Bobby Sherman, a singer and actor who became a quintessential shaggy-haired teen idol of the late 1960s and early ’70s, died Tuesday at age 81.
His wife, Brigette Poublon Sherman, had announced three months ago that the entertainer had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
In posting the news of his death to Instagram Tuesday morning, Poublon Sherman wrote, “It is with the heaviest heart that I share the passing of my beloved husband, Bobby Sherman. Bobby left this world holding my hand — just as he held up our life with love, courage, and unwavering grace through all 29 beautiful years of marriage. I was his Cinderella, and he was my prince charming. Even in his final days, he stayed strong for me. That’s who Bobby was—brave, gentle, and full of light.”
She continued, “As he rested, I read him fan letters from all over the world — words of love and gratitude that lifted his spirits and reminded him of how deeply he was cherished. He soaked up every word with that familiar sparkle in his eye. And yes, he still found time to crack well-timed jokes — Bobby had a wonderful, wicked sense of humor. It never left him. He could light up a room with a look, a quip, or one of his classic one-liners.”
Sherman’s wife pointed to how he had reinvented himself in his post-idol decades, finding new roles far from the screen or concert stage: “He was a man of service. He traded sold-out concerts and magazine covers for the back of an ambulance, becoming an EMT and a trainer with 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 ex-teen idol to another — rest in peace Bobby Sherman.”
The news had been anticipated ever since his wife revealed to fans in social media posts in late March and early April that the entertainer had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, explaining why he would no longer be able to make personal appearances. “Thank you so much for still remembering him,” she wrote then on her Facebook page. “We really appreciate it.”
She had elaborated on his condition in an interview with Fox News Digital published April 2, saying that Sherman was “at home with special care” at that time after the previous night being in the hospital and telling her, “Brig, I just want to go home.” Poublon Sherman added that he was suffering from kidney cancer that had “spread everywhere… He was doing crossword puzzles with me in the last few days. And then all of a sudden Saturday, he turned around and… he’s just sleeping more and his body’s not working anymore. Everything’s shutting down.”
Sherman came to fame as a regular for two seasons on the ABC series “Here Come the Brides” in 1968-1970 and quickly parlayed that into an even bigger career as a singing star. Sherman was especially beloved by adolescent and pre-teen girls for his hit singles and television appearances, coming to be literally the poster boy for the power of bubblegum music for a few years. With his suitable-for-wall-pasting photo spreads in magazines like Tiger Beat and 16, Sherman was rivaled only by Donny Osmond and David Cassidy in his power to mesmerize with a soothing voice and cuddly good looks.
At his peak, in 1969-70, he had four singles reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and achieve gold-selling status: “Little Woman” (No. 3), “La La La (If I Had You)” (No. 9), “Easy Come, Easy Go” (No. 9) and perhaps his best-known song, or the one most likely to be spontaneously belted out by fans of a certain age, “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” (No. 5).
Other hits that didn’t reach quite that high but still impacted the Hot 100 or adult contemporary charts included “Hey, Mister Sun,” “Cried Like a Baby,” “The Drum” and “Jennifer.” He also had three albums achieve gold status.
Sherman got his first break while he was attending Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley. As he would later recall it, he was dating a girl who knew a famous Hollywood director and was invited to a July 4 party at a beachside home, which turned out to be filled with celebrities. He knew some of the members of the band that was performing at the party from high school, and when he was encouraged to jump up and sing a couple of numbers with them, it turned out to be fateful. “When I started singing, kids started jumping up on the wall from the public side, I guess, to see who was singing,” he told writer Ann Moses. “After it was all over, Jane Fonda and Natalie Wood came up to me and said, ‘We think you’re very talented, are you being managed?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’ And they said, ‘Well you should do something about it.’”
Within the week, he said, Wood had arranged meetings for him with both MGM and an agent, and soon he was booked by Jack Good on 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-synched at his audition to a recording of the then-hit “Palisades Park.” “After 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?’ … Just like that I was in the business.” Sherman soon came to realize he would be the selling point to a network for “Shindig,” which had gone through pilots but remained in limbo. “They were looking for the all-American kind of kids, because everything else was very long hair and British at the time. Jack Good put me on the (subsequent) pilot as this kid with cropped hair, very straight, singing ‘Back Home in Indiana.’”
Although he picked up a following, the show was canceled, and Sherman went into what he called eight months of “dark days,” wondering if his one shot had come and gone. He did manage to book episodes of “The Monkees,” “The FBI” and “Honey West” when he met future manager Ward Sylvester and Screen Gems VP Streve Blauner, who asked him, “I have a show that you might be good for — can you stutter?” — putting him up for the pilot of “Here Come the Brides.”
The hour-long comedy-Western show ran for two seasons, from fall 1968 through spring 1970, with Sherman coming to stardom as younger brother Jeremy Bolt alongside costar David Soul.
Later acting roles included guest shots on “The Partridge Family,” “The Mod Squad,” “Emergency!,” “Murder She Wrote,” “The FBI” and “Frasier,” plus 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 Is My Brother” and the 1983 cult favorite “Get Crazy,” a rock-themed film in which he was ironically paired with Fabian as the comedy’s henchman villains.
Sherman stopped recording in the mid-1970s. After eschewing the life of a singer for roughly a quarter-century, Sherman went back on the road in 1998 on a nostalgia tour with Davy Jones and Peter Noone, before retiring again from most musical pursuits three years later.
On an appearance with Dick Clark in the 1990s, Sherman said that he had not given up his role as an entertainer, but his personal focus was on other areas.
“I’m still in show business,” Sherman said, “but I volunteer my time basically as a emergency medical technician and a special officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, where I teach police officers first aid and CPR at the Los Angeles Police Academy.”
Asked why this had become a focus of interest, Sherman said, “When my two sons, Christopher and Tyler, were growing up, I had visions of them kind of falling out of trees and bites and all that, 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 know, I’m an instructor.”
When he was asked in the ’90s if he’d ever grown weary of his fame, Sherman said, “Never did. I was blessed with some really nice fans, and they’re still with me, so God bless ’em. And any time I go out, I don’t try to hide from ’em; I don’t wear disguises. I’m just as eager to see them as they are to see me.”
But his conversations often turned to his private passion for medical aid. “If I had a wish, I would wish that every man, woman and child would learn first aid and CPR,” he said. “It works, and you never know when you’re gonna be called upon to take care of somebody.”
Sherman was divorced from the mother of his two sons, Patti Carnel. He married Brigitte, a native of Indonesia, in 2010.
Besides Brigitte, Sherman is survived by Tyler and Christopher and six grandchildren.
In her social media message, Brigitte added: “He lived with integrity, gave without hesitation, and loved with his whole heart. And though our family feels his loss profoundly, we also feel the warmth of his legacy — his voice, his laughter, his music, his mission. Thank you to every fan who ever sang along, who ever wrote a letter, who ever sent love his way. He felt it.”
