Above is a photo I took at one of the Hollywood Collectors Shows. The guy with the glasses is my pal, Earl Kress. Forget about him for the moment. He always seems to have a sheep of one kind or another on his head. The one he's wearing in this picture is, of course, Lamb Chop, the adorable puppet made famous by the late Shari Lewis. The woman who has her hand inside the adorable puppet is Shari's adorable daughter, Mallory…or Mally to her friends.
I've been meaning to write a piece here about how Mallory is carrying on the family tradition with amazing skill and taste. A fellow named James H. Burns, who reads this site and often sends me interesting e-mail, beat me to it. He wrote this up and offered it to me for inclusion here. I'll meet you on the other side of it and add a few comments. Here's Jim…
Over the holidays, I caught a show with Mallory Lewis and that great American kids-TV icon, Lamb Chop.
Mallory is carrying on the great act and tradition begun by her mom, Shari Lewis, for decades, with such puppets as Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy…
I feel strange calling this "an act." Almost as strange as it seems to call Lamb Chop a puppet. Because while Shari Lewis was a spectacularly talented ventriloquist, she was also a terrific actress. And the reason I think she clicked with kids and adults both, beginning in the 1950s, was that she had that inner glow and charm that is almost imposible to capture in words, but which when it's there and glimmers, manages to transcend the TV, or whatever medium the performer inhabits.
And Lambchop lives in the hearts of millions.
Mallory Lewis' show, is terrific. It turns out she co-produced the last several TV shows her mom did, many of which are still available on video, over at Amazon. But no one knew, apparently, that she also, somewhere along the way, picked up her family heritage for performing —
And, as our pal Paul Winchell might have said, "Ventrilliliqui…"
Lovely and a good singer, Lewis' neatest attribute was her immediate, and warm, rapport with the kids in the audience. The show was a Chanukah party/concert in Manhattan.
And when Lewis appeared center stage, with Lambchop, I was moved. How could this be?
I'm not old enough to have seen the TV shows that first made Shari Lewis a household name. And I was too old for the PBS shows of the late 1980s that returned Lamb Chop and Company to fame. (And, to be honest, I got a little tired of hearing tykes singing that show's theme, "The Song That Never Ends…")
But the Shari Lewis show had become legendary in my home. Older relatives had grown up with her, and still loved her. And my father had been entirely taken with the winning gamine from the Bronx. As I became entirely enthralled by the later 1960s shows of Soupy Sales and Frank Nastasi, Chuck McCann, and Paul Winchell, folks would tell me how great the Lamb Chop series had been, and how great it would be if Shari would return to TV.
I must have seen Lamb Chop and the gang on some variety show appearance of some kind, because I had memories of the characters by the time they resurfaced.
But what was the power in that New York theatre, as Mallory Lewis began bantering with whom I guess one could even say is really her sister? I think it's the emotion that's palpable when people encounter artists and characters that they've loved since childhood. The ten year olds there had also grown up with Lamb Chop. And the joy in their minds was as strong as ours would have been, when tots, if encountering one of our childhood heroes.
By the end of the hour, at least a couple of the grandparents had tears in their eyes. But that's what happens when an icon comes to life, at least as marvelously performed by Mallory Lewis. (Lewis also hosts, and has written, a new DVD/video series for toddlers, Phonics for Babies, featuring a new conglomeration of puppets and characters.)
Afterwards, chatting with Joseph Giangrasso, the show's producer, I suddenly remembered that extraordinary episode of Love, American Style that Shari Lewis did with Paul Winchell. Lewis and Winchell play two ventriloquists waiting in a talent agent's office. Their dummies are on their knees. But the two of them are too painfully, way too painfully, shy to even talk to each other.
I mean, the ventriloquists.
So the two of them start chatting with their puppets. And fall in love.
It was one of the best vignettes produced on American television, in the '70s.
The great punchline to all this, was that Giangrasso then told me something I never knew…that that episode was written by Jeremy Tarcher, a celebrated book publisher, Shari's husband…
…and Mallory's Dad.
It's Evanier again. Mallory is just as good as James says, and the mood in the room when she performs is just as chilling…in a good way. I second everything he says.
I was fortunate to work with Shari Lewis on a project that, alas, never materialized. It was a Saturday morning pilot for CBS — a series that would have been not unlike Welcome Back, Kotter but with Shari as the teacher…and the only human in the show. The class would have been a grouping of new puppet characters. We spent several weeks working together on it before someone on high at the network decided against it. Them's, as they say, the breaks.
But I was pleased that I got to spend some time with Shari. One of those lost treasures of television history — I don't know how many of its episodes even exist today — was the show she did for NBC Saturday morning from 1960 to 1963. It was a wonderful and musical little affair that tapped into the New York theatrical community of the day for both its performers and writing talent, and I suspect it would hold up very well if it could be rerun now or issued on DVD. Later on, Shari was always a welcome presence on my teevee in everything she did.
Shortly after our project fell through, I ran into her at the V.S.D.A. in Las Vegas, which was a big convention of companies that put movies and shows out on VHS tape. You may remember VHS tape. Shari invited me to sit with her at a booth as she signed hundreds of posters and photos for a company that was putting some of her work out on tape and the reaction from the autograph-seekers was fascinating. Everyone talked to her about Lamb Chop but not one person said anything that would indicate that Lamb Chop was not a living creature, let alone that Shari manipulated that creature and provided the voice. I'm sure they all knew but didn't want to fiddle with the illusion, just for themselves. I'm delighted that Mally Lewis is keeping the illusion intact.