After the First World War the three elder brothers of the family, Dan Sherry, Harry Sherry and Jim Sherry formed an act called “Dan Brothers and Sherry”. By 1926 they were touring with a show called “Contrasts” however in September 1928 they decided to purchase the rights to the show and run it as a family. As “New Contrasts” the show involved both Dan Brothers and Sherry and the Sherina Sisters. In January 1929 the name was changed to “A Sherry Cocktail” by which time Peter and Sam had joined the show.
Dan Sherry took up the role of principal comedian with Jim Sherry as straight man and Harry Sherry playing the character parts. Peter and Sam joined them as a speciality dancing act, and three of their sisters did a musical dancing and singing act.
Various combinations of the four Sherry sisters had, up to this time, been performing under the stage name of the “Sherina Sisters”, specialising in close harmony singing.
When they joined forces with their brothers to form “A Sherry Cocktail” all four were involved. Later however, Ouida married and left the show. Wherever “A Sherry Cocktail” went business was phenomenal and it seemed that the act was going places and that they were going to be rich. Unfortunately the talkies came in about that time spelling doom to a certain extent for the variety theatre and music hall.
The silent cinema had made its presence felt but it had lived alongside the music hall. It hadn’t been a real competitor, as people went to the pictures and to the music hall. But with Al Jolson in ‘The Singing Fool’ the whole situation changed and within a short time, where they had been playing to good audiences, they found you were playing to mediocre business.
Happily at that point the family was ‘discovered’ by George Black who ran the Palladium and the big theatre circuit in those days, Palladium, Holborn Empire, the Finsbury Park. He thought that they were quite unique and decided he would like to put the family into a show so ‘A Sherry Cocktail’ was disbanded, and the family formed a show called ‘Pageant on Parade’ where they were known as the “Straight 8 Sherry Family”