DVDs: 17 Cherry Tree Lane
Beginning in 1934, P.L. Travers wrote a series of eight popular children's books about Mary Poppins, the English nanny who flies through the air. When his daughter fell in love with the books in the late '30s, movie producer Walt Disney became interested in adapting the stories to the screen. But it was not until 1961 that Disney was able to secure the film rights from Travers.
To play the role of the magical nanny who helps bring a family together in Edwardian London, Disney hired Julie Andrews, the star of Broadway's The Boy Friend, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, but a screen newcomer. Because she had not previously made a film, producer Jack L. Warner had recently passed on Andrews' services for his film of My Fair Lady, which was shot and released simultaneously with Mary Poppins.
Warner's fair lady was, of course, Audrey Hepburn, an established screen star with strong box-office appeal. But Andrews was more than compensated by Mary Poppins. Not only did she win the 1964 Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Poppins, but Hepburn, who didn't do her own singing in the Fair Lady film, failed to win so much as a Best Actress nomination. In the same year's Golden Globes competition, Hepburn was indeed nominated, but lost to Andrews.
Directed by Robert Stevenson and with a screenplay by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, Mary Poppins co-starred the multi-talented Dick Van Dyke, who actually had a dual role, playing the hero, cockney street entertainer/sidewalk artist/chimney sweep Bert, and elderly bank president Mr. Dawes. Glynis Johns and David Tomlinson were ideal as the parents, and the cast included a number of colorful English character actors Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Baddeley, Arthur Treacher, Reginald Owen.
Shot entirely on studio soundstages, the film's dance highlights include Van Dyke's routine on the rooftops of London with his fellow sweeps, "Step in Time," and his dance with some animated penguin waiters in "Jolly Holiday." These and other sequences were choreographed by Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, who had assisted choreographer Michael Kidd on Broadway. Another Broadway talent, Irwin Kostal, arranged and conducted the music. Andrews' husband at the time, Tony Walton, was the film's costumer and design consultant.
When Disney's Mary Poppins opened in New York in September 1964 My Fair Lady would arrive a month later, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther called it "the nicest entertainment that has opened at the {Radio City} Music Hall this year....I find it irresistible. Plenty of other adults will feel the same way. And needless to say, so will the kids."
Critics hailed the film's skillful integration of live action with animation that allowed Bert, Mary, and Mary's two charges to pass through a street drawing into a cartoon wonderland of barnyard animals and an animated fox hunt and horse race.
In addition to Andrews' Oscar nomination, the film received a dozen additional nominations. It lost in the Best Picture category and several others to My Fair Lady. But in addition to Andrews' victory, Oscars were won by Mary Poppins' scoring, editing, and special effects, the latter highly proficient for the time. The film also took the Oscar for best song, for "Chim Chim Cheree," even though the full-length score by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman also included such delights as "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Jolly Holiday," "Feed the Birds," "Let's Go Fly a Kite," and, of course, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
Although Travers was reportedly dissatisfied with the picture she liked Andrews, but not the songs, Mary Poppins was a huge box-office success, with its soundtrack LP also a major seller. The picture's rentals were only surpassed in the '60s by The Sound of Music, which also boasted Andrews playing a no-nonsense governess. The combination of these two blockbuster hits made Andrews for a time the screen's top female box-office attraction. Meanwhile, the success of Mary Poppins led directly to such other elaborate musical screen fantasies as Doctor Dolittle, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the latter two also featuring songs by the Sherman Brothers.
Mary Poppins has been available on DVD for some time, but it has just been released in a new, fortieth-anniversary, two-disc special edition, the release coinciding with the London opening of the stage version of Mary Poppins, which joins Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the West End as the second Sherman Brothers film musical to be transferred to the stage. And just as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is headed to Broadway in the spring, the stage Mary Poppins will eventually follow it to New York. Unlike the additional stage songs for Chitty, those for Mary Poppins are not by the Shermans.
In addition to a handsomely restored edition of the picture, the first disc includes a full-length track of audio commentary reuniting Andrews with Van Dyke, and Richard Sherman with Karen Dotrice, who played little Jane Banks. Also heard in archival recordings are the voices of Walt Disney, Kostal, and Robert Sherman.
There's a good deal of information on such technical aspects of the picture as animatronics and matte-painting backdrops. It's revealed that Disney's initial casting notion was Bette Davis for Mary and Danny Kaye for Bert. Andrews, who filmed Princess Diaries II on the same soundstage used for Poppins, pays extensive tribute to Walton's contribution. Robert Sherman says the film is about women's liberation, while his brother states that everyone involved in the production knew they were working on a very special film.
Disc Two opens with three featurettes about the score. Richard Sherman plays and sings a cut song written for Mary to sing at Uncle Albert's, "The Chimpanzoo," with Sherman's rendition accompanied by storyboard sketches. Next is a reunion around a piano of Sherman with Andrews and Van Dyke. Sherman recalls the song "Through the Eyes of Love" that was replaced by "A Spoonful of Sugar" at Andrews suggestion, and gets Andrews and Van Dyke to reprise "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." Then there's a twenty-minute "Musical Journey" with Sherman, which includes extensive information on cut songs, some of which the Shermans recycled in later films.
There's a new animated short, The Cat That Looked at a King, based on one of Travers' Poppins stories, and featuring live-action sections with Andrews. What with her recent appearances in Broadway: The American Musical and the Cinderella DVD, Andrews has never been busier revisiting her roots.
A fifty-minute documentary on the making of the film includes the on-camera recollections of Andrews, Van Dyke, Dotrice, Johns, Walton, and the Shermans, and treats the film as the crowning glory of Disney's career. We learn of the extreme difficulty Disney had in negotiating the rights, and get to hear tape recordings of meetings with the demanding Travers.
We're told that Mary Martin and Angela Lansbury were also considered for the title role, but that Andrews' appearance in numbers from Camelot on "The Ed Sullivan Show" clinched it for her. We learn that Johns had hoped to play the title role, and only agreed to play Mrs. Banks if she got a song. Van Dyke admits that, as many have noted, his cockney accent in the film is pretty dreadful. Also duly noted is the 1977 death of Matthew Garber, who played young Michael Banks.
Then it's on to the technical aspects, including a demonstration of how animation was mixed with live action. The score "Feed the Birds" was Disney's favorite song and choreography are discussed, as are the huge critical and financial success of the finished film.
And there's still more. A "Movie Magic" short deals with such special effects as audio animatronics, stop-motion animation, wire work, and process screens. By separating the various elements involved, there's a demonstration of how the "Jolly Holliday" and "Step in Time" sequences were created. And there's extensive footage covering the world premiere of the picture, at L.A.'s Grauman's Chinese Theatre, with glimpses of everyone from Andrews, Van Dyke and Disney to Ann Miller, Celeste Holm, and Annette Funicello.