Todd James Pierce’s new book Making Mary Poppins is an essential read for anyone interested in the making of the 1964 classic Mary Poppins or the complex dynamics of creative adaptation. It excels by moving beyond the warm, “feel good” mythologies presented in the film Saving Mr. Banks to deliver a detailed, academic, yet highly engaging account.
The central thesis isn’t the magic of Disney, but the three-way dynamic interplay between Walt Disney’s vision for family entertainment, P.L. Travers’ fiercely protective, esoteric, and ultimately more somber literary vision, and an unlikely pair of brothers who delivered musical magic.
When we watch “Mary Poppins” today, we see seamless magic – Julie Andrews descending from the clouds, Dick Van Dyke dancing across rooftops, and a spoonful of sugar making everything delightful. What we don’t see is the extraordinary twenty-year war of wills that made this masterpiece possible, a conflict between two creative, stubborn individuals with fundamentally opposing visions of what children’s entertainment should be paired with an unlikely duo of musical brothers.
Beyond the Fairy Tale
If you’ve seen Saving Mr. Banks, you know the Hollywood version of this story – a heartwarming tale of Walt Disney melting the icy heart of difficult author P.L. Travers. The reality, as revealed in Pierce’s exhaustive research, is far more complex, fascinating, and revealing about the nature of creative adaptation. This wasn’t a story of one person being right and another being wrong. It was a collision between two legitimate but incompatible artistic philosophies, each championed by a brilliant, stubborn creator who refused to compromise their core values.
The Woman Who Wouldn’t Be Charmed
P.L. Travers was not simply obstinate, as she’s often portrayed. She was a deeply private literary artist who viewed Mary Poppins as something almost sacred – a mystical figure drawn from esoteric traditions, mythology, and her own complex inner world. To Travers, Mary Poppins wasn’t meant to be likable or warm. She was meant to be transformative, enigmatic, and even frightening at times.
For two decades, Walt Disney pursued her, not with simple charm but with persistent negotiations, contract loopholes, and the considerable financial leverage of his studio. Travers resisted because she understood something fundamental: Disney didn’t just want to adapt her books. He wanted to translate them into an entirely different language – the language of American family entertainment, with its emphasis on optimism, sentiment, and emotional transparency.
Her concerns were genuine and literary. She worried that additions like the animated penguin sequence or the nonsense word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” would strip away the story’s emotional and mystical core, replacing depth with spectacle. She feared her complex character would be flattened into mere cheerfulness. And in many ways, she was right to worry – Disney absolutely intended to transform her creation. The miracle is that the final film somehow honored both visions.
Walt’s Last Great Crusade
For Walt Disney in the early 1960s, Mary Poppins represented something personal and urgent. This was his last major attempt to personally champion a new type of feature film, one that could blend live-action sophistication with the enchantment that had made his animated features legendary. He was deeply involved in every aspect, viewing the project through his famous three-part creative lens: as dreamer, as realist, and as critic.
Disney’s genius manifested in unexpected ways on set. He possessed an unusual ability to tour a finished set, examine the physical props and environments, and spontaneously generate comedic moments and bits of character business. Associates described watching him immerse himself in a scene, feeling every expression and reaction, discovering spontaneous ways the characters might interact with their world. The famous color-changing medicine trick – a multi-chambered prop bottle that elicited genuine surprise from the child actors – exemplified this approach. Disney understood that magic needed to feel immediate and real, not just technically proficient.
His team had to navigate Travers’ constantly shifting demands, often placating her while simultaneously moving the production forward. It was a delicate dance, requiring both respect for her concerns and commitment to Disney’s own vision of what the film needed to be.
The Unsung Heroes: Robert and Richard Sherman
Between these two powerful personalities stood Robert and Richard Sherman, the musical brothers who became the creative buffers this impossible project required. Their background made them uniquely qualified for this nearly impossible task.
As sons of Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman, they’d grown up immersed in American popular song, learning to write music that was accessible, catchy, and told complete stories in three minutes. Their early success with pop hits like “Tall Paul” gave them an ear for contemporary arrangements that would keep the songs from sounding dated. When Walt hired them in 1960, they became his in-house composers, creating music for theme park attractions and films, absorbing the Disney philosophy of balancing fantasy, family appeal, and narrative clarity.
Mary Poppins demanded unprecedented range from them. They had to satisfy Walt’s desire for spectacle while accommodating Travers’ demand for psychological complexity – and somehow make these opposing requirements work together.
Their musical discipline allowed them to write songs that spoke directly to characters’ inner lives. “The Life I Lead” and “A Man Has Dreams” are almost operatic in their dramatic focus on Mr. Banks’ misery and eventual epiphany – far more complex than typical Disney fare. “Feed the Birds,” Walt’s personal favorite, embodied the gentle yet profound message of charity and neglected beauty that resonated with Travers’ deeper themes.
Simultaneously, their Disney experience enabled them to create grand spectacle numbers like “Jolly Holiday” and “Step in Time,” with complex rhythmic structures and vivid imagery perfectly tailored for animation and cinematic choreography.
Their masterwork of balance might be “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” – pure Disney showmanship and fun, yet cleverly framed by Bert as something to say when you haven’t anything to say, subtly aligning with Travers’ theme of language’s limitations. The Sherman Brothers were equipped with the technical skill of pop writers and the thematic understanding of Disney collaborators, enabling them to create a score that was simultaneously a commercial smash and a deeply textured, narrative-driven masterpiece.
The Transformation of Bert
One of the most significant creative departures from Travers’ original books was the character of Bert. In the novel, he’s a minor figure – a “Match Man” who briefly appears as a chalk artist and has tea with Mary Poppins in one of his drawings before largely disappearing from the narrative.
Disney and the Sherman Brothers recognized that the film’s episodic structure needed a friendly, recurring presence to hold it together. They expanded Bert into a jack-of-all-trades figure, positioning him as Mary Poppins’ confidant and an unofficial narrator guiding the audience and the Banks children through the magic.
Bert cycles through several distinct jobs throughout the film: one-man band and pavement artist (leading to the animated “Jolly Holiday” sequence), chimney sweep (leading to “Step in Time”), and kite seller (providing the means for Mr. Banks’ ultimate redemption). This continuous presence allowed Bert to act as a foil to Mr. Banks – a poor, happy grown-up versus a wealthy, miserable one – providing the structural glue that held the musical’s fantastical segments together.
Dick Van Dyke’s warm, accessible performance made Bert the audience’s entry point into Mary Poppins’ world, a creative decision that Travers initially resisted but which proved essential to the film’s success.
The Messy Reality of Creative Genius
What emerges from Pierce’s detailed historical account is a truth that Hollywood prefers to gloss over: great art often comes from friction, not harmony. The enduring magic of Mary Poppins lies not just in its performances or technical effects, but in the volatile yet ultimately productive tension between opposing creative visions.
Travers never fully made peace with the adaptation. Disney never fully understood why she couldn’t see the magic he was creating. The Sherman Brothers spent years caught between them, somehow finding ways to honor both perspectives. And from this uncomfortable, frustrating, brilliant process came a film that has enchanted audiences for six decades.
The real story behind “Mary Poppins” isn’t about one genius bending another to their will. It’s about the messy, human reality of creative compromise – about what happens when talented, passionate people with fundamentally different values are forced to work together. Sometimes, just sometimes, the result transcends what any single vision could have achieved alone.
That’s the real magic worth remembering.
Making Mary Poppins is a must-have for any serious Disney library. While I have long been fascinated with the original movie, and have multiple books on both P.L. Travers and the Disney movies and stage productions, this book delivers extraordinary behind the scene stories from the key players who made the magic.
This article is the first of four planned for December, three highlighting brand new Disney books just released and one classic about Christmas and Disney:
- Making Mary Poppins, by Todd James Pierce – read more here.
- The Vault of Walt, by Jim Korkis – read more here.
- Xavier “X” Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend, by Tori Atencio McCullough, Kelsey McCullough, and Bobbie Lucas – read more here.
- Worlds to Conquer: The Art and Making of Walt Disney’s Fantasia, by J.B. Kaufman – read more here.
Part of a regular series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader.
During my elementary school years one of the things I looked forward to the most was the delivery of “My Weekly Reader,” a weekly educational magazine designed for children and containing news-based current events.
It became a regular part of my love for reading, and helped develop my curiosity about the world around us.
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