“Mary Poppins” arrives with a tagline that promises it is “the fairest of them all…the funniest of them all!” That is a lot to carry. The 1964 film, directed by Robert Stevenson for Walt Disney, mostly earns it. It runs 139 minutes, and it is a musical comedy built on live-action and animation, with songs by the Sherman Brothers and a screenplay by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi from P. L. Travers’s books.
Trailer, via Disney UK.
A Nanny Floats Into Edwardian London
The story opens in 1910. Winifred Banks comes home to Edwardian London from a suffragette rally and learns that her children, Jane and Michael, have run away “for the fourth time this week.” Their nanny, Katie Nanna, quits. That night George Banks, Winifred’s strict and ambitious husband, returns from his job at the bank and writes an advertisement for a stern, no-nonsense nanny. Jane and Michael write their own, asking for someone kind and sympathetic. George tears it up and throws the scraps in the fireplace.
A strong wind pulls the scraps up the chimney and into the sky. The next day a line of sour-faced nannies waits outside the house, and a gust blows them away. Jane and Michael watch a young woman float down from the sky under an open umbrella. She introduces herself as Mary Poppins and hands George the children’s advertisement, the scraps put back together. She agrees with what the children asked for, promises George she will be firm, and talks him into hiring her.
Julie Andrews plays Mary in her feature film debut, and the film turns on her. She had a stage career behind her and got the part soon after Jack L. Warner passed her over and replaced her with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle in his screen version of “My Fair Lady,” a role Andrews had originated on Broadway. She was three months pregnant when Disney approached her. Disney said they would postpone filming until she had given birth so she could take the part.
Bert, the Park, and the Carousel
Mary helps the children clean their nursery with a song, “A Spoonful of Sugar.” On a walk in the park the three meet Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke, a jack of all trades working that day as a street painter and Mary’s best friend. Mary moves the group into one of Bert’s drawings. The children ride a carousel while Mary and Bert stroll and sing “Jolly Holiday.” They all join a horse race, and Mary wins.
The film was shot entirely at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, using painted London background scenes. The London of this film is a painted thing, and the movie knows it. The film combines live-action and animation, and the sequences where the two meet are where the budget and the ambition meet. The film never pretends the drawing is real. It invites you in instead.
Van Dyke does double duty. He plays Bert and also Mr. Dawes Sr. David Tomlinson plays Mr. Banks and supplies the voice of Mary’s talking umbrella, Admiral Boom’s first mate, and other voice-over parts. Andrews, for her part, provided the whistling harmony for the robin during “A Spoonful of Sugar” and was one of the Pearly singers during “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
The Cast That Almost Was
The casting file on “Mary Poppins” is a document of near-misses. In March 1961 Disney said it might cast Hayley Mills and Mary Martin. Julie Harris, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Barbara Eden, Elizabeth Taylor, Jayne Mansfield, Natalie Wood, and Elizabeth Montgomery were all considered for Mary. For Bert, the list included Bert Convy, Sean Connery, Bob Denver, Adam West, Andy Williams, Cary Grant, Jamie Farr, and Andy Griffith.
Before Ed Wynn was cast as Uncle Albert, the film considered Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, George Burns, Bob Hope, Jack Albertson, Jim Backus, Alan Hale Jr., Kirk Douglas, and Lorne Greene. Stanley Holloway was considered for Admiral Boom, but the part went to Reginald Owen because Holloway was committed to “My Fair Lady.”
| Role | Cast | Considered but not cast |
|---|---|---|
| Mary Poppins | Julie Andrews | Julie Harris, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood |
| Bert | Dick Van Dyke | Sean Connery, Cary Grant, Adam West, Andy Griffith, Andy Williams |
| Uncle Albert | Ed Wynn | Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, George Burns, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas |
| Admiral Boom | Reginald Owen | Stanley Holloway |
The table is worth reading twice. Any of those Bert candidates would have made a different film. Van Dyke’s Bert is the film’s most physical presence, and the movie leans on him hard.
The Supporting Household
The rest of the cast fills the house and the streets around it. David Tomlinson’s George Banks is the film’s real subject, a man who has arranged his life around the bank and his own advancement and has left his children at the edges of it. Glynis Johns plays Winifred, whose suffragette rally opens the film and whose politics sit in the same house as her husband’s ambition.
Hermione Baddeley is Ellen. Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber are Jane and Michael. Elsa Lanchester is Katie Nanna, the nanny who quits before the story starts. Arthur Treacher is the Constable. Reginald Owen is Admiral Boom. Ed Wynn is Uncle Albert. Reta Shaw is Mrs. Brill.
That is a deep bench for a family film, and it is used well. The household scenes are the ones that carry weight. The musical numbers are the ones people remember.
What the Film Won, and What It Made
“Mary Poppins” opened on August 27, 1964, to critical acclaim and commercial success. It earned $44 million in theatrical rentals in its original run, became the highest-grossing film of 1964 in the United States, and at the time of release became Disney’s highest-grossing film. Over its theatrical lifetime it grossed more than $103 million worldwide.
It received thirteen Academy Award nominations, a record for any film released by Walt Disney Studios and Walt Disney Cartoons, including Best Picture. It won five: Best Actress for Andrews, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Song for “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” In 2013 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The published critical score is 8.8/10, with a Metacritic of 88/100.
Where the 139 Minutes Actually Go
Here is the case against the film, and it is a real one. At 139 minutes it is long for what it is. The middle act, built around Bert and the drawing and the carousel and the horse race, is a stretch of pure spectacle. The film’s pleasures there are real but they are not the reason the film matters.
The reason it matters is George Banks. The film opens with a man who has left his children at the edges of his life. Mary employs music and adventure to help the children become closer to their father. Mary Poppins is the mechanism, not the point. She arrives, she works on the family’s dynamic, and she leaves. The movie is honest about that in a way most family films of the era were not.
The score is the other thing that holds. “Chim Chim Cher-ee” won the Oscar, and it is the right choice among the songs, but “A Spoonful of Sugar” and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” are the ones that stuck. The Sherman Brothers wrote songs that do work in the film and out of it, which is rarer than the awards record suggests.
The weaknesses are the ones a 1964 children’s musical was never going to avoid. Some of the pacing is slack. Some of the comedy is broad. The painted London is a choice, and it is not one. And the film’s answer to a hard problem is a soft one. But the film is not pretending otherwise. It is a musical comedy, and it says so.
What makes “Mary Poppins” worth the 139 minutes is that it takes the trouble to make the family worth saving. The children are not props. George is not a villain. Winifred is not a joke. That is a sturdier structure than the tagline suggests, and it is why the film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2013.
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