{"id":4097,"date":"2025-07-18T00:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T00:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/4097\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T00:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T00:13:09","slug":"from-playboy-to-dirty-jokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/4097\/","title":{"rendered":"From Playboy to Dirty Jokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a specific look that people get when they see Lamb Chop, the beloved sock puppet originally voiced by Shari Lewis that\u2019s been entertaining children across generations for nearly 70 years. <\/p>\n

Mallory Lewis, Shari\u2019s daughter who took over puppeteer and ventriloquist duties for Lamb Chop after her mother\u2019s death in 1998, knows the look well. <\/p>\n

\u201cI call it The Lamb Chop Face,\u201d she tells me over Zoom from her home in Portugal. Imagine if you gasp with glee and your face froze wide-eyed and mouth agape in a huge smile for several seconds before melting into a booming \u201caww.\u201d <\/p>\n

She then reaches out of frame for several seconds before returning with Lamb Chop herself on her right hand. I obviously react just as Lewis predicted. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSee, you made the face!\u201d Lamb Chop says, the cooing voice the same as it was when I watched Lamb Chop\u2019s Play-Along as a kid in the \u201990s, which was the same it was decades earlier when The Shari Lewis Show debuted in 1960. \u201cHe made the face!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis and, by extension, the adorable, sassy little puppet have been seeing the face more often recently: \u201cDid you see my movie?\u201d Lamb Chop asks, getting down to business. <\/p>\n

\"SherrySherry Lewis and Lamb Chop during the 1993 VSDA Convention Barry King\/Barry King\/WireImage <\/p>\n

Lewis, Lamb Chop, and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Lisa D\u2019Apolito (Love, Gilda) have been gearing up for this weekend\u2019s release of Shari & Lamb Chop, a new documentary about the trailblazing career of Shari Lewis and her lasting legacy, with Lamb Chop still, today, a major pop-culture star. \u201cDon\u2019t you think the movie should have been called Lamb Chop & Shari?\u201d the puppet cheekily asks. To wit, at age 69, Lamb Chop was just crowned America\u2019s Hottest Dog Toy in The New York Times<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Shari Lewis\u2019 rise in children\u2019s programming and family variety television predated Fred Rogers and Jim Henson, with Lamb Chop as an appendage through it all as she and her cast of quirky puppet co-stars crusaded for kindness, inclusion, and dignity for their young audiences. When Lewis spoke in Congress to campaign for protections for children\u2019s television, she got Lamb Chop permission to speak<\/a>.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Apolito is visibly tickled remembering a trip to New York City\u2019s Museum of the City of New York for a photo shoot with Mallory and Lamb Chop. \u201cWe went all over the city, and people were stopping traffic to run over and see Lamb Chop,\u201d she says. \u201cThere were adults who were strolling with their kids, who would abandon their kids on the sidewalk to get a picture with Lamb Chop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cops were really funny,\u201d Lewis adds. \u201cOh man. And in New York, you know, they wear those huge guns. And yet, they were like, \u2018Lamb Chop!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MalloryMallory Lewis in ‘Shari & Lamb Chop’ White Horse Pictures <\/p>\n

There is something clearly cross-generational about the appeal of Lewis and her style of performance\u2014and, of course, Lamb Chop\u2014that may be entirely unique in the world of entertainment. \u201cI am 100 percent authentically who I am,\u201d Lamb Chop says, nodding her head. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why we have half a million social media followers. 300,000 on TikTok!\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s 2025. Lamb Chop is on TikTok.<\/p>\n

The mission of Shari & Lamb Chop the film, then, is to get to the heart of Lewis and what it was that\u2019s made her legacy, like the iconic, perhaps infamously interminable earworm of a song made famous in PBS\u2019s Lamb Chop\u2019s Play-Along, never ending. <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Shari Lewis grew up in the Bronx with a supportive, proudly feminist mother and a father who was named New York City\u2019s \u201cofficial magician\u201d by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. As such, Lewis was surrounded by illusionists, puppeteers, and ventriloquists, all of whom taught her tricks of their trades while she was young. <\/p>\n

\u201cI started researching Shari and one of the first things I came across was her father\u2019s obituary [and the news he was New York\u2019s official magician]. I was like, is this really true?\u201d D\u2019Apolito remembers. <\/p>\n

\"LambTHE SHARI LEWIS SHOW — Pictured: (l-r) Lamb Chop, host Shari Lewis, Charlie Horse (Photo by NBCU Photo Bank\/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images) NBC\/NBCUniversal via Getty Images <\/p>\n

After several years hustling as a variety performer and ventriloquist, Lewis was given her first network program, The Shari Lewis Show, by NBC when she was 27. A career of ups and downs\u2014her show\u2019s cancellation, an attempt to break out as a serious actress, and a triumphant comeback in the \u201990s on PBS\u2014was, as portrayed in Shari & Lamb Chop, most defined by Lewis\u2019 indefatigable tenacity and spunk. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story about the whole person, Shari Lewis, not just the little lady and overalls that you watched on the box in your living room,\u201d Mallory says.<\/p>\n

You might be surprised to learn, for example, that Shari Lewis appeared on the series Playboy After Dark\u2014and so did Lamb Chop, outfitted like a Playboy Bunny. \u201cYou\u2019re far too young to be a bunny,\u201d Shari tells the puppet. Lamb Chop laughs: \u201cShari, you still see me as a child, but to millions of hot-blooded American men, I\u2019m a three-page foldout.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Lewis had a whole night club act that she\u2019d perform where Lamb Chop is drunk, a tradition that Mallory now continues\u2014though she\u2019s shocked at how controversial it is to some fans. <\/p>\n

\"ShariShari Lewis, holds her petite redhead daughter Mallory, 4 days old, as they depart New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital for home Bettmann\/Bettmann Archive <\/p>\n

\u201cI only do Lamb Chop drunk at 21 and over clubs,\u201d Mallory says. \u201cLike, I\u2019m not gonna do drunk Lamb Chop for a 4-year-old. First of all, they wouldn\u2019t get the jokes. This woman comes up to me and she goes, \u2018Your mother would be horrified by that routine.\u2019 And I looked at her and I\u2019m like, \u2018My mother wrote that routine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis loved to tell dirty jokes, Mallory says. She also loved to eat lamb: \u201cThe family joke is that \u2018lamb has been feeding our family for years,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cShe loved to order lamb in a restaurant just to freak people out.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable to look at Lewis\u2019 professional biography and see the years in which she was totally in charge of her own TV programming, as the face, name, and talent of the show, but also behind the scenes. This was the \u201950s and \u201960s when she was breaking out in a major way. <\/p>\n

\u201cHer and Lucille Ball were probably the only women at the time who had full control,\u201d D\u2019Apolito says. \u201cShari had total control over who was going to write on the show, who was going to be on the show, the finances. So she was really in charge of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ShariShari Lewis with Johnny Carson on ‘The Tonight Show’ aimondo Borea\/Gartenberg Media Enterprises\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

One of Mallory\u2019s favorite anecdotes in the film is when a producer on one of Lewis\u2019 sets recounts when he asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s the power in the studio?\u201d Lewis raised her arm, pointed at herself, and bellowed, \u201cRight here!\u201d He, of course, was referring to the electrical power in the studio. But it\u2019s emblematic of Lewis\u2019 dynamism. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe had to fight to stay relevant, and she had to fight for respect,\u201d Mallory says. \u201cBut nobody made the mistake of f—ing with her twice.\u201d <\/p>\n

When the whole process of the movie began, Mallory gave D\u2019Apolito access to Lewis\u2019 personal archives, housed in a shipping container on the hillside of her property in Malibu. She set up a pop-up tent and folding table for D\u2019Apolito and said, \u201cHave at it.\u201d The thought of joining the director in the dig through the treasure trove seemed overwhelming, and hot: \u201cI\u2019ll be in the nice, clean, air-conditioned home.\u201d <\/p>\n

After some time passed, however, D\u2019Apolito called her concerned and asked for her help. \u201cShe goes, can you find me somebody who will say anything other than \u2018Shari Lewis was the hardest-working, most focused person on the planet?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Well\u2026maybe someone who hasn\u2019t met her?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a specific look that people get when they see Lamb Chop, the beloved sock puppet originally voiced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,4973,75,337,4972,1788],"class_list":["post-4097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-documentary-film","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-pbs","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}