60 years of 'Mary Poppins': Still pitch perfect with a spoonful of sugar
In 1964, Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins gracefully floated onto cinema screens around the world via umbrella, on a quest to mend the cracks deep within the Banks family. Sixty years ago, with a spoonful of sugar and a disconcerting love for the pigeons at the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, this disarming no-nonsense pitch-perfect nanny captured the hearts of film buffs wherever there was a big screen. Thirty years ago, she captured mine on VHS. She hasn’t really let go ever since. And I don’t think she ever will.
A story woven with magic: true family fun
For a kid in the nineties inserting a video in the VCR, Mary Poppins is the film that truly had it all. An unforgettable musical score. A runaway kite. A blonde airhead mother. A joyless father. A nanny with a flying umbrella and ramrod posture. Learning that a spoonful of sugar is the cure-all for any problem. Magic snapping fingers. Waltzing penguins. A deliciously long word to be used as a trump card in any hangman game: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Floating to the ceiling in a helpless fit of laughter. A formidable bank overthrown by two children. A breathtaking view of the London skyline. Gallivanting about rooftops. Dancing chimney sweeps. A father who finds his children again. And a mended kite that soars.
Watching as an adult, the hidden gems keep on coming. I present before you the delightful Mrs Banks, who has a cause very dear to her heart: women’s rights. Mrs Banks has not an iota of interest in parenting, preferring to outsource that odious task. She does, however, nurse a passion for women’s rights (although this passion comes second in the face of husbandly commands.) She packs rotten eggs in her bag to throw at the Prime Minister on a planned outing to Downing Street. She even wears Votes for Women ribbons, although these are hastily hidden away as soon as she realises her husband is on his way home, because “you know how the cause infuriates Mr Banks!”
To Mr Banks, with love
And of course, how could we not ache for the frowny Mr Banks? Mr Banks adores order and toils away in a heartless bank, blind to his children's naked need for affection. He rips up their (admittedly ridiculous) advertisement for a nanny. He gets repeatedly manipulated – albeit for the greater good – by Mary Poppins, whom he hires without quite figuring out how. To his credit, Mr Banks does attempt to fire her a few weeks down the line after realising his catastrophic negotiating skills. However, instead of firing her, he ends up giving Mary Poppins the day off and agreeing to take his children to work the following morning instead. He has no clue how this transpired.
Meanwhile, upstairs as she is getting the children ready for bed, Mary Poppins sings them to sleep with Feed The Birds, a musical composition scientifically proven to reduce us to a blubbering mess. “Though her words are simple and few,” sings Mary Poppins, ostensibly about a bird woman in London. “Listen, listen – she’s calling to you.” As an adult, you understand Feed The Birds for what it really is: a coded plea to pay attention to your children. Listen to your children, she is saying. Hear what they have to say. Mend their broken kite. It costs you nothing. But it means the world to them.
Mr Banks doesn’t get the memo immediately. But later the following night as he walks home a broken man after being fired from the bank, he remembers the most important thing of all: the kite. Finally understanding that the broken kite is no different to the broken bond between him and his children, Mr Banks knows what he must do.
As the Banks leave the house for the final time to fly their mended kite – this time together - without once looking back for Mary Poppins, we know her work here is done. She flew in when the Banks needed her, and now that they are whole again, she has to leave. To us, it is a poignant goodbye. But the moment that kite soars to the skies, we cheer for Mr Banks. We weep for the children who found their parents, and for the parents who will hold them a little closer. Our hearts are full.
Heartbreak for PL Travers, victory for Julie Andrews
The one person whose heart was far from full was PL Travers, the woman who wrote the Mary Poppins books and was pursued by a determined Disney for 20 years so he could win the rights to her beloved creation. A most unwilling Travers eventually acquiesced and regretted it almost immediately. She left the theatre sobbing after seeing the film for the first time. The penguins appear to have been a particularly sore point. (Travers was famously anti-animation.) Saving Mr Banks (2013), Disney’s version of a love letter to itself, would have you believe that Travers, brought impeccably to life by the wonderful Emma Thompson, overlooked the animation and left the cinema sobbing after being touched to the core at Mr Banks’ redemption. It makes for a stirring story but appears to be the stuff of fiction. According to a 2005 New Yorker article, Travers’ immediate words of horror after watching the film were, ‘Oh, God, what have they done?’” – not quite the sentiments of a woman wracked with joy.
Travers may have loathed the film with a flaming passion, but this was the role that ensured Julie Andrews became a household name. At the time, Andrews had been hoping to portray Eliza Doolittle in the film adaptation of My Fair Lady (1964) after portraying Eliza on stage from 1956-1959. However, producer Jack Warner opted for the more cinematically palatable Audrey Hepburn, leaving a snubbed Andrews free to pursue Mary Poppins instead. With her cut-glass pronunciation and clear-as-a-bell vocals working their magic alongside Richard and Robert Sherman’s music, Andrews ended up making Mary Poppins her very own. Never one to let a good dose of pettiness slide, she made sure to thank Warner in her acceptance speech after beating out Hepburn for the Golden Globes that year.
As for me, I have found my spoonful of sugar. Have I not, on these hallowed pages, extolled the virtues of wireless headphones to help finish horrible chores? I may not be able to snap my fingers to put away laundry, but with good posture and my headphones to help the medicine go down, I know I’ll get there. Six decades down the line, Mary Poppins’ message still rings true.
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