Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children’s Television

Celebrated ventriloquist Shari Lewis (1933–98) was ubiquitous on kids’ TV programming for generations. Now her daughter Mallory, a ventriloquist, puppeteer, and prolific children’s author (Stop That Orangutan!) has teamed with Shari Lewis & Lamb Chop producer Segaloff (also a biographer of filmmaker Arthur Penn) to recount her career and explore the history of women in television. Shari Lewis, born Phyllis Hurwitz, came from a Jewish American family steeped in the entertainment world. She first took the stage as a toddler and came to ventriloquism early, unusual for a young girl at that time. This book suggests that her singular focus on her show-business career shaped her marriages, her approach to motherhood, and her daily life. Readers are also treated to Mallory’s discussion of her own life as Lewis’s only child. Her life’s convergences and divergences with her mother’s reveal the differences in entertainment and Jewish life between the mid-20th century and now.