Remembering Bobby Sherman

The world received the sad news on June 24 that former teen idol Bobby Sherman, a singer and actor in the late 60's and early 70’s, died of kidney cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 81. His wife Brigitte made the announcement on the Instagram account of actor John Stamos, a family friend. In March, Brigitte made the public announcement that Bobby was suffering from Stage 4 kidney cancer and that his body was “shutting down” because the cancer had “spread everywhere.” 

While Bobby Sherman’s varied career in the entertainment industry and his subsequent career as a paramedic and EMT, including work with the Los Angeles Police Department, will be highlighted in news reports, what will not be mentioned is how his entertainment career intersected with the stuttering community.

Bobby Sherman was discovered by Natalie Wood and Jane Fonda singing at a birthday party. The two actresses helped get him an agent. Soon he landed a spot on the ABC show Shindig! as a house singer and a member of the cast. From 1968 - 1970 he was a cast member of the weekly ABC comedy Western Here Comes The Brides. He played Jeremy Bolt on the show. While that show was on the air, Sherman began a successful career as a pop singer, which ultimately saw him score seven singles in the Top 40 between September 1969 and May 1971. Four of them were Top Ten singles, selling in the millions. In 1969, “Little Woman” and “La La La (If I Had You)” reached the number 3 and number 9 positions on the charts, respectively. In 1970, “Easy Come, Easy Go” and “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” reached the number 9 and number 5 positions, respectively. During that time, he was regularly on the covers of every teen magazine and Bobby Sherman merchandise was widely sold, such as lunchboxes and posters.

After his time as a teen idol cooled off, he had regular guest roles on countless shows. Ironically, it was a guest role on the series Emergency! in 1974 in which he found his post-acting calling as an EMT and paramedic. His lengthy career as a paramedic included more than a decade serving as a medical training officer at the Los Angeles Police Academy, in which he taught first aid and CPR to thousands of officers.

It was Sherman’s two years as Jeremy Bolt on the show Here Comes The Brides that is noteworthy to the stuttering community because it was the first ever regular cast member on a primetime network show who stuttered. If you discount the character of Greg Medavoy on NYPD Blue, who had bumbling speech and an occasional stutter, Sherman’s character of Jeremy Bolt is the only regular cast member of a primetime show who stuttered.

Here Comes The Brides was a half-hour show that ran weekly on ABC for two seasons from September 25, 1968, to April 13, 1970, for a total of 52 episodes. The show was loosely based on the efforts of Asa Mercer in the 1860’s to import women interested in marriage from the East Coast to Seattle, where there seemed to be a shortage. The show centered around charismatic logging company boss Jason Bolt, played by Robert Brown, who was dealing with the possible shutdown of his company as his lumberjacks wanted to leave Seattle due to a lack of female companionship. Jason makes the promise to bring 100 marriageable ladies to town and have them stay for a full year.

The show propelled both Bobby Sherman and David Soul to pop stardom as Jason Bolt’s brothers, Jeremy and Joshua, respectively. Later in the 1970’s, David Soul starred in the hit show Starsky & Hutch as well as scoring a number hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 with “Don’t Give Up On Us”.

Sherman’s character of Jeremy Bolt was not a character that was meant to ridicule or mock people who stutter. It was a natural everyday person who stuttered, and who, at times during the show’s run, explained to people that he had a stuttering problem and had to deal with it accordingly. It was reported at the time that Sherman worked with a speech-language pathologist to learn about stuttering and its nuances as it can be seen that his character was adept at such things as repetitions, blocks and the facial tensions accompanying them.

At times during the show’s run if other people made slights about Jeremy’s stuttering, his family and friends would vigorously stand up for him. Jeremy’s character transcended his stuttering and was in effect a character who happened to stutter rather than a stuttering character.

There was one episode early in the first season titled “A Man and His Magic”, which aired on December 4, 1968. Jack Albertson played a huckster who came to town who said he had special powers such as controlling the rain and curing problems. When the rain coincidentally stopped, some people in the town started to believe him. Jeremy asked him to cure his stuttering; the huckster gave him a set of odd exercises to work on which temporarily cured his stuttering, but when he was unmasked as a fraud, the stuttering returned.

While some people who stutter may have found the show difficult to watch and opted to change the channel, Here Comes The Brides is viewed by many in the stuttering community as positive portrayal of a person who stuttered in comparison to the usual negative portrayals of people who stutter projected by Hollywood.