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Other authors named Allan:
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Author's popularity: -1
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If you like or dislike this author in general or one or more of their quotes in particular, please give us your feedback by clicking on the icon to vote for, or the icon to vote against them.
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Popularity: -1
Vote: | Adultery - which is the only grounds for divorce in New York - is not grounds for divorce in California. As a matter of fact, adultery in Southern California is grounds for marriage. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | After the Lincoln Hotel people showed their colors by demanding payment, we turned our back on them. We moved out. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | At first I only used the Scotch to flavor the seltzer. Then I left out the seltzer altogether and only retained the ice cubes with the Scotch. Today, I am proud to say, I have emancipated myself from all such crutches. I drink my Scotch straight. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Even if Scrabble had been invented then, I wouldn't have wanted to play Scrabble, because the highest triple word score in the world would not have expressed how much I liked the game Natalie and I played every afternoon. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Four times I looked for psychiatric help, and each time I arrived at the inescapable conclusion that the psychiatrist was crazier than I was. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | Grandma cheated whenever she could. She cheated because it was a much more scientific and surer way of winning than trusting to luck. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I didn't decide I was crazy until 1952. That's when I began making a steady salary and could afford to be crazy. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I had moved out of the Edison Hotel because I couldn't pay the bill and was living at the Lincoln Hotel, where I couldn't pay the bill either, but it was cheaper. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I have always lived beyond my means. I am still trying to live beyond my means, but it is getting harder all the time. I am very rich. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I phoned the man in charge of writers at MCA and said, "I realize you can't get me a job writing. In fact, you will be relieved to hear that I am thinking of giving up writing. Perhaps you can switch me to somebody who won't be able to get me a job acting? |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I was having trouble making ends meet, and my beginnings weren't meeting either. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | In Hollywood if you are not working, you are a leper. True, you are probably living in the most expensive leper colony in the world. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | In Hollywood, we have some of the richest unemployed people in the world. They have sun tans. Some of them have chauffeurs in Rolls-Royces waiting outside. They have their golf clubs ready in the car. There is no law that says you cannot play golf while being unemployed. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | It's a play where something went wrong, 'Cause it's five hours, twelve minutes long. If you sit there, my friend, From beginning 'til end, Then your bladder better be strong! |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | My new Sex Image was an immediate hit. Richard Burton hasn't spoken to me since. Or before either, for that matter. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Nothing fazes Nancy. She's always laughing and singing and happy. She's popular and well adjusted and gets straight A's in school. Where did we go wrong? Why isn't she crazy like the rest of the family? |
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Vote: | One night Uncle Maury suggested to the Putterer that perhaps he had planted the bulbs upside down and would have to go to China to see his tulips. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Our act started at the bottom and went downhill. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Somewhere, over the rainbow, Way up tall, There's a land where they've never heard of cholesterol. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Success is like winning the sweepstakes or getting killed in an automobile crash. It always happens to somebody else. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | The only choreography I have in my act is where I walk about ten feet, from stage right to stage left. Then I say, "You may be wondering why I went from over there to over here. Well, that was choreography." |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The whole city (Los Angeles) gives you the impression of impermanence. You have the feeling that one day someone is going to yell. "Cut! Strike it!" and then the stagehands will scurry out and remove the mountains, the movie-star homes, the Hollywood Bowl - everything. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | They sit there in committees day after day, And they each put in a color and it comes out gray. And we all have heard the saying, which is true as well as witty, That a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | When the great history of horticulture is written I will be listed among the absent. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | When the great history of trouble is written, my family will stand extremely high in the table of contents. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | When they told Missus Cohen that she'd lost her man, She said 'Must you interrupt me when I'm playing 'Pan'?' Then she said to her partner, Missus R. J. Rosen, 'Cohen was a lovely husband, but he's no good frozen. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | You want to fall in love with a shoe, go ahead. A shoe can't love you back, but, on the other hand, a shoe can't hurt you too deeply either. And there are so many nice-looking shoes. |
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Biography
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Allan Sherman (sometimes incorrectly Alan), November 30, 1924 - November 20, 1973, was an American musician, parodist, satirist, accordionist, and television producer.
Sherman was the creator and original producer of the popular Goodson-Todman game show I've Got a Secret (1952-1967), but was fired after a particularly unsuccessful episode (featuring Tony Curtis) that aired June 11, 1958. Later, he found that the little song parodies he performed to amuse his friends and family were taking on a life of their own. He released an LP of these parodies, My Son, the Folk Singer, in 1962. The album was so successful that it was quickly followed by My Son, the Celebrity.
The first LP was mainly Jewish-folk-culture rewritings of old folk tunes, but by his peak with My Son, the Nut in 1963, Sherman had begun to appeal to a larger audience, and broadened both his subject matter and his choice of parody material.
In My Son, the Nut alone, his pointed parodies of classical and popular tunes savaged summer camp ("Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" to the tune of Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours), encroaching automation in the workforce ("Automation" to the tune of "Fascination"), space travel ("Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue" to "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"), the exodus to the suburbs, ("Here's to the Crabgrass" to the tune of "English Country Garden"), and his own bloated figure ("Hail to Thee, Fat Person", which blames his obesity on the Marshall Plan).
At the height of his popularity in 1965, Sherman published an autobiography, A Gift of Laughter. For a short period, Sherman was culturally ubiquitous. He sang on and guest-hosted The Tonight Show, appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and narrated his own version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler (this concert was released as an album Peter and the Commissar). A children's book version of "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" with illustrations by Syd Hoff was released. A pirate album, More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends, contained two parodies Sherman had recorded in the early 1950s with material by other artists.
Later albums grew more pointedly satirical and less light-hearted as the decade lost its innocence, and Sherman took up his pen to skewer protesting students ("The Rebel"), consumer debt ("A Waste of Money" to "A Taste of Honey"), and the generation gap ("Downtown", "Pop Hates the Beatles").
Allan Sherman's large body of parody work (over 100 recorded parodies in 5 years) was brilliant on many levels: His choice of material was itself funny, his lyrics were self-contained and consistently funny (and usually led to a climactic punchline), and yet spookily paralleled the sounds of the original, and his choice of topics was always timely and relevant. Finally, his humor was charming, self-deprecating, insightful, and never seemed to be trying too hard. His brilliance inspired a new generation of developing parodists such as "Weird Al" Yankovic, who pays homage to Sherman (for the sharp-eyed) on the cover of his own first LP. Sherman is also credited with introducing Bill Cosby to a national audience, and thus launching that popular entertainer's career.
Like his contemporary Tom Lehrer, Sherman wrote satirical songs for the two-year-long "highbrow" satire program (the American version) That Was The Week That Was (1964-1965), including his Dropout's March. Unfortunately, his topics were often relevant only to his own time and place; unlike most of Lehrer's, Sherman's parodies generally don't date or travel very well. But anyone familiar with the American concerns of the era will still find all his songs hilarious. And a few are timeless -- "Hello Muddah", the abovementioned story of the boy from Camp Grenada, is as fresh now as ever, and has been translated into other languages -- Sweden has translated and adopted the song as its own.
Sherman's creative career was rather short. After its peak in 1963, his popularity declined precipitously during 1964 and by 1965 he had released two albums that didn't make the top 50. In 1966 Warner Brothers dropped him from the label. Disillusioned but still creative, in 1973 Sherman published the controversial "The Rape of the A.P.E.", which detailed his point of view on American Puritanism and the sexual revolution. He was struggling with lung disease during the book's writing, and he finally succumbed to emphysema in November of 1973 at the age of 48.
Sherman's personal life was rather miserable, both before and after his sudden success as a singer-songwriter. An excellent biographical article details his rise and fall, as well as the follow-on story of his son Robert Sherman, who was the original "Boy from Camp Granada".
Allan Sherman was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.
His works were not forgotten after his death -- his "Best of" CD was released in 1990, and a musical revue of his songs entitled "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" toured in 2003. "The Rape of the A.P.E" is once again topical and actively sought-after, though rare.
Brief discography * My Son, the Folk Singer (1962)
* More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends (1962) [pirated album]
* My Son, the Celebrity (1963)
* My Son, the Nut (1963)
* Allan in Wonderland (1964)
* Peter and the Commissar (1964)
* For Swingin' Livers Only (1964)
* My Name is Allan (1965)
* Live!! (Hoping You Are The Same) (1966)
* Togetherness (1967)
* My Son, The Greatest (Posthumous, 1990)
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Allan Sherman".
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