Bobby Sherman, a singer and actor who became a cult shaggy-haired teen idol in the late 1960s and early ’70s, died Tuesday at age 81.
His wife, Brigette Poblon Sherman, announced three months ago that the entertainer had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Posting the news of his death on Instagram Tuesday morning, Poblon Sherman wrote, “It is with a very heavy heart that I share the news of the passing of my beloved husband Bobby Sherman. Bobby left this world holding my hand — just as he had held our lives for all 29 beautiful years of marriage, with love, courage and unwavering grace. I was his Cinderella, and he was my Prince Charming. Even in his final days, he stayed strong for me. That’s how Bobby was — brave, gentle and full of light.”
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He added, “While he was resting, I read him letters written by fans from all over the world – words of love and gratitude that boosted his morale and reminded him how much he was loved. He absorbed every word with that familiar sparkle in his eye. And yes, he did find time to crack a joke – Bobby had a wonderful, wicked sense of humour. It never left him. He could light up an entire room with a look, a joke or one of his classic one-liners.”
Sherman’s wife described how he reinvented himself in the decades since his idolization, finding new roles away from the screen or concert stage: “He was a man of service. He replaced sold-out concerts and magazine covers in the back of an ambulance, became an EMT and trainer in the LAPD. He saved lives. He showed us what real heroism looks like — quiet, selfless and deeply human.”
His friend John Stamos confirmed the news, reposting Brigitte’s message and adding, “From one former teen idol to another — rest in peace Bobby Sherman.”
The news had been long awaited since his wife told fans in social media posts in late March and early April that the entertainer had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, making it clear he would no longer be making in-person appearances. “Thank you so much for still remembering him,” she wrote on her Facebook page then. “We really appreciate it.”
She elaborated on his condition in an interview with Fox News Digital published on April 2, saying Sherman was “at home with special care” at the time after being in the hospital the previous night and telling her, “Brig, I just want to go home.” Poblán Sherman said he was suffering from kidney cancer that had “spread everywhere… He was doing crossword puzzles with me for the last couple of days. And then all of a sudden on Saturday, he turned around and… he was just oversleeping and his body wasn’t working anymore. Everything was shutting down.”
Sherman rose to fame as a regular on the ABC series “Here Come the Brides” for two seasons from 1968-1970 and soon transitioned to a major career as a singing star. Sherman was particularly loved by preteen and teen girls for his hit singles and television appearances, becoming for some years the poster boy for the power of bubblegum music.
With photos suitable for wall-mounted appearances in magazines such as Tiger Beat and 16, Sherman was rivaled only by Donny Osmond and David Cassidy in his sweet voice and charismatic power to mesmerize. At their peak, in 1969–70, four of their singles reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and achieved gold-selling status: “Little Women” (No. 3), “La La La (If I Had You)” (No. 9), “Easy Come, Easy Go” (No. 9) and perhaps their most famous song, or the one spontaneously sung by fans of a certain age, “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” (No. 5).
Other hits that did not reach as high but still made an impact on the Hot 100 or Adult Contemporary charts included “Hey, Mr. Sun,” “Cried Like a Baby,” “The Drum” and “Jennifer.” Three of his albums also achieved gold status.
Sherman got his first break when he was attending Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley. As he later recalled, he was dating a girl who knew a famous Hollywood director and was invited to a July 4 party at a beach house that was packed with celebrities. He knew some of the members of the band performing at the party from high school, and it proved lucky when he was encouraged to sing a few songs with them. “When I started singing, kids started jumping over the wall from the public side, I think, to see who was singing,” he told author Ann Moses. “When it was all over, Jane Fonda and Natalie Wood came up to me and said, ‘We think you’re so talented, are you being managed?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’ And they said, ‘Well, you should do something about it.'”
Within a week, he said, Wood had arranged meetings for him with both MGM and an agent, and soon he was booked by Jack Good for the teen music show “Shindig.”
“I, of course, had never made a record and I didn’t have anything on tape,” he recalled, so he lip-synced to a recording of the then-hit “Palisades Park” at his audition. “When I did the number, Jack said, ‘Groovy, please wait outside.’ A few minutes later he came out and said, ‘How would you like to do 26 of our shows?’ … That’s how I got into the business.” Sherman soon realized he would be the selling point to a network for “Shindig,” which had gone through pilots but was in limbo. “They were looking for all-American kind of kids, because everybody else at the time was very long-haired and British. Jack Good put me in the (later) pilot as a kid with his hair cut short, very straight, singing ‘Back Home in Indiana.'”
Although he attracted attention, the show was canceled, and Sherman had to spend eight months of “dark days” wondering if his one chance had come and gone. He managed to book episodes of “The Monkees”, “The FBI” and “Honey West” when he met future manager Ward Sylvester and Screen Gems VP Struve Blauner, who asked him, “I have a show you might be good for — can you stutter?” — and cast him for the pilot of “Here Come the Brides”.
The hour-long comedy-western show ran for two seasons, from the fall of 1968 to the spring of 1970, with Sherman finding stardom as younger brother Jeremy Bolt alongside costar David Soul.
Subsequent acting roles included guest appearances on “The Partridge Family”, “The Mod Squad”, “Emergency!”, “Murder She Wrote”, “The FBI” and “Frasier”, as well as a regular role on the short-lived USA Network series “Sanchez of Bel Air” in 1986. He appeared in two films, the 1975 family film “He’s My Brother” and the 1983 cult favorite “Get Crazy”, a rock-themed film in which he was paired with Fabian as the comedy’s henchman villain.
Sherman stopped recording in the mid-1970s. After nearly a quarter century away from the singer’s life, Sherman returned to the Nostalgia Tour with Davy Jones and Peter Noone in 1998, retiring from most musical activities again three years later.
On an appearance with Dick Clark in the 1990s, Sherman said he had not given up his role as an entertainer, but his personal focus was on other areas. Sherman said, “I’m still in show business, but I basically volunteer my time as an emergency medical technician and a special officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, where I teach first aid and CPR to police officers at the Los Angeles Police Academy.” When asked why it became a focus of interest, Sherman said, “When my two sons, Christopher and Tyler, were growing up, I had visions of them falling out of trees and getting cut and so forth, so I wanted to be prepared for any emergency, so I took first aid. And I just fell in love with it. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know more, and the next thing I knew, I’m an instructor.” When asked in the ’90s if he ever got tired of his fame, Sherman said, “Never. I got some really great fans, and they’re still with me, so God bless them. And whenever I go out, I don’t try to hide from them; I don’t wear a disguise. I’m just as eager to see them as they are to see me.”
But his conversations often centered on his personal passion for medical assistance. He said, “If I had a wish, I would want every man, woman and child to learn first aid and CPR.” “It takes work, and you never know when you’ll be called upon to take care of someone.”
Sherman was divorced from Patty Carnell, the mother of his two sons. He married Brigitte, a native of Indonesia, in 2010.
In addition to Brigitte, Sherman is survived by sons Tyler and Christopher and six grandchildren.
In her social media message, Brigitte said: “He lived with integrity, gave without hesitation, and loved with all his heart. And although our family feels his loss deeply, we also feel the warmth of his legacy — his voice, his laughter, his music, his mission. Thank you to every fan who ever sang with him, who ever wrote a letter, who ever sent love for him. He felt it.”