Shari Lewis from November 1993 © Copyright John Mathew Smith 2001. Retrieved from flickr.com, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (accessed: December 28, 2021).
Shari Lewis
, 1933 - 1998
Shari Lewis (b. New York 1933 as Phyllis Hurwitz) was a Jewish-American ventriloquist, puppeteer, symphony conductor, television host and children’s book author. She studied drama at Columbia University. Prior to this, she attended New York’s High School of Music and Art and the American School of Ballet. Lewis was the recipient of five Emmy Awards, as well as the Kennedy Center Award for Excellence and Creativity in the Arts and seven Parents’ Choice awards.
Her shows include Kartoon Klub/Shari and Her Friends/Shariland (which underwent multiple name changes), Hi Mom, The Shari Lewis Show, The Shari Show, Lamb Chop’s Play-Along and The Charlie Horse Music Pizza. The Washington Post paraphrases her as saying that ‘when music education has been cut by more than a third of elementary schools nationwide, children needed more exposure to basic concepts such as notes, pitch, harmony, composing and rhythm’ and that her content aimed to provide this.
Lewis performed as a child with her professional magician father. After a divorce from her first husband, she later married publisher Jeremy Tarcher, with whom she had one daughter, Mallory. Mallory was a writer and producer on Lewis’ shows (see here, accessed: January 9, 2019.) Lewis also wrote over sixty books, the majority of them for children. These included One-Minute Bible Stories – Old Testament, One-Minute Bible Stories – New Testament, One-Minute Bedtime Stories and One-Minute Favorite Fairy Tales (see here, accessed: January 9 2019.)
Bio prepared by Robin Diver, University of Birmingham, RSD253@student.bham.ac.uk
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