Buena Vista Distribution Company, Inc.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The sound of it is quite atrocious isn’t it? Yet this tricky word reflects all the complications that the movie Mary Poppins (obviously) had to face to take form. The Disney feature-length movie was released in 1964, starring Dame Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Just in case, I’m going to present you the story. We are transported to Edwardian England which corresponds to the early 20th century, in the life of a family composed by the father, a banker believing in the rules of the patriarchate to lead his family correctly, the mother, depicted as a superficial suffragette, and the two children, Jane and Michael Banks, who keep running away from their nanny. When it comes to finding a new nanny, the children propose a sweet description of the person they would like but Mr Banks throws it away. Mary Poppins magically shows up though. With her flying umbrella and her unbelievable bag, she starts to heal this broken family. That’s the beginning of the adventures. Now did you know that Mary Poppins was the adaption of a series of novels written by an Australian author Pamela L. Travers? I happened to discover that very late, when the movie Saving Mister Banks was released. Because the Disney version of Mary Poppins was a huge success, it has totally prevailed over the book. The movie is considered as a turning point in Walt Disney’s life and career as well as in cinema history, but it overshadowed its source. That’s the tricky part of the encounter between art and business.
It was in the ‘60s when the production of Mary Poppins began. For several years, in reaction to the success of his animated movies and of Disneyland Park, Walt had decided to produce live-action movies. Mary Poppins was not the first one. Films inspired by canonical stories such as Treasure Island which was the first one in 1950, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Davy Crockett were produced. The Disney Company had become an important group also producing series for television such as Zorro. The first Disneyland Park opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California. The ‘50s were marked by investments and prosperity: in 1957 the Disney Company entered the New York Stock Exchange, they bought ABC and created the Buena Vista International (which handles Winnie the Pooh for instance). Between 1961 and 1964, Walt Disney started the project of a second theme park. That’s a lot of dates and data but it is in this context of big investments that Mary Poppins production took place and it turned out to be a huge aesthetic and economic success. It’s the cherry on the cake, if I may say.
This film, from the beginning to the end, wasn’t easy at all to produce. Walt Disney one night heard his daughter Diane laugh at the reading of a book, when he saw the book: it was Mary Poppins! Walt immediately understood that this story had the potential to become a successful Disney movie. To get the rights, he tried to contact the author, Pamela Travers, who lived in England. By this point, it was 1940. But Pamela Travers was not an easy lady to convince. Her own life substantially inspired the writing of the book, as it is reported on the movie Saving Mister Banks, and she didn’t want to see her story become a meaningless Disneyesque cartoon. But Walt Disney never forgot an idea
once he had it. So he insisted for the following twenty years, he called her, sent her letters and even sent his brother, promised her a lot of things in order to get her approval but nothing would do. Finally in 1959, during a trip to London, Disney decided to go see her in person. The meeting went well and Travers agreed to give him the rights on the one condition: Disney’s proposition had to suit her, otherwise she wouldn’t let him produce the film.
It was in the ‘60s when the production of Mary Poppins began. For several years, in reaction to the success of his animated movies and of Disneyland Park, Walt had decided to produce live-action movies. Mary Poppins was not the first one. Films inspired by canonical stories such as Treasure Island which was the first one in 1950, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Davy Crockett were produced. The Disney Company had become an important group also producing series for television such as Zorro. The first Disneyland Park opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California. The ‘50s were marked by investments and prosperity: in 1957 the Disney Company entered the New York Stock Exchange, they bought ABC and created the Buena Vista International (which handles Winnie the Pooh for instance). Between 1961 and 1964, Walt Disney started the project of a second theme park. That’s a lot of dates and data but it is in this context of big investments that Mary Poppins production took place and it turned out to be a huge aesthetic and economic success. It’s the cherry on the cake, if I may say.
This film, from the beginning to the end, wasn’t easy at all to produce. Walt Disney one night heard his daughter Diane laugh at the reading of a book, when he saw the book: it was Mary Poppins! Walt immediately understood that this story had the potential to become a successful Disney movie. To get the rights, he tried to contact the author, Pamela Travers, who lived in England. By this point, it was 1940. But Pamela Travers was not an easy lady to convince. Her own life substantially inspired the writing of the book, as it is reported on the movie Saving Mister Banks, and she didn’t want to see her story become a meaningless Disneyesque cartoon. But Walt Disney never forgot an idea once he had it. So he insisted for the following twenty years, he called her, sent her letters and even sent his brother, promised her a lot of things in order to get her approval but nothing would do. Finally in 1959, during a trip to London, Disney decided to go see her in person. The meeting went well and Travers agreed to give him the rights on the one condition: Disney’s proposition had to suit her, otherwise she wouldn’t let him produce the film.
Walt went back to America satisfied with his achievement and started the work right away. He had hired a little earlier two musicians, the Sherman Brothers, whose work he liked so much that he decided to put them in charge of Mary Poppins music. They worked in a team with Don Dagradi to create a first scenario. They imagined the scenes and wrote songs for each of them, some of the compositions would never even be in the movie. Just for the anecdote: the first song the brothers wrote was “Feed the birds”, which was Disney’s favourite and we can understand why.
After all this preparation work, Pamela Travers came to America. Disney had already approved many propositions but when they presented them to Mrs Travers, she hated everything. She stayed for a while, constantly criticizing the propositions (for instance, she didn’t approve casting of Dick Van Dyke as Bert the Chimneysweep). She didn’t want her book to become a silly musical, which is understandable as she was deeply attached to her story. But anyway, it was very complicated to go on with the project. She got back to England saying she would not give Disney the rights. End of the story right? Except for one little thing: the money. Pamela Travers needed money, her books were not selling as well as they used to and Walt Disney was offering a substantial financial recompensation. That’s the reason why she finally agreed to assign rights to Disney without any more power over the project. She only came back for the premiere. That’s not the greatest ending, I know.
Walt went back to America satisfied with his achievement and started the work right away. He had hired a little earlier two musicians, the Sherman Brothers, whose work he liked so much that he decided to put them in charge of Mary Poppins music. They worked in a team with Don Dagradi to create a first scenario. They imagined the scenes and wrote songs for each of them, some of the compositions would never even be in the movie. Just for the anecdote: the first song the brothers wrote was “Feed the birds”, which was Disney’s favourite and we can understand why.
After all this preparation work, Pamela Travers came to America. Disney had already approved many propositions but when they presented them to Mrs Travers, she hated everything. She stayed for a while, constantly criticizing the propositions (for instance, she didn’t approve casting of Dick Van Dyke as Bert the Chimneysweep). She didn’t want her book to become a silly musical, which is understandable as she was deeply attached to her story. But anyway, it was very complicated to go on with the project. She got back to England saying she would not give Disney the rights. End of the story right? Except for one little thing: the money. Pamela Travers needed money, her books were not selling as well as they used to and Walt Disney was offering a substantial financial recompensation. That’s the reason why she finally agreed to assign rights to Disney without any more power over the project. She only came back for the premiere. That’s not the greatest ending, I know.
Disney and his team could at last start the production. It’s important to say that Mary Poppins is one of the few films in which Walt was invested from the beginning to the end, at every step of the production. He did not do that often. The last time he had done it was for Snow White which was released 27 years earlier. Marry Poppins was also the last movie released before his death.
There were a few more complications concerning, amongst others, the leading actress Julie Andrews. She had never played in a movie before. She had been a widely successful child singer prior to the war, even singing for the King of England himself at a command performance. Then, at the tender age of nineteen she had made a name for herself as a musical comedy actress, first in London’s West End, and then on Broadway in New York, to great acclaim in the smash hit musical My Fair Lady. The Sherman Brothers told Disney to watch her perform and he immediately wanted her to play Mary Poppins, except that she was pregnant. Disney chose to reschedule the shooting of the movie. It went well and the movie was released in 1964.
The adaptation of literature to the screen is always something complicated as well: you have to please the author, please the audience, not deceive the readers, etc. But when the book is less known and the movie is a success, the movie tends to overshadow the book and become the “original” in people’s mind. That’s exactly what happened with Mary Poppins. Few people know that it came from a book and fewer people have actually read it. We can’t deny the quality of this movie. However the film appears to be more of a rewriting of the book than a real adaptation. There are 6 books in total. The movie draws inspiration mostly from the first one but also a little bit from the next three. Still, the story is almost unrecognizable for someone who has read the book. Pamela Travers was not entirely happy with the adaptation, as I said earlier. Mary Poppins is a typical Disney movie. We can find in it all the elements that characterize these films: a sense of optimism, fantasy and magic features, good triumphing over the evil, and so many other features, which have now become cliches, but which we still come to cherish in Disney films, for their genuine quality.
A gap is created between the book and the film. Here go some major changes. The character of Mr Banks has been modified to concur with Disney’s portraits of bad fathers who change over the movie to be saved and redeemed at the end. Pamela Travers didn’t want, for example, to see Mr Banks throw away the children’s description of their ideal nanny. She thought it was too cruel; her character was not like that because Mr Banks was the replica of her own father, whom she idealized. She said about Disney that “all had to be sweetness and light and cruelty in order to get the sentimental outcome of the end”. The character of Mary Poppins is also more ambivalent in the book whereas in the movie Julie Andrews is a sort of angelic character who comes on earth to save the it. Bert was a minor character in the novel, he appears really briefly in one book but he is brought to the foreground in the movie to form a duo with Mary. Magic is used to rescue the world from itself and Disney seems to affirm that cinema is better than books because it’s the only place where magic can really happen.
In spite of all of this, we can’t deny that Mary Poppins is a great movie. I said earlier that it was the last movie released before Walt Disney’s death. It’s also considered his masterpiece. At the age of 62, he had reached a new level in his career. At the premiere, Mary Poppins was praised with standing ovation. The movie also received 5 Oscars: for best actress, best song (“Chim Chim Cher-ee”), best musical composition, best visual effects and best montage. I’m going to talk about the visual effects as there is a reason why this movie received an Oscar for it. I had never realised it before but this film’s technique is revolutionary for the period thanks again to Walt’s investment in new technology.
Nowadays to shoot scenes with special effects we use a green screen and add images on it later. Well, before Mary Poppins we used a blue screen. But for reasons of wavelength and colour spectrum, it wasn’t convenient: it prevented from using blue costumes for instance and didn’t allow a lot of precision in the effects. That’s why Disney used a new technique invented by Petro Vlahos which consists in shooting on a white screen lit with sodium vapor light which gives a sort of orange colour. Moreover, Vlahos added in the camera a prism which isolated the colour of the vapor sodium light in a very precise way. It not only became possible for actors to wear blue and even orange (because it was a very specific hue that was used) but also the image shot in live-action could be perfectly cut from the background, which was impossible with the blue screen. This technique was used for about 40 years, paving the way for the green screen (which is even more elaborate and allows us to have the blockbusters we have today). So basically Mary Poppins paved the way for blockbusters. Thanks to this technique then we have a 16 minutes sequence of animation combined with live-action in Mary Poppins. The combination of animation and live-action was first used in Alice’s Comedies in the ’20s and then only reused in the Three Caballeros in 1944. Although Mary Poppins is only the third film with animation and live-action, it truly reaches a higher level of quality.
This film has a lot of history. It was difficult to sum up all of it. It has a special place in Walt Disney’s career and life because not only was it the last film he really invested himself in but also because it is considered as his masterpiece, the climax of his career if you will. With its success, the studios were more prosperous than ever. It is also a turning point in cinema history because of its revolutionary techniques in visual effects. Even if the movie has totally overshadowed the original book, it is not the only example of this phenomenon. An everlasting commercial success, it remains today a classic of Walt Disney Studio. It inspired children’s dreams for decades, proving that difficulties in production can be overcome with a simple spoon full of sugar.
