Making Mary Poppins - The Story Begions

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:03]So today I'm going to read you the first chapter from my new book, Making Mary Poppins. And a couple of months ago, I realized that for this one chapter, I had almost enough film and photographs to illustrate everything that takes place. And then I realized that I could fill in the gaps with some computerenerated drawings. And so now I'm going to spin back the wheel of time and take us all to a big moment in the life of Walt Disney, of the Disney studio, and of two songwriters, the Sherman Brothers. And that event is the Hollywood premiere of Mary Poppins.

[00:00:46]Let's go.

[00:00:49]Chapter 1. During the life of every successful studio, there is at least one major transition, a before and after in which the old world fades away and a [music] more prosperous one begins.

[00:01:04]During the lifetime of Walt Disney, there were three such moments. The first two are easy to spot. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfves, the studio's first featurelength offering, told a 90-minute story through handdrawn animation. The second was the opening of Disneyland, a project that expanded the business center of Walt Disney Productions to include themed amusements, a division that would become a company mainstay far more than film in the decades to follow.

[00:01:37]But the third is not as easy to find. On the night of August 27th, 1964, the Disney Company premiered Mary Poppins at Groman's Chinese Theater. A venue so large it was often referred to as a movie palace. Rising at the front, ornamented with dragons, was an electric pigota, an architectural wonder ablaze with green and pink neon, situated in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. Its courtyard was paved with the hand and footprints from the town's golden age.

[00:02:12]From the Marx Brothers to Harold Lloyd to Mary Pikford. The sidewalk was covered with a red carpet and a line of crimson jacketed valet stood at the curb to assist invited guests into the theater courtyard and to keep out overly enthusiastic fans. Shortly after dusk, a line of limos worked its way down Hollywood Boulevard, their hazy headlights cutting through the darkness.

[00:02:41]Though it had been a hot summer, this was an unusually cool night with a light wind and temperatures dipping below 70.

[00:02:50]One by one, the limos arrived at the theater. Passengers stepped out to find search light beams lancing across the sky and temporary bleachers six benches high filled with fans hoping to glimpse Hollywood royalty. In the theat's forcourt were dancers dressed as penguins and chimney sweeps just as in the movie. To complete the scene, the red carpet that night was lined with cherry blossoms reminiscent of Cherry Tree Lane where the story was set. When Walt Disney and his wife Lillian stepped from their car, they were greeted by performers dressed as characters from his first big film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as though the characters from this beloved classic were passing the torch of success to a new film. For Walt, the picture was an enormous gamble, an extremely expensive project that reached beyond any previous Disney liveaction production. On its surface, Mary Poppins was a throwback to the sensibilities of the previous decade.

[00:03:56]The cinematic stepchild of An American in Paris, Singing in the Rain, and The King and I. Yet, it was a story that he had wanted to tell for over two decades.

[00:04:07]Now, Walt was dressed in a black dinner jacket and bow tie, his wife in a yellow dress and gloves. They walked the red carpet and were interviewed over an address system as the crowd screamed with delight. When asked if this would be one of his biggest films, Walt rather cautiously said, "Uh, you never know what's coming." The film star, Julie Andrews, arrived wearing a gray empire style silk gown with a matching mink stole that she had rented for the evening. She stepped out of her limo with her husband Tony Walton. For years, she had been a star on stage, but this was her first big movie. She was nervous, unsure how Hollywood hoopla would differ from the distant adoration of the West End or Broadway. A friend had instructed her to pause for interviews. As she made her way up the red carpet, she stopped. She waved. Near the entrance to the theater, she found Walt waiting for her. so the star and the storyteller could be interviewed on TV together. A few minutes later, the film's co-star, Dick Van Djk, dressed in a black jacket and tie joined them. He was greeted by a 12-piece pearly band, nearly identical to the one in the film.

[00:05:25]Before the cameras, he took on the comedic persona of his film character, Bert. Though he'd had his own TV series, The Dick Van Dyke Show and had appeared in two previous films, he'd never been a featured star at a major premiere with a live telecast and endless celebrities crushing in around him, including Marino Hera, Edward G. Robinson, Suzanne Pette, Fred McMurray, Caesar Romero, and Buddy Epson. The atmosphere was buoyant and optimistic. a wave of goodwill and confidence surging through the crowd.

[00:06:01]But it was a fragile confidence, the type that could be easily crushed if major papers such as the Los Angeles Times panned the movie or if leading weekly magazines, Time, Newsweek, and Life berated the film for focusing on English fantasies while the discontent of dissatisfied youth burned through America. But this too was part of the film's charm. Though it was a costume musical set in Eduwardian London, the story, at least as it had been reimagined by Disney, focused on children who were disillusioned because their parents placed their jobs and social activities above family, which was more or less the same story that was playing out at breakfast tables across America. Dozens of people who worked on the film attended the premiere, all of them hoping it would do well. Among them were the producer Bill Walsh and PL Travers, the author of the books on which the film was based known as Pamela around the studio. Travers was a force of nature. Also among the invitees were two songwriters virtually unknown to the public, the brothers Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, known around the studio as Bob and Dick, the two men who more than anyone had poured their lives into this film. They were given screen credit for writing all the songs in the picture, but unofficially they had created the overall story. The Mary Poppins books had been written as a series of bedtime stories, charming anecdotes that could be read aloud to children in 15 or 20 minutes. The characters for the Disney film, or at least most of them, came from the books, as did some narrative set pieces. The tea party on the ceiling and the magic journey into the chalk drawings. But the film's overall story had largely been invented by the brothers. A man's desire for success and a children's need for their parents. a tale the brothers developed in large part by drawing on their own unfulfilled ambitions and memories of their childhood. For them, this was a personal project, their one chance to demonstrate that they could do far more than write songs to fit existing film and TV scripts. Mary Poppins was a blend of the stories written by Pamela Travers and their own experiences, adventures with their father, childhood word games, and most of all, a desire to reach beyond themselves to find a small piece of greatness, a quiet achievement that for them invited the rarest of gifts, the ability to look beyond their work with personal respect. act. On the night of the premiere, Bob and Dick along with their wives were driven up Hollywood Boulevard in a limo, a novel experience for the young men. In the distance, they saw a colorful marquee that featured the name of their film along with the names of the lead stars.

[00:09:25]For blocks, the sidewalk was thick with fans. A few of them holding cameras, others just peering at cars and wondering who was behind the tinted glass. But before their limo squeezed into the cordoned off red carpet area, a young girl trying to fill her autograph book tapped on the backseat window and waited until it was rolled down. She looked in briefly from Dick to Bob, then to their wives. Her face tightened with a frown. to her friends waiting behind her. She pronounced, "Ah, they're not anybody." Bob's wife, Joyce, briefly objected. The girl, clearly unimpressed, walked away. If that girl could have only seen the future, she would have known that not only were Bob and Dick Sherman the architects of what would soon would become the highest grossing film of 1964, but they would set a trend in Hollywood with other studios far better funded than Disney releasing The Sound of Music, Oliver and Dr. Doolittle. family musicals that in one way or another took their queue from Poppins. This Disney film would earn so much money, it would allow Walt the following year to buy 43 square miles of land in Central Florida, a place to build a massive resort, thereby transforming his company once again. As for their own work, the brothers would eventually write the soundtrack for an entire generation, defining the musical tone of Disney films and the Disney parks for decades with songs for The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, The Aristocats, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, and It's a Small World. Their fame and careers would outlast nearly everyone else than popular in Hollywood. They would write songs well into the next century. But on that cool August night, as the girls somewhat stiffly looked at other limos parading up the road in hopes of finding recognizable stars, the brothers settled back into their seats. They knew their roles and were comfortable with them.

[00:11:45]"Uh, we're not visible guys," Dick later explained. "We're from the older school.

[00:11:50]Love our songs, not us." Like nearly everyone associated with the film, they too remained anxious, not knowing what to expect from such a large premiere.

[00:12:03]They understood it needed to go well.

[00:12:06]Disney had embarked on a risky limited release strategy, placing the film in just 15 theaters in North America for 4 months. If reviews were poor, it would burn out and die long before it was moved into a wide release.

[00:12:23]But if reviews were good, it would create anticipation, virtually ensuring that it would be a hit. The brothers, then 36 and 38 years old, tried to push their nervousness away. From the wide back seat, they gazed out at colorful lights that beckoned them forward, drawing them toward a magnificent theater, what some might call the center of Hollywood, that presented a motion picture that they more than anyone else had helped to create.

[00:13:12]You can find the book over on Amazon as a hardback published by WW Norton, as a Kindle edition, and as an audio book read by Al Kessle. And one more thing, if you're interested in the history of the Disney Company, of Disney films, of the Disney parks, we have a podcast where we tell stories about these things every week. It's called Disney History Institute. You can find it everywhere.