9 / 10
Official trailer
Mary Poppins is Robert Stevenson’s 1964 American musical fantasy produced by Walt Disney from P.L. Travers’s 1934 children’s book series. The film depicts magical nanny Mary Poppins arriving at the Banks household in 1910 Edwardian London to care for the neglected children Jane and Michael. Their father George works at a bank where he’s been promoted to senior position requiring major time away from home.
Mary uses her magic to take the children on adventures including a chalk drawing that becomes a real countryside scene, a tea party on the ceiling, and other improbable activities.
Julie Andrews plays Mary Poppins in her film debut. Dick Van Dyke plays chimney sweep Bert. David Tomlinson plays George Banks. Glynis Johns plays the suffragette mother Winifred Banks. Karen Dotrice plays Jane Banks. Matthew Garber plays Michael Banks. Hermione Baddeley plays cook Mrs. Brill. Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi wrote the screenplay.
I adore this movie. Julie Andrews walks into that house and the whole film snaps to attention, the songs stick in your head before the scene is over, and it has more nerve than most family films of any decade. Dick Van Dyke’s accent is the one thing I’d change, and even that I can forgive. Walt Disney Productions produced the film on a budget of approximately 5 million dollars, and it grossed approximately 102 million dollars worldwide. The work won five Academy Awards including Best Actress for Andrews.
Walt Disney pursued the Mary Poppins rights for twenty years before P.L. Travers finally agreed to authorize a film adaptation.
Travers disagreed with most of Disney’s creative choices including the casting, the animation sequences, the songs, and the wider sentimentality this film introduced to her source material. Her unhappiness with the completed film was major and continued for the rest of her life. She refused to authorize additional Disney adaptations of her work. Saving Mr. Banks (2013) dramatizes the tension between Travers and Disney and shows the fight from both sides. The film is Disney studio production at its commercial peak, and it also records a clash between an author and a studio that keeps repeating itself whenever a studio adapts a beloved book.
Andrews as Mary Poppins
Julie Andrews had been passed over for the film version of My Fair Lady, which she had originated on Broadway. Audrey Hepburn was cast instead despite not having Andrews’s singing capability. Disney offered Andrews the Mary Poppins role because My Fair Lady had become available. The casting decision produced one of the more consequential Hollywood ironies. Andrews won Best Actress for Mary Poppins. Hepburn wasn’t even nominated for My Fair Lady. The Academy effectively rewarded Andrews for the role Warner Bros. had refused to give her.
Andrews plays Mary Poppins with the controlled English authority that the character requires. She doesn’t need to show her magical abilities through extensive verbal explanation. She simply produces results that surprise the surrounding characters. The performance combines theatrical projection with intimate cinema acting. The combination wouldn’t have been possible if Andrews hadn’t spent years performing in front of live audiences before her film debut. The Best Actress win in her first major film role remains an unusual achievement.
Andrews is the reason I rate this a 9. She never winks, never begs for the audience’s affection and never explains herself, and that brisk confidence ends up funnier and warmer than any amount of sweetness would have been.
For Writers
A character can communicate authority through composure instead of through verbal demonstration. The character whose abilities are simply assumed produces stronger effect than the character who must constantly prove themselves.
The Travers Conflict
P.L. Travers disagreed with Disney’s approach to her source material throughout production and after release. She objected to the casting of Dick Van Dyke as Bert because his American accent couldn’t produce convincing Cockney speech. She objected to the animation sequences as inappropriate sentimentality. She objected to the songs as too cheerful. She objected to making George Banks too sympathetic. Her objections weren’t all wrong. Van Dyke’s accent has been criticized for over six decades as one of the worst attempts at Cockney speech in cinema history.
On the accent, Travers had a point, and I’ll grant it. Van Dyke’s Cockney is a mess. I barely care, because Bert is so warm and so easy in his own skin that I’d follow him into any chalk drawing he pointed at.
Travers reportedly cried at the film’s premiere because she felt Disney had betrayed her source.
Disney himself attempted to address her concerns by suggesting modifications that he then refused to make. The conflict has become foundational case study in source author versus film studio adaptation. Travers’s perspective received later treatment in Saving Mr. Banks (2013) starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks. The continuing focus on the work conflict makes clear how source author dissatisfaction can produce sustained cultural attention to the adaptation history.
For Writers
Source author dissatisfaction with adaptations rarely changes the commercial result but does change the cultural narrative around the work. Adaptations remembered as betrayals of their sources work differently than adaptations remembered as successful translations.
The Sherman Brothers
Richard and Robert Sherman composed the songs including A Spoonful of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and Let’s Go Fly a Kite. The brothers had been Disney studio staff composers before Mary Poppins.
The film’s commercial success made them the studio’s principal songwriting team for the later decade. Their work on Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book (1967), and other productions defined Disney musical style for a generation.
The Sherman songs pair simple melodies with lyrics clever enough for adults.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious put a new word into general use, and Chim Chim Cher-ee won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. I think A Spoonful of Sugar is the smartest song in the score, because it’s the film’s whole outlook set to a tune a small child can hum. Most of these songs are still sung and quoted, and later Disney musicals have spent decades trying to match them.
For Writers
Simple memorable craft can survive longer than sophisticated complex work. The melody that audiences can hum after hearing once travels through culture in ways more demanding material can’t.
Craft Note
Robert Stevenson directed real Disney output across the 1950s and 1960s including Old Yeller (1957), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), and many others. Mary Poppins represents his strongest production. The director was British but worked within American studio production methods throughout his career. The combination of British sensibility and American production capacity produced specific results that purely American or purely British production wouldn’t have generated.
Does Mary Poppins still hold up?
Yes, it holds up. It’s a 9 because Andrews, the Sherman songs and the sheer confidence of the thing still work on me completely. The one point I hold back goes to Van Dyke’s accent, which I enjoy and wince at in equal measure. Watch it for family cinema, for 1960s Disney at its peak, or for the strange story of an author who hated the film that made her character famous around the world.
