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WALT DISNEY

RESISTS

P.L. TRAVERS

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles

August 27th 1964

It is all smiles as Walt Disney and his most recent collaborator, P.L. Travers, pose with Julie Andrews at the world premiere of Mary Poppins. This, he tells reporters, is the movie he has been dreaming of making ever since 1944, when he first heard his wife and children laughing at a book and asked them what it was. At his side, Travers, aged sixty-five, appears equally thrilled. ‘It’s a splendid film and very well cast!’ she enthuses.

The premiere is a lavish affair. A miniature train rolls down Hollywood Boulevard with Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Peter Rabbit, the Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf, Pluto, a skunk and four dancing penguins on board. At the cinema, the Disneyland staff are dressed as English bobbies; at the party afterwards, grinning chimney-sweeps frolic to music from a band of Pearly Kings and Queens.

The next day, Travers is over the moon, wiring her congratulations to ‘Dear Walt’. The film is, she says, ‘a splendid spectacle … true to the spirit of Mary Poppins’. Disney’s response is a little more guarded. He is happy to have her reactions, he says, and appreciates her taking the time, but what a pity that ‘the hectic activities before, during and after the premiere’ prevented them from seeing more of each other.

Travers writes back, thanking Disney for thanking her for thanking him. The film is, she says, ‘splendid, gay, generous and wonderfully pretty’ – even if, for her, the real Mary Poppins remains within the covers of her books. On her copy, she adds a note saying that it is a letter ‘with much between the lines’. The same month, she complains to her London publisher that the film is ‘simply sad’.

Those smiles at the premiere are, in fact, the first and the last they will ever exchange. Pamela Travers is a long-time devotee of Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, Yeats and Blake. For her, the Mary Poppins books were never just children’s stories, but intensely personal reflections of her Alphabetti Spaghetti blend of philosophy, mysticism, theosophy, Zen Buddhism, duality, and the oneness of everything. In the last year of her life, she will reveal to an interviewer that Mary Poppins is related to the mother of God. Disney’s own conception of the finger-clicking nanny is rather more straightforward.

Nothing about the film of Mary Poppins has been easy. The contract alone took sixteen years to negotiate: Travers finally accepts 5 per cent of gross profits, with a guarantee of $100,000. But this is to prove inadequate compensation: she soon begins to complain that Disney is ‘without subtlety and emasculates any character he touches, replacing truth with false sentimentality’.

Walt Disney’s attitude to Travers is one of damage limitation. He wants to keep her on board, but positioned as far as possible from the driver’s seat. This does not stop Travers making frequent lunges for the steering wheel, generally with a view to forcing the vehicle into reverse. She complains about everybody and everything, even stretching to the type of measuring tape Mary Poppins would use.^*

She objects to all the Americanisms that seem to be creeping in – ‘outing’, ‘freshen up’, ‘on schedule’, ‘Let’s go fly a kite’ – and considers the servants much too common and vulgar. Furthermore, the Banks home is much too grand, and any suggestion of a romance between Mary Poppins and the cockney chimneysweep Bert is utterly distasteful. Finally, she objects to Mrs Banks being portrayed as a suffragette, and considers the Christian name they impose on her – Cynthia – ‘unlucky, cold and sexless’, her own preference being Winifred.

Travers even believes her responsibilities extend to the casting.^* The day after Julie Andrews gives birth, she phones her in hospital. ‘P.L. Travers here. Speak to me. I want to hear your voice.’ When they finally meet, her first remark to the actress is, ‘Well, you’ve got the nose for it.’

Mary Poppins is a worldwide success. Costing $5.2 million to make, it grosses $50 million. But the more the money rolls in, the more Travers’ attitude to the film and its creator sours. She tells Ladies’ Home Journal that she hated parts of the film, like the animated horse and pig, and disapproved of Mary Poppins kicking up her gown and showing her underwear, and disliked the billboards saying ‘Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins’ when they should have said ‘P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins’.

She writes to a friend that Disney wishes her dead, and is furious with her for not obliging. ‘After all, until now, all his authors have been dead and out of copyright.’ But there is always the promise of a sequel, and yet more money. It is only when Disney dies in December 1966^† that her objections become more concentrated and vocal. In 1967, she says that the film was ‘an emotional shock, which left me deeply disturbed’, and in 1968 that she ‘couldn’t bear’ it – ‘all that smiling’. In 1972, she declares in a lecture that ‘When I was doing the film with George Disney – that is his name, isn’t it – George? – he kept insisting on a love affair between Mary Poppins and Bert. I had a terrible time with him.’

Her invitation to the world premiere is, it later emerges, not achieved without a struggle. Failing to receive an invitation, she instructs her lawyer, agent and publisher to demand one on her behalf. When it is still not forthcoming, she sends a telegram to Disney himself, informing him she is in the States, and plans on attending the premiere: she is sure somebody will find a seat for her, and will he let her know the details? Her attendance is, she adds, essential ‘for the dignity of the books’.

Disney writes back saying that he has always been counting on her presence at the London premiere, but is now delighted to know she will also be able to come to the premiere in Los Angeles. And yes, they will happily hold a seat for her.