There are certain songs from kids' movies that most of us can sing along to, but we often don't know how they originated. Now we have a timely insight into one such song—"A Spoonful of Sugar" from "Mary Poppins."
It's common for parents to try all kinds of tricks to get kids to take medications they don't want to take, but the inspiration for "A Spoonful of Sugar" was much more specific. Jeffrey Sherman, the son and nephew of the Sherman Brothers—the musical duo responsible not just for "Mary Poppins," but a host of Disney films including "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," as well as the song "It's a Small World After All"—told the story of how "A Spoonful of Sugar".
"When I was a kid, they rolled out a vaccine for polio. We were given it at school on a sugar cube. I went home and my dad, who was working on Mary Poppins, asked how my day was.
What I didn't know was that Julie Andrews who was hired to play Mary had not really liked the song my dad and uncle had written -'Through the Eyes of Love' - and it was rejected. It was their favorite song for the movie.
Walt asked the Sherman Brothers to come up with a new song that would be in line with Mary's //Julie's philosophy.
Dad asked me how my day was and I told him about getting the polio vaccine at school.
I was known for rejecting the booster shots at my doctors' office and running away.
He said, 'Didn't it hurt?'
I told him they put it on a sugar cube and you just ate it.
He stared at me, then went to the phone and called my uncle Dick.
They went back to the office and wrote -'A Spoonful of Sugar' ('Helps the Medicine Go Down.')
