by Bob Thomas
General Electric’s public-opinion surveys indicated that “Progressland” had helped improve the company’s image in the wake of the price-fixing scandal—and had also increased sales. G.E. agreed to sponsor the show at Disneyland after the fair closed in 1965. Ford also had excellent results from its “Magic Skyway” but after much consideration decided against the move to Disneyland; executives reasoned they could not afford so large an outlay for promotion in one marketing area. The prehistoric monsters from the Ford show were transferred to the Disneyland train ride; the rest of the figures were scrapped. “It’s a Small World” and “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” moved to Disneyland intact.
Walt was pleased with the results of his ventures at the New York World’s Fair. He had acquired new attractions for Disneyland at minimal cost. He had established an impressive record of working with large corporations for common goals. And by stretching the creative muscles of his imagineers, he had achieved in a brief time what might have taken years to accomplish. Time, to Walt Disney, was important.
THE wall of Walt Disney’s conference room was dominated by an aerial map of Disneyland. Next to it was an enlarged reproduction of Variety’s annual list of the biggest moneymaking films of all time. By the early 1960s, seven of the top fifty were Disney pictures. One or two more joined the list each year, as Disney grew more dominant in the field of family movies, which the major companies had largely abandoned. “I put that up there to study what are the big moneymakers,” Walt said to a reporter as he studied the list. “Most of them aren’t the sensational pictures with a lot of sex; they’re attractions for the whole family.” Walt was careful to avoid any film material which might be offensive to families. He strayed from his principle only once. In Bon Voyage, he permitted a scene in which an attractive Parisian girl propositioned Fred MacMurray at a sidewalk cafe. “I caught hell for it,” Walt said. “Never again.”
In 1964, Walt Disney produced the greatest of his successes, Mary Poppins.
The project had had its beginnings twenty years before when Walt picked up a book on the bedside table of his daughter Diane. “What’s this?” he asked. She explained that it was a collection of stories about an English nanny who could fly. Walt read the book and recognized immediately that it was Disney material. The author, P. L. Travers, didn’t agree. She was an Australian lady who had lived in England and had taken her son to New York to escape the London Blitz of World War II. Walt asked Roy, who was going to New York in early 1944, to call on Mrs. Travers and express the company’s interest in acquiring the Mary Poppins stories.
“We had a very nice talk, and she seemed glad to see me,” Roy wrote to his brother. “She said in years back she was a contributor to several English magazines, and on a couple of occasions she had written about Disney pictures.” Mrs. Travers told Roy that she owned the copyright, but her American publishers had an interest in what she did in motion pictures. “I had a hunch that this was a ‘stall’ at the moment, for the way she said it, it didn’t seem logical to me,” Roy said. “It seemed to me that she was fencing.”
Roy added in his letter: “Mrs. Travers said she could not conceive of Mary Poppins as a cartoon character. I tried to tell her that this was a matter that should be left for future study—that it might be best for Mary Poppins to be produced in a combination of live action and cartoon, using the animation to get the fantasy and illusion of the Mary Poppins character. I told her that we were thoroughly qualified and equipped to produce either medium, and, as a matter of fact, are producing such types of pictures.”
Walt followed up Roy’s visit with a letter to Mrs. Travers inviting her to visit the studio and discuss what kind of production she had in mind. She remained interested but noncommittal. That continued to be her attitude over the years. When Walt visited England during the making of his first live-action films there, he paid a call at Mrs. Travers’s home in Chelsea and discussed the filming of Mary Poppins over tea. Still she refused to relinquish the movie rights. It was not until 1960 that Mrs. Travers finally agreed to deal with the Disneys. By this time, Walt’s eagerness for the property had grown so acute that he paid an extraordinary price: he gave her approval of the screen treatment.
Robert Stevenson, who had proved with Old Yeller, The Absent-Minded Professor and In Search of the Castaways to be the most serviceable of Disney directors, declared himself to be the obvious choice to help prepare and to direct Mary Poppins. After all, he had been a boy with an English nanny in an upper-middle-class family in Edwardian England. Bill Walsh, who was to co-produce, and Don DaGradi, a veteran Disney story man, were charged with devising a script from the series of Travers stories.
Once again Walsh employed a technique which had proved successful: he injected Walt Disney into the script. The father of the London family became the important figure instead of the mother, and he was instilled with the same qualities Walsh recognized in Walt: Mr. Banks was outwardly a strong-willed person, though he was soft underneath; he was cunning and resourceful and got along well with the children; and he was “always in trouble with the bank.”
Walt assigned Robert and Richard Sherman to write the songs for Mary Poppins. They returned in two weeks with sketchy versions of five songs that could fit into the script, including “Feed the Birds” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Walt liked them, especially “Feed the Birds.” “That song’ll replace Brahms’ Lullaby,” he declared, and he cried every time he heard it. The Sherman brothers were told to work closely with Don DaGradi, and Walt gave them an office near his. “Any time you want to talk to me, call my secretary and come on over,” he said.
Mrs. Travers made two journeys to Burbank to view the storyboards for Mary Poppins. She objected to many of the liberties that had been taken with her characters, and adjustments had to be made. Walt Disney exercised his own considerable powers of persuasion to win Mrs. Travers’s approval. By the time she returned to England, she seemed convinced that the Disney innovations had originated in her own books.
Walt closely followed the writing of the script, making contributions from his intimate knowledge of London. He had become an anglophile during the making of his four English features and in his revisits of London. He loved to prowl the old streets, visiting antique shops and apothecaries and chatting with the proprietors. Once he pressed an unwilling Lilly into a search for a Disney Street; when they finally found it, Lilly was amused to learn that it had once been called Dunghill Lane. Walt was fascinated with the buskers who made a precarious living by entertaining in pubs and on the London streets. He introduced the idea of having Bert, Mary Poppins’s exuberant friend, make music as a one-man band. Walt remembered the chalk artists who drew scenes on the sidewalk in front of the National Gallery, and the script included Bert’s sidewalk mural. Walt also suggested a fantasy sequence in which horses leaped off a carousel and raced through the countryside.
During the planning stages, Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi sought a theme for the chimney sweeps’ dance atop the London roofs. They explained their need to Peter Ellenshaw, the British-born matte artist and designer whom Walt had brought to the studio after his work on Treasure Island. Ellenshaw described a ritual he shared with other students during his college days in London. Returning from a day at the seaside, the young men stopped at pubs along the route back to the city. After a pint or two, they locked arms and performed a dance to the tune of “Knees Up, Mother Brown.” It consisted of raising knees as high as possible, then racing to the other side of the pub. The owner usually ejected the roisterers because of the disruption.
“Can you do it for us?” Walsh asked. Ellenshaw could, and did. Walsh and DaGradi were charmed by the exuberant dance, and they hastened to show it to Walt. This time both Ellenshaw and DaGradi performed it in Walt’s office.
“Hey, that’s great!” Walt responded. “Let me try it.” Now the three men plunged across the room, knees high, to the chant of “Knees Up, Mother Brown.” Walt immediately sent for the Sherman br
others and demonstrated the dance to them. They were assigned to write an adaptation of the old song, and they produced “Step in Time” in half an hour. It provided the background for the liveliest number in Mary Poppins.
Walt’s total control of the script process can be seen in the various drafts of the Mary Poppins screenplay. The pages are marked by the familiar Disney hand-printing as he made additions and deletions in the scenes. In the opening sequence of the first-draft screenplay, dated July 12, 1961, these emendations appear:
Camera follows Mr. Banks down street on his way home from work—Let him open door on the upset household….Nanna’s dialogue: “It’s not only the children but the adolescent adults, etc.” The cook and maid should be peeking out doors at this scene…(eliminating screams of Jane and Michael). This makes kids brats. Let Nanna Kate do all the screaming…She has packed in such a hurry that some of her clothes stick out of the bag….[Mr. Banks’s] bowler, umbrella and brief case are very English….Mr. Banks brings money home in evening in his brief case—takes his lunch to work in it each morning….[of the exchange between the departing Nanna and Mrs. Banks:] We see all of this thru Mr. Banks’ eyes….Mr. Banks hangs up bowler hat and umbrella and carries brief case and evening paper….[substituting dialogue:] Mr. Banks: “What! Another position?” Nanna: “Yes! To get a little rest I have just accepted a position in a lunatic asylum (or boiler factory). Good day, Mr. Banks.”…[Mr. and Mrs. Banks compose an advertisement for a new nanny:] As Mrs. Banks starts to read it back, dissolve to front page of London Times which is all want-ads—camera zooms in to Mr. Banks’ ad. Mrs. Banks continues to read—or a chorus of nannies’ voices reading—the complete advertisement. Dissolve to morning shot, exterior Banks house with scores of nannies, etc.
Walt’s editing continues throughout the script, changing a word of dialogue, eliminating whole scenes, adding visual touches. Subsequent versions of Mary Poppins received the same treatment. A script dated December 31, 1962, contains comments on almost every page:
Played to camera…They forget camera and play to each other….Bad taste [eliminating a line about the cook’s cold—“…wheezing and drizzling like a broken dredge pump”]…Is this the only use of kitchen set?…Use mechanical robins here….Do we need Mary in this?…This is sad; use later….Would Mary have a nanny?…Father should sing part of this….Background music: “Tuppence the bag”…
Mrs. Travers had portrayed Mary Poppins as a middle-aged woman, and Walt first considered Bette Davis for the role. But as the score by the Sherman brothers developed, it appeared that the role would require a singing actress. Mary Martin was a candidate, but she decided against a return to films. Walt began thinking that Mary Poppins could be played by a younger actress, and he was receptive when his secretary, Tommie Wilck, suggested Julie Andrews, who had starred in the musical My Fair Lady and was then appearing on Broadway in Camelot. He asked to see film of Miss Andrews and was told that a screen test she had previously made had been destroyed; it had made her seem unsuitable for movies. Walt attended a performance of Camelot on his return from Europe late in 1961. He was impressed by her stage presence, her beauty, and her clear, lyrical soprano; he was overwhelmed by her loud, sure whistle in the number “What Do the Simple Folk Do?” He met her backstage after the performance and proceeded to relate the entire plot of Mary Poppins. She was impressed with such attention from Walt Disney, but she was not certain that she wanted to make her film debut as a flying nanny.
On February 26, 1962, Walt wrote Miss Andrews: “We would still like to have you consider playing the role of ‘Mary Poppins’ in the Pamela Travers story, and I have just asked our Casting Department to contact your agent to see if some workable arrangements can be made. As it is difficult to visualize a story of this type from a written script, I thought you might fly out to Hollywood the early part of June and then you could sit down with us and get a first-hand idea of what the finished story will be. We can play the songs, lay out the story line and I am sure after seeing this sort of presentation you will be able to make your own decision….We definitely feel in our own minds that, with your talent, you would create an unforgettable Mary Poppins, and we hope you will want to portray this wonderful character after you have seen the presentation which we can have ready for you in June….”
Miss Andrews and her husband, Tony Walton, came to the studio after she completed her contract for Camelot. She saw the storyboards and heard the Sherman brothers’ songs and liked the material, although she had some reservations. She returned to England to await the birth of her first child. Walt wrote her on June 22 that “the ‘go-ahead’ from you and your manager to start negotiations on Mary Poppins…made all of us here very happy. In the meantime, we are revamping Mary—putting in better songs—and the story is shaping up much better. Your helpful criticism has inspired the boys to dig in, which I feel is going to pay off very well. So before long, we will have a new approach to the story….”
A girl named Emma Kate was born to Julie and Tony Walton in November, and they came to California in February to begin preparations for Mary Poppins. Walton was assigned to design the costumes in the film. Miss Andrews’s agreement with the studio stipulated that she would be released from the film if Warner Brothers should cast her as Eliza Doolittle in the movie version of My Fair Lady. Jack L. Warner, who was producing the film, chose Audrey Hepburn instead.
With Julie Andrews cast as Mary Poppins, Walt sought an American actor for the role of Bert, the cheerful chimney sweep. Walt didn’t want the film to be too British, and mixtures of accents never bothered him—he had successfully cast Hayley Mills as an American girl. When Dick Van Dyke was suggested for Bert, Walt admitted he had never seen him on television. He viewed a segment of The Dick Van Dyke Show in a projection room and decided immediately to cast Van Dyke as Bert. Ed Wynn, whom Walt had used in several comedies, was assigned to play the eccentric Uncle Albert. The rest of the cast was mostly English: David Tomlinson, whom Bill Walsh had seen in a British comedy, Up the Creek; Glynis Johns, who had appeared in Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy; Hermione Baddeley; Reginald Owen; Elsa Lanchester; Arthur Treacher; and two talented youngsters, Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber.
The filming of Mary Poppins, although lengthy, proved to be as smooth and pleasant as had been the making of Dumbo. Some of the sequences were designed for combination live action and cartoon, and Walt instructed Robert Stevenson not to concern himself about the animation; that would be filled in later. “Don’t worry,” Walt said, “whatever the action is, my animators will top it.” He was challenging them, and they knew it.
Walt made a habit of “walking through” the sets after they had been built, searching for ways to use them. Bill Walsh described a visit by Walt to the Bankses’ living room in search of reaction to the firing of Admiral Boom’s cannon: “Walt got vibes off the props. As he walked around the set he said, ‘How about having the vase fall off and the maid catches it with her toe?’ Or, ‘Let’s have the grand piano roll across the room and the mother catches it as she straightens the picture frame.’”
In the early stages of production, Van Dyke was being tested in various makeups for later sequences. To relieve the boredom, he delivered snatches of comedy routines. One of them was his impression of an aged man desperately striving to step down from a sidewalk curb without injury. When Walt viewed the test in a projection room, he decided immediately to cast Van Dyke as the antediluvian Mr. Dawes, board chairman of the bank. “And build a six-inch riser on the board-room set,” Walt instructed, “so Dick can do that stepping-down routine.”
Mary Poppins was premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on August 27, 1964. The industry audience responded with cheers, and Walt realized that he had a hit of immense proportions. He was enjoying the triumphant glow at the post-premiere party when Mrs. Travers approached him. “It’s quite nice,” she began. “Miss Andrews is satisfactory as Mary Poppins, but Mr. Van Dyke is all wrong, and I don’t really like mixing the
little cartoon figures with the live actors. When do we start cutting it?”
Walt smiled indulgently. “The contract says that when the picture is finished, it’s my property,” he replied. “We aren’t going to change a thing.”
Movie critics, many of whom had deprecated the postwar Disney films, devoted columns of praise to Mary Poppins. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times: “…the visual and aural felicities (Disney and company) have added to this sparkling film—the enchantments of a beautiful production, some deliciously animated sequences, some exciting and nimble dancing and a spinning musical score—make it the nicest entertainment that has opened at the Music Hall this year.” Judith Crist in the New York Herald Tribune: “The performers surpass even the technical wizardry of the film…Miss Andrews is superb at song and dance and the heart of the matter.” Hollis Alpert in Saturday Review: “One of the most magnificent pieces of entertainment ever to come from Hollywood.” Even Disney-hating Time magazine conceded: “To make a good show better, Disney employs all the vast magic-making machinery at his command. The sets are luxuriant, the songs lilting, the scenario witty but impeccably sentimental, and the supporting cast only a pinfeather short of perfection.”
Although he claimed to be indifferent to critical response, Walt Disney could not conceal his pleasure at the outpouring of praise. The box-office figures mounted astonishingly, and in its first release Mary Poppins amassed worldwide rentals of $44,000,000. Walt was delighted when the film drew thirteen Academy nominations; it was the first time that a Disney movie had contended in the leading categories. My Fair Lady won the Oscar as best picture of 1964, but Julie Andrews, who had evoked sympathy by being overlooked for the film version of the Eliza Doolittle role she had created, was named best actress for her role in Mary Poppins.
Walt refused to entertain suggestions for a sequel to Mary Poppins, clinging to his old theory that “you can’t top pigs with pigs.” To devote a year or two of his creative life to a sequel was unthinkable. “Time is getting on, and I still have things left to do,” he remarked. “I don’t want to go back and cover the same ground.”