Bobby Sherman, a hitmaking teen-idol singer and actor who starred in the ABC comedy Here Come the Brides and appeared on such hit series as The Partridge Family, Emergency! and Mod Squad, died Tuesday morning of cancer. He was 81.
His wife Brigitte Poublon announced the news on social media via her friend John Stamos (read his post below). She had said in March that Sherman was fighting terminal Stage 4 cancer.
Born on July 22, 1943, in Santa Monica, Sherman released a string of noncharting singles in the mid-1960s before hitting big with four Top 10 hits in 1969-70: “Little Woman,” “La La La (If I Had You)” “Easy Come, Easy Go” and “Julie, Do Ya Love Me.” He also scored three consecutive gold albums in Bobby Sherman (1969), Here Comes Bobby (1970) and With Love, Bobby (1970), and Bobby Sherman’s Christmas Album was a yuletide smash in 1971.
“Here Come the Brides” cast, clockwise from top left: Sherman, Hanley, Brown, Blondell and Soul
Everett Collection
Sherman had guested on series including The Monkees and The F.B.I. and had a bit role in the 1968 counterculture film Wild in the Streets when he landed his big TV break. He was cast at a series regular in Here Come the Brides, a rather high-concept hourlong ABC comedy-adventure series inspired by the classic Hollywood musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The 1968-70 show starred Robert Brown as the operator of an 1870s logging camp whose employees revolt over the lack of local women.
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Bridget Hanley played Candy Pruitt, a “straw boss” who led a group of 100 potential brides who were brought from Massachusetts to the Pacific Northwest in a scheme to save the business. Joan Blondell and future Starsky & Hutch co-lead David Soul also starred with Sherman, who played Pruitt’s boyfriend and respective brother and son of Soul and Brown’s characters.
Sherman then appeared in a 1971 backdoor-pilot episode of The Partridge Family — starring another teen idol, David Cassidy — that led to Getting Together, in which he starred with Wes Stern as a songwriting duo. The music-focused ABC series featured songs from Sherman’s albums.
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Sherman also did guest shots on such popular TV shows as Mod Squad, Ellery Queen, Fantasy ISland, The Love Boat, Frasier and Murder, She Wrote and was a series regular on the short-lived 1986 USA Network sitcom Sanchez of Bel Air.
He also had a few big-screen roles including He Is My Brother (1975) and opposite fellow teen idol Fabian in Allan Arkush’s Get Crazy (1983).
Inspired by his stint on the popular 1970s first-responders drama Emergency!, Sherman also worked as a paramedic, deputy sheriff and medical training officer for the Los Angeles Police Academy later in life.
