very revealing: 

[pp. 54-55] I wonder why, when I started to write a chapter about sex, I began with the missing trains. I guess it was because I wanted you to understand, and I wanted myself to understand, that since the morning those trains disappeared in Chicago, since the night my family fell apart in Los Angeles, since the first time I was sent away to live with distant relatives, I have lived with the terror that there is nothing tangible, that there is no one who really wants me, and that anything that is any fun — anything in the world that is any fun — is not going to last. One morning I’ll look for it, and it just won’t be there anymore.

Allan was a humorist first and foremost, though, and so the book does contain numerous instances in which the tangents are delightfully funny instead of achingly sad. When speaking of the Yiddish plays his grandfather used to bring him to, Sherman reflects that the actors didn’t just act out a death scene, their characters would proclaim, “I am dying! I am dying! Oh, God, I am dying!” The character would then give a speech that includes “all of the philosophical Talmudic learnings of his life, and it is chock full of advice to his sons and daughters and farewells to his daughters and his wife, and this speech alone lasts five minutes.”

Once the speech is over, the character tries to stand up and… “he lets out this horrible, croaking groan and stumbles over the entire stage again, knocking over what’s left of the furniture and family, and finally he dies…. If the play is a musical, it is exactly the same, except with singing and dancing and very melancholy music underscoring the whole thing.” The audience, “who have troubles of their own,” enjoy the scene, “and they moan and groan and weep, and when he is finally dead, they sigh with relief and they feel this wonderful sense of total satisfaction.”

Gift thus offers some great bits that are perfectly in line with the humor on Sherman’s LPs. Although a good deal of it is timeless, thanks to his deft wordplay and downright strange and fun outlook on life, a chunk of Sherman’s music is tied up with the Fifties “exodus” of city-dwellers to the suburbs, as well as the industry that seemed to define the era (and the “Camelot” period that followed), the advertising business.

Sherman had no use for the latter, referring to the “gray flannel snake pit” that ruled TV in the Fifties. Gift contains many complaints about the rigidness Sherman encountered while working for Goodson Todman as the producer and co-creator of I’ve Got a Secret.

The opinions about advertising expressed in Gift are a product of the same mindset that produced the Sherman songs that serve as “snapshots of an era,” like his Gilbert and Sullivan rewrite “When I Was a Lad” (found here at 23:35):

And his superb laundry list of bogus terms and chemicals utilized by ad agencies to convince the public to keep buying familiar products (seen here with snappy animation accompaniment):

Allan also had many pungent (and, as ever, catchy and tuneful) things to say about the “urban flight” to the suburbs. In Gift he discusses how owning a home in the burbs meant constantly being in a state of renovation. He also showcases his favorite pithy summation of the situation by his friend, the great Carl Reiner (who gave us one of the most idyllic portraits of suburbia in The Dick Van Dyke Show). Said Reiner: 

[p. 160] “I have been living in the suburbs for three weeks now. You want the world’s shortest description of it?” he asked. “Twenty-three Sparrowfart Lane.” 

Allan’s most sublime commentaries on suburban living were of course expressed in his songs. Here is his excellent update of the English folk tune “Country Gardens” called “Here’s to the Crabgrass” (at 15:28):

After tackling the ad game and suburbia, Allan examines Los Angeles in Gift. He discusses how you’re only as good as your last hit in L.A., and comes up with a beautiful snapshot-phrase to describe the place: 

[p. 168] “...you get the impression — which is true — that Los Angeles is not a city, but twenty-four shopping centers in search of a city.”

Sherman was thought of as a singer of “Jewish parodies” but, as his albums indicate, his skill at wordplay transcended his ability to hone ethnic spoofs of popular songs. He definitely felt hemmed in by this definition and was in fact not fond at all of the main stomping ground for Jewish entertainment, namely the Borsch Belt: 

[p. 248] They want me to fit in a mold I never made but they did. They want me to be a professional Jew, an inside Jew, and they want me to sit there and laugh their version of the hipsters' laugh – “I dig you but the Goys don't.” And I can't give them that. That's too much Jewish. 

I don't know why those same people go ever summer to the Catskill Mountains. I don't know why they want to be in a ghetto, even one that's full of mink and thick carpets and championship golf courses and costs as much as a trip to Europe or California or Hong Kong or Israel, for that matter. What are they afraid of?

Don't be afraid, please, you people up there. Don't be afraid any more. Jump in, the water's fine in the human race.

As Gift moves on, Allan namechecks colleagues and close friends in show business. The former are folks like he who started out writing gags for TV variety shows and moved on to bigger and better things (like author Max Wilk and the superb screenwriter-playwright George Axelrod). At one point he notes that an average dinner party guest list of his closest friends in the biz would include Everett Sloane, screenwriter Ernest Lehman (North by Northwest), Steve Allen, and Jim Backus. He also does crow at times — we learn that various superstars told him they liked his albums; among these were George Burns and Jack Benny (early supporters of his songs), as well Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Jack Kennedy.

The sweetest salute to a celebrity who was both a fan and a friend of Allan’s comes at the book’s finale when he pays tribute to his next-door neighbor Harpo Marx (who, like Burns and Benny, had urged him to record his “party songs” and then promoted My Son the Folk Singer to everyone he knew). Sherman devotes the last chapter in the book to an account of two concerts that he did with Harpo (who apparently, from the text, opened for Allan).

He notes with chagrin (and a touch of anger) that Harpo’s name was left off the marquee, and so he had to threaten to walk off to ensure that Harpo received equal billing with him. He then goes on to talk about how Harpo decided that the second of the two shows would be his last-ever live performance.

Allan found it hard to tell the audience that they’d just seen Harpo’s farewell to performing, so the world-famous mime comedian came out and took over the microphone — and proceeded to give a long farewell speech, in which he reviewed most of his career (his opening line, according to the book, was “Now as I was about to say in 1907...”).

Thus, while Gift was reportedly ghosted by Maurice Zolotow, I found that it contains quite a large dose of emotion (and, sadly, depression) that clearly came from Allan himself. It’s currently well out of print, but worth reading if you’ve enjoyed Sherman’s albums and are curious about his life. (Note: I will indeed review Overweight Sensation at a future date.)
*****

I’ll close out with just a sample of the many Sherman songs that are floating around on YouTube. First, a wistful little love tune he wrote for his wife, performed here to a little girl (who seems perplexed by the lyrics — and quite rightly so).

Allan hosted a bunch of variety-show episodes (here he is with Herman’s Hermits). In honor of the fact that Halloween is coming up, thought, I present his one and only horror novelty 45, a little ditty called “My Son, the Vampire”:

One of the nicest finds currently “hiding in plain sight” is a 1965 TV special called “Allan Sherman’s Funnyland” that features guest stars Jack Gilford, Lorne Greene, and Angie Dickinson.

As the title indicates, the show was meant to be funny (and is), but at the end Allan slips in one of his few serious tunes, the touching “His Own Little Island” (at 7:30 here) from the Broadway flop Let It Ride, as a sort of goodbye theme. The public was not much interested in Sherman as a serious singer-songwriter, but he was an incredibly talented man who, again, did have his sad side — from which, no doubt, his desire to make people laugh sprang.

At various points in Gift Allan supplies his personal philosophy: “Nothing is impossible!” Not a bad way to end any tribute to him.