One of the tidbits that Allan Sherman fans have heard is that he attended 21 schools before college. The figure comes from his entertaining but not wholly reliable autobiography, A Gift of Laughter.
Well, that’s not right.
For my biography of Sherman I have done some prodigious digging, and as I gathered information I became embarrassed that I didn’t think more critically about Sherman’s claim. From kindergarden through 12th grade there are 13 years of schooling. To rack up 21 schools he’d have to had gone to a different school every year and to two schools in eight of those years.
Not likely.
But he did move around.
According to school records Allan Sherman, then known as Allan Copelon, began 4th grade in New York and finished it in Chicago.
He started 5th grade in Chicago and finished it in California.
Seems like he spent 6th grade in California.
But he went to 7th grade in Chicago.
At the end of 7th grade he moved back to California.
Getting all this?
And remember, this was in the 1930s. The Depression. No air travel.
Sherman was only 11 when he finished 7th grade. (I haven’t found out whether he started school very young or skipped a grade.) But apparently, his enjoyment of wordplay was already clear. On his Progress Report, under a category for Special Aptitudes, a teacher wrote Poetry.
More tomorrow on 8th grade and Sherman’s growing taste for fame.
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