Lisa D’Apolito’s documentary Shari and Lamb Chop lovingly examines the life and career of a pop culture icon and her impact on an entire industry. A Jewish girl from the New York City projects born to a magician father, Shari Lewis had performing in her blood. Learning from some of vaudeville’s greatest performers, Lewis could sing, dance, perform magic, and act on stage with ease. But it was her particular knack for ventriloquism that would propel her to stardom, and with the help of a handful of puppet sidekicks, including the iconic Lamb Chop, Lewis became one of the first stars of children’s television in the 1950s, before Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, or The Muppets were able to cross over into the public eye.
Shari and Lamb Chop follows a standard documentary arc for this sort of biography and career retrospective, but D’Apoloto (Love, Gilda) pays tremendous respect to her subject and the frankly insane amount of hard work Lewis put into honing her craft. Once her first television series started in 1956, Lewis was learning songs, scripts, and commercials – where she would play multiple different characters – for live television broadcasts six days a week. D’Apolito outlines Lewis’ life in great detail, but what shines through brightest is the performer’s undying work ethic; her striving to create the best act possible.
Archival interviews with Lewis add a lot of personality to Shari and Lamb Chop, especially when the film pertains to some of the lower periods in her career. While fellow ventriloquists like Nina Conti and Jay Johnson pay tribute to a fellow trailblazer, those closer to Lewis, like her daughter Mallory (with whom Shari would become the only mother-daughter co-Emmy winners) and sister Barbara O’Kim, are able to provide plenty of context to show just how hard giving joy to the world could be at times. A section of this film discussing Lewis’ fraught marriage to publisher Jeremy Tarcher (who got heavy into psychedelic usage and New Age philosophy and frequently cheated on Shari) is wrenching. Another extended and fascinating spotlight is also placed on Lewis’ attempts to break into more adult fare, where she would learn that even the adults wanted to see Lamb Chop, bringing a puppet once meant for kids into a flirtier, edgier adult revue. And then after that, everything came full circle, with Lamb Chop returning to children’s television for a memorable, beloved, award winning revival at PBS starting in 1992.
Viewers of Shari and Lamb Chop will be left in awe by Lewis’ work ethic, and constantly desire to try new things. Lewis notes at one point in an interview that being in show business means going out of style and fashion a lot, and her ability to stick to what works best in her act while always finding room for reinvention allows her legacy to endure to this day. (It’s very hard not to tear up at the end, with some memorably touching behind the scenes footage of Lewis filming what would be the final song of her career.) Shari and Lamb Chop doesn’t rest on the nostalgia of Lewis’ characters, but rather offers up a compelling argument that she might be one of the most talented performers ever on television.
Shari and Lamb Chop screens at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Sunday, August 24, 2025 at 4:00pm.
