‘Shari & Lamb Chop': A Singular Talent Gets Her Due

New York Times

5 days ago

I was a PBS-watching child, and one of the shows I loved was 'Lamb Chop's Play-Along,' with a theme song I could still sing for you today and an infinitely earwormy outro, 'The Song That Doesn't End.' (Sorry.) I was a little old for the show when it started airing in 1992 — I watched with my brother, who would have been a toddler around then — but no matter. The mechanics of the puppetry and ventriloquism were entrancing, and they all revolved around a curly-haired woman named Shari Lewis and her puppet friends, especially the lightly sardonic and always funny Lamb Chop.
My mother told me she used to watch Shari and Lamb Chop on TV, too. But it wasn't till I was older that I realized what a trailblazer Lewis, who died in 1998, had been over her long career. She's the subject of Lisa D'Apolito's light and nostalgic new documentary, 'Shari & Lamb Chop' (in theaters), which is full of archival footage stretching from Lewis's early days on 'Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts,' the CBS variety show that provided her big break, through the children's shows she hosted single-handedly (so to speak) with her puppets from the mid-1950s to 1960s, including 'Facts N' Fun,' 'Shariland' and 'The Shari Lewis Show.'
The film explores her work in the years after 'The Shari Lewis Show' was canceled, including nightclub acts, variety shows, telethons, county fairs and guest turns on various TV shows. And it chronicles her triumphant return to TV in the 1990s with 'Lamb Chop's Play-Along,' as well as her emergence as an advocate for children's educational television.
This biographical information is presented in a fairly perfunctory manner, especially since Lewis's life isn't punctuated by any great scandals, the sort of thing that usually provides shape to biographical documentaries. Instead, the most interesting part of the film — aside from copious clips of Lamb Chop, who is just as funny as I recall, and pretty subversive, too — is its strong (if perhaps too brief) argument that Lewis has never gotten her due as a pioneer in children's television. Several interviewees suggest that Lewis was doing Mr. Rogers before Mr. Rogers was: speaking directly to the children watching the show, telling them that they were special and important, encouraging them and providing a positive adult presence for those who might not have that in their lives.
Furthermore, the film makes clear just how talented Lewis was, and how easy she made near-impossible feats look. Several interviewees — including Megan Piphus Peace, a puppeteer for 'Sesame Street,' and Darci Lynne Farmer, a ventriloquist and winner of 'America's Got Talent' — discuss the incredible difficulty of operating two puppets separately, one on each hand, and talking to them both while keeping personalities and voices straight. Lewis was also able to sing while performing as a ventriloquist, which is phenomenally demanding. Her whole career was unusual: She got her start at a time when few, if any, ventriloquists were women.
'Shari & Lamb Chop' is a charming introduction to a remarkable artist and the characters she created, which have endured across generations because they reflect the playfulness at the heart of their creator.