46 – Mary Poppins

I’m currently trying to picture a world where the following happened:

A Disney film was nominated for thirteen Oscars, including Best Picture.

The Best Actress award went to a woman in her first film – who was not playing ugly, disabled, a Holocaust survivor or a real person.

The Oscars were not just for the technical categories (make-up, hair styling etc.)

This Oscar nominated film was also the most profitable release of the year.

And yet that’s exactly what happened in 1965. Mary Poppins took Hollywood by storm – in the days before the huge divide between movies people watched and those that won awards. The film was a mainstay in our house when I was a child. I don’t remember watching it religiously like some of the other Disney videos we had, but it was a favourite. When I was around 14-ish I started re-watching a lot of my childhood loves – but this one got left out. I didn’t even see it again until I was nineteen. Back then I would have dismissed it as a shallow kids’ movie. But now in my mid-20s many of my favourite films are intended for children or a family audience – I happily saw Paddington 2 as soon as it came out. I believe that a lot of children’s films tend to have deeper meanings than we give them credit for. The lessons are often simple but very meaningful. The Little Mermaid teaches that being an overprotective parent can be dangerous, Beauty & the Beast teaches to look beyond appearances and Aladdin has some important lessons about friendship and trust. So what does Mary Poppins teach us?

Mary Poppins was created by author PL Travers in the 1930s. You’d be forgiven if you thought she was an original Disney character; a large amount of people likely only know she was a book thanks to the movie Saving Mr Banks showing the hoops Uncle Walt had to jump through to get the adaptation rights. Walt’s daughters loved the books when they were children, and he had been hoping to adapt them as early as 1938. PL Travers refused, because Disney had yet to make a live-action film and she reacted to the idea of animation the same way vampires react to crucifixes.

In her defence, their first attempt Song of the South was quite bad. But she eventually gave in around 1961 – still retaining script approval rights. A lot of what she didn’t like still made it into the final film – an animated sequence, Mary Poppins getting a nicer personality, Dick Van Dyke being cast as Bert. But she approved of Julie Andrews being cast as Mary, and the song “Stay Awake” was one of the few she liked. The songs in particular were going to be a high point for Disney on this project. Thanks to these guys.

Richard and Robert, the Sherman Brothers. They wrote the music for most of Disney’s films in the 60s, and Mary Poppins was their first project with him. The Oscar you see them with in the photo they won for the score on Mary Poppins. The Sherman Brothers and their music in Disney films is very reminiscent of a new tone the studio went in during the 60s. I’ll detail the reasons why when I review Sleeping Beauty but Disney spent most of the 40s and 50s in a state of financial panic. By the 60s Disneyland was up and running, the TV series Walt Disney Presents was a success and Uncle Walt no longer had to worry about going bankrupt. So the tone became overall much more upbeat, jolly and showy. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the up-tempo, fast-paced piece that opens the film as we meet our title character.

Julie Andrews was a relative unknown to the film-going public of the day; she had gotten her start in the theatre, and eventually transitioned to Broadway. There she headlined such hit musicals as Cinderella, Camelot and My Fair Lady. The last one was crucial to how Mary Poppins turned out – as Julie was set to play Eliza Doolittle in the film version around the same time she was offered this. But it was decided that she wasn’t enough of a name, so Audrey Hepburn got that role. Julie first turned down the magical nanny since she was pregnant, but Uncle Walt put production on hold to wait for her. Thus she became a star and even beat out Audrey Hepburn at the Oscars that year.

Note: yes I know Audrey Hepburn was planning to do her own singing too and it was the studio that made Marni Nixon dub her. I’ve also heard her sing, and yes she’s quite respectable.

We get introduced to a 1910 London. The original books were set in the 1930s but it was PL Travers who insisted on moving the setting back a couple of decades. We’re introduced to a man called Bert who is currently a one-man-band – but he will pop up doing various other jobs throughout the film. He’s played by Dick Van Dyke, who is American. Doing a cockney accent. Said accent has been discussed many times over the years, but I’ll happily give you my take on the matter.

Bert breaks the fourth wall (or he’s just got a really shy friend) and brings us to the nerve centre of the whole neighborhood – Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane. The house is home to the Banks family – none of whom are actually home right now. For the parents it’s excusable, but not the children. You see, their nanny Katie Nanna has lost them for the fourth time this week. And she’s ready to leave her position because of it. In the course of this scene she argues with…

Ellen, the housemaid, played by Hermione Badderley. She wants Katie Nanna to stay, since she’s going to get stuck minding the children if she doesn’t. She’s in contrast to…

Mrs Brill, the cook, played by Reta Shaw. Who was also the cook in Pollyanna. Hey a living’s a living. Cook bluntly says to Katie Nanna “don’t stumble on the way out, dearie.”

This was actually my favourite scene in the film when I was a child. Ellen and Mrs Brill don’t get a lot of screen time but they’re hilarious whenever they’re on – and I was a little sad when I went to the stage musical and saw that Ellen wasn’t in it. Elsa Lancaster also has fantastic comic timing as the pompous Katie Nanna – “not if you heaped me with all the jewels in Christendom!” – and the chemistry between these actresses makes me wish they’d tried at least one comedy sketch together. The fun factor is upped when Mrs Banks arrives home.

One of the many changes Disney made to the film was giving her a first name – originally Cynthia but PL Travers insisted on Winifred. Another was making Mrs Banks a suffragette. And I say right on, because how often do you see that in children’s movies? I probably learned about the suffragette movement from Mrs Banks’s song. She’s played by Glynis Johns, who would only agree to be in the film if she got her own number. So the Sherman Brothers rewrote one of the songs for her and it became “Sister Suffragette”. It won’t top any radio charts but Glynis Johns makes it very entertaining – and Katie Nanna having to chase after the others as they parade around the room just adds to the comedy.

What also adds to the comedy is the antics of Admiral Boom – who lives a few doors down. And he also has a habit of firing cannons from the roof of his house at set times every day. The Banks household is so used to it, they have their own posts to stand at to protect the valuables in the house.

It makes you wonder if the children are the only reason Katie Nanna is leaving. But anyway she finally gets the message to Winifred and storms out of the house just as Mr George Banks arrives home.

It’s funny that I mentioned Pollyanna a few paragraphs ago, because the two movies have a major thing in common (aside from both being Disney movies set in the early 1900s with Reta Shaw as a cook) – the title character is not the true protagonist. Well you could argue that Pollyanna is more of a protagonist than Mary Poppins, but both characters don’t need to grow or learn anything from their stories. Pollyanna arrives in Harrington Falls with her Glad Game already helping her deal with her father’s death – and cheering up everyone in town with it. Mary Poppins’s role in the story is to teach everyone else life lessons. And no one learns a bigger lesson than George Banks.

He begins the story as a man who thinks he has everything figured out; every morning he goes to work, earns the living to support the family, comes home to have everything prepared for him, pats his children on the head, sends them to bed and rinse and repeat the next day. No, those are literally the lyrics to his intro song “The Life I Lead” (which David Tomlinson nails by the way). George’s house is treated like a business, where everything has to run as if it’s clockwork. His children are expected to behave and if there’s any problems then that’s for the nanny – instead of the person who actually dropped the sprog. It’s not done maliciously but George has yet to see that there are serious problems afoot.

George doesn’t have too much time to panic once he finds out the children are missing, because a policeman helps them home immediately. I only just noticed the clever way in which Jane and Michael are introduced. We don’t see them until roughly the fifteen minute mark, and all we hear about them is Katie Nanna calling them brats and beasts. So the 1964 viewer who doesn’t know the Mary Poppins story is bound to assume they’re the worst sort of delinquents imaginable. But now you see that they’re two perfectly ordinary children who just want some affection from their father – judging from Michael’s line about how he didn’t help them make their kite.

The children do apologise for driving Katie Nanna away, and offer to help advertise for their new nanny. They do so via song because Sherman Brothers, that’s why. Among the requirements include not being cross or cruel, frequently playing games with them, loving them like a son and daughter, being “fairly pretty”…

And Michael enthusiastically says he put in “never smell of barley water…”

Yes I know barley water is an actual drink but I so want this to be an in-joke about one of their previous nannies coming to work drunk.

George thinks incredibly little of the children’s advertisement, rips it up and throws the pieces in the fireplace. But a magical wind blows them up the chimney. The same wind shows up the day George is to interview nannies – and in fact blows them literally off the doorstep. As if someone wanted to get rid of the competition. Does that mean their new nanny is…

No, it’s Mary Poppins, who prompts some hilarious facials from Ellen when she’s told to show the nannies in and sees no one else on the doorstep. Mary Poppins confidently walks in and pretty much hires herself for the job – all the while insinuating that the family are the ones who need to impress her.

Ellen is told to dismiss the others – but by this stage ‘the others’ is just a dog who seems very put out when he’s told “the position has been filled…”

Mary now meets the children, and we get such classic gags as:

Her carpet bag can fit a whole hatstand, mirror and potted plant inside.

Her reflection in the mirror talks back.

Her tape measure that gives us the 411 on people’s personality traits.

When Mary lets the children measure her, it reads ‘Practically Perfect In Every Way’ – which has led to more fan discussions than you’d think. My interpretation is that part of the perfection is humility, acknowledging that everyone has room for improvement. So Mary can’t say she’s 100% perfect. She now segues into the classic song “A Spoonful of Sugar” – as she teaches the children that tidying up their nursery can become a game.

After the nursery is clean, Mary takes the children for an outing in the park. This gets forgotten about when they run into Bert – who is an old friend of Mary’s. And they’re just friends. Seriously. PL Travers ordered that there be no hint of romantic attraction between the two.

Bert convinces Mary to take the children inside one of his chalk drawings. Thus we get an animated sequence in the film – which I like the concept of but in execution it’s somewhat lacking. I know I lean towards the idealistic end of the spectrum, where I don’t mind corniness or sappiness. But even I have my limits. They are as follows:

So yeah, I’m not the biggest fan of the “Jolly Holiday” sequence. It runs a bit too long, and it’s not helped by the animation being rather rough and scratchy – like most of Disney’s films in the 60s. The backdrops are at least pleasant to look at. And after Bert serenading Mary, a dance with some penguins, a horse race involving animals from a merry-go-round and Mary Poppins winning said race – the sequence does deliver the movie’s famous song.

As much as I’m meh towards the “Jolly Holiday” sequence, it’s impossible to hear “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and not get into it a little. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke are clearly having a blast singing it, and the Shermans clearly had fun with the wordplay in the lyrics. There’s conflicting stories on who came up with it, but hey, it’s the longest word in the English language. Sadly for the residents of Bert’s chalk world, down comes the rain.

When they get back home, Mary Poppins makes the children take her own special medicine. In any other story, that would be a not-so-subtle euphemism. But this medicine dispenses different flavors – Michael getting strawberry and Jane getting lime cordial. The medicine bottle was a working prop and Jane squeals when a different colour liquid comes out onto her spoon – which was Karen Dotrice’s genuine reaction. Mary Poppins gets…ahem…rum punch…

Mary Poppins promises to stay until the wind changes – which again, different meaning to anyone who lives in Ireland. She also reacts to the children talking about the day’s activities as if nothing happened at all – which makes me wonder if MP was a fan of Gaslight. But she helps the children sleep with the lullaby “Stay Awake” – one of the few songs PL Travers approved of.

Mary Poppins’s presence in the house seems to put everyone in a good mood. Ellen and Cook are being all nice and friendly to each other, Ellen’s going around humming, the children give their mother flowers and lead the rest of the household singing “Supercali-you know the rest”. George of course is the only one not in a good mood. In fact, everyone else’s cheeriness is pissing him off even further.

Mary is planning to take the children shopping but she gets word from the dog she beat out for the job that her uncle has been laughing so hard he’s stuck on the ceiling.

Uncle Albert is played by Ed Wynn, who was a Disney regular and most famously lent his voice to the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland. They’re joined by Bert but he’s not much help; the laughter is infectious and soon he and the two children are flying around the room. After the jolly “I Love To Laugh” to really set the scene, Mary joins everyone in the air so as not to have her lunch schedule interrupted.

After some puns that probably shaped me in more ways than I’d care to admit, Uncle Albert reveals the secret to getting down – thinking of something sad. And the camera didn’t show us the fine print on Mary Poppins’s measuring tape that read ‘100% Wet Blanket’ – so she gets everyone down. Later on, George is less than thrilled that the children are talking about tea parties on the ceiling. But you can tell he’s more annoyed about them repeating all those jokes.

George is annoyed at all the frivolous things his children have been getting up to. It’s high time they learned to be serious. And he tells us all this via song.

Uh-huh.

This reprise of “The Life I Lead” goes from attempted firing to George somehow believing he plans to take the children to the bank with him tomorrow.

The children don’t seem keen on that idea, but Mary tells them of an elderly woman who sits on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral – near where the bank is. She’s selling food for tuppence to feed all the birds. Mary gives this information via the song “Feed the Birds”.

This is by far the most serious song in a pretty light-hearted film; it’s slow, calming and oh so powerful. It was in writing this song that both the Sherman Brothers and Walt Disney really got what the film was all about. Mary Poppins arrives in the Banks household to teach the children the importance of charity, the importance of being selfless and thinking of other people. As Pinkie Pie said in “One Small Thing”…

“One small thing is not so small. One small thing can be the biggest thing of all…”

For the remainder of his life, Walt would walk into the Sherman Brothers’ office in the studio and tell them to “play it” – and this was the song he always wanted. PL Travers even liked it.

Uncle Walt had a very specific idea of who he wanted to play the bird woman. An Oscar winning lady by the name of Jane Darwell – who was one of his favourite character actresses. She turned the part down – as she was now in her eighties and her health was quite bad. But Walt – ever the determinator – went all the way to her retirement home to ask her to do it.

When the children walk by her the next day, George refuses to let Michael give her his tuppence. At the bank he and his partners launch into a song called “Fidelity Fiduciary Bank” – which if you can guess from having ‘bank’ in the title is all about investing your money in the greater good. Forget about living things when you can be part of railroads in Africa and other such wonders. And guess who the senior partner Mr Dawes Sr is really played by.

Yep. Dick Van Dyke, hidden under ageing make-up and an actually convincing English accent. The child actors were fooled as well – and Karen Dotrice thought this poor old man was going to hurt himself with all the gyrating he was doing. The children however aren’t fooled, and Michael accidentally makes the other customers think the bank is trying to take everyone’s money.

Jane and Michael flee the chaos and bump into Bert – who’s now working as a chimney sweep. He really should be working as a therapist though – as he gives the children some pretty solid advice when it comes to their father. They believe he doesn’t love them, partly because he’s always working and doesn’t pay them much attention. While there is some truth to that, Bert reminds the children that they have their mother to look after them as well as a hired nanny who can move things with her mind. Life as a child can be hard, but it’s nowhere near as hard as being an adult trying to provide for your child. This is a lesson you really don’t see much in children’s media – when the moral is usually for the parents to spend more time with the kids. Take a look at all the 90s media that had neglectful mothers and fathers throwing their cellphones away in the name of family time.

Bert takes the children home, but Winifred is just about to head off to a suffragette rally, Mary Poppins has a day off and the other servants are busy. So Bert gets roped into both watching them and cleaning out the drawing room chimney. As soon as Mary Poppins appears in the room, Michael shoots up the chimney and onto the roof! A few seconds later Jane goes up to, forcing Bert and Mary to go after them. Or as Mary puts it,

“We can’t have them gallivanting up there like kangaroos, can we?”

I can remember whenever I watched this part as a child that I always wished I could go exploring up the chimney like they did. After some nice shots where they do so, Bert rallies all the other sweeps of London to sing “Step In Time”.

To describe this song, I’ll give you an analogy. It’s a disinterested day in the city, where people are glumly going about their business. But all of a sudden, an army of dancing men start singing in the middle of the street. Every single person – from the most enthusiastic child to the most disinterested policeman – joins in because they just can’t resist. That is the kind of feeling the song provokes.

It’s the liveliest one in the movie and it’s accompanied by an unbelievably fun sequence of the sweeps showing off their dancing and gymnastics. I remember the movie Carousel doing this kind of thing – where the plot gets put on hold to showcase the dancing – and I was left bored, wondering when it would be over. Not here. You wish it could go on longer.

Admiral Boom fires his cannon on the sweeps, forcing them to retreat to the Banks’ house. Cook tries to go after them with a frying pan. Ellen tries to run but gets persuaded to dance along with very little effort. And Winifred arrives home to happily join in as soon as the sweeps start singing about Votes For Women. The fun does have to end as soon as George arrives home – which you have to admit would be quite an experience after the type of day he’s had already. His blame goes to Mary Poppins instead of y’know the person who hired a stranger/chimney sweep to watch the children. But Mary deflects the criticism with the iconic line.

Things take a turn for the serious when George gets a call from his bosses to see them later. And it’s Bert he ends up having the heart-to-heart with – in the form of a bittersweet reprise of “The Life I Lead”. Bert reminds him that all his ambitions of being remembered do kind of fall flat when you think of his children who just want some love and affection. PL Travers may have felt Laurence Olivier was one of the greats, but I can’t picture him moving the hell out of me the way Dick Van Dyke does right now. But it’s David Tomlinson who truly moves me as Michael gives his father the tuppence as an apology.

That is the face of a man who has spent his life dreaming of “walking with giants” but has now finally realised what truly matters to him. Earlier in the film the constable returning Jane and Michael home called them his ‘valuables’. And his face says that he now knows exactly what the constable meant. There’s a beautiful shot of Mary Poppins at the top of the stairs, nodding with approval as this happens. But the shot to really talk about is this one as George walks to the bank.

Now obviously at night there would be no people walking about, so no reason for the bird woman to be on the steps at that time. But a very popular fan theory is that the woman has actually died. When George sees that she’s not there, he has an unusually sad expression on his face. And the music really swells to sound like a church orchestra – as if to say the woman is in heaven now. This would tie into Bert’s lesson that childhood is fleeting and that time is eventually going to run out. George trivialised giving the bird woman money but if she’s died, then he came to his senses too late. And if she’s dead then he can’t make up for it. He can’t undo it and bring the woman back to show her some kindness. He just missed his chance. Just like if his children grow up without any love from him, he can’t make them children again to give it to them.

When George gets to the bank, his bosses fire him. As they go through a bizarrely specific ritual of turning his umbrella inside out and punching a hole in his hat, George bursts out laughing. First at the word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, then at Uncle Albert’s ‘wooden leg named Smith’ joke. He really doesn’t care about being fired at all.

After taking a few minutes for the punchline to sink in, Mr Dawes Sr bursts out laughing too and soars up into the air just like Uncle Albert. Things are less giggly at the Banks house the next morning – as not only is George missing but Mary Poppins is preparing to leave! It however turns out that George was in the cellar the whole time mending Michael’s kite from the beginning of the film.

This segues into the climactic “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” – one of the songs that PL Travers hated most about the film. But we won’t talk about that. We will talk about the emotional highs this song hits as the children go playing with their parents. It’s pointedly the only scene where all four are properly together in the frame – all other scenes they share having one character sitting or standing at a distance. Loose ends get wrapped up as Mr Dawes Jr informs us that his father died laughing, and George is welcome to come back on board as a new partner. Mary Poppins goes ‘my work here is done’ and soars into the sky. The last line of the film is Bert asking her not to stay away too long.

While PL Travers may have been reduced to angry crying at the premiere, it was a different story for literally everyone else. Julie Andrews claimed an Oscar for her first film, and she had another smash hit in The Sound of Music right after – typecasting her as a wholesome Disney lady for longer than she’d be happy about. There is something about how everything in this movie comes together so perfectly that it almost seems like a fluke. From the world building to the visuals to the characterization to the deeper meanings – and of course the fun songs, great gags and anything else you can think of. And that’s simply why it has been a timeless classic ever since its 1964 release. Some movies you watch as a kid and love, then watch them back as an adult and sadly realise they aren’t as good as you remember them. Mary Poppins is thankfully not one of those. It’s a movie that becomes even better once you’re an adult and you can appreciate its deeper meanings. For what it’s worth I enjoyed Saving Mr Banks too. And if you’d like to know, PL Travers did eventually become more positive towards the film. From a 1977 interview:

“It’s glamorous and it’s a good film on its own level, but I don’t think it is very like my books.”

A spoonful of sugar helps the grades go down.

*Story? For such an episodic film, the narrative flowed very well. We went from one adventure to the next seamlessly and without any bits that ran too long (though the “Jolly Holiday” sequence has always been my least favourite). A

*Characters? We get a great character arc for George Banks, a solid lead in Mary Poppins and buckets of fun supporting characters. Winifred, Ellen, Mrs Brill, Bert…they were all memorable in their own way. A+

*Performances? I feel quite proud that Julie Andrews won the Oscar for this. These days she’d be pigeonholed into the ‘Musical or Comedy’ section at the Golden Globes and that’d be it. While Dick Van Dyke’s accent may be hard to take, his talent for physical comedy should not be overlooked. Glynis Johns and Hermione Badderley really stood out among the supporting cast. Sadly the child actors weren’t as solid. A-

*Visuals? Beautiful matte paintings and set designs helped create a unique looking world. You see those sets and you instantly know they’re from Mary Poppins. Some of the shots were especially spectacular – and some very impressive SFX for the 60s. A

*Anything Else? A top notch score by the Sherman Brothers, and some brilliant world building. A

We’ve got another Honorary Pick up next. It’s Darling Lili.