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# Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey # Chim chim... | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
In 1964 the Disney film Mary Poppins was released to worldwide acclaim. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:15 | |
#..chim chim cher-oo | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
# Good luck will rub off when I shakes 'ands with you | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
# Oh, blow me a kiss... | 0:00:20 | 0:00:22 | |
# And that's lucky too... # | 0:00:23 | 0:00:25 | |
The film told of a magical world | 0:00:26 | 0:00:28 | |
where chimney sweeps are happier than bankers, | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
where you can jump into living pictures on the pavement. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
Or should that be sidewalk? | 0:00:32 | 0:00:34 | |
It made an international star of Julie Andrews overnight, | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
and it changed forever our concept of what a nanny is, | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
or should be. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
And the songs... Who could forget the songs? | 0:00:42 | 0:00:44 | |
# Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
# Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious... | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
But one person hated the film's cheery tone... | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
# Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious # | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
..the author of the Mary Poppins books, PL Travers. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:01 | |
In contrast with the practically perfect world of the movie, | 0:01:03 | 0:01:07 | |
her own life was complex and troubled. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
As a single woman, PL Travers adopted a baby. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
Who knew that was allowed in the 1930s? | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
But it all went horribly wrong and she nearly tore her own family apart. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
50 years later, the Disney Corporation has made another movie about HER. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
Would PL Travers have liked this one? | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
Will it set the record straight? | 0:01:42 | 0:01:44 | |
Can her bumpy, quirky, controversial life story be told on film at all? | 0:01:44 | 0:01:48 | |
All I knew is, those guys can dance! | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
Or is it too strange for Hollywood, even now? | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
Good luck. Thank you, everybody. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:01 | |
Everyone's heard of Mary Poppins, | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
but far fewer can name its author. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:18 | |
Many have no idea of the real origins of the world's most famous nanny. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:24 | |
Mary Poppins began life as a book in 1934. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:30 | |
This atmospheric cottage in Sussex was the rented home of PL Travers, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:40 | |
who had just turned 35. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
When she was younger, she had wanted to be an actress. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
This is her playing Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
But she moved on to become a well-established poet and art critic. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:56 | |
Now, she was starting her first novel. | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
At the time, she was cohabiting with a friend, Madge Burnand. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:06 | |
Biographers have speculated they were romantically involved, | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
and that PL Travers had unconventional romances with men and women throughout her life, | 0:03:11 | 0:03:16 | |
but she never wrote or talked about this. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:21 | |
In her writing, PL Travers created a more conventional family, the Banks family. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
She chose as her subject one of the great English preoccupations - | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
nursery life - | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
a relatively untapped seam, the relationship between a nanny and her charges. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:43 | |
"Mary Poppins' eyes were fixed upon him, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:49 | |
and Michael suddenly discovered that you could not look at Mary Poppins, and disobey her. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:55 | |
There was something strange and extraordinary about her, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
something that was frightening, yet at the same time, most exciting." | 0:03:58 | 0:04:03 | |
I like the cottagey-ness of this room. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:07 | |
I went to Golden Eye once where Ian Fleming used to write, and it was very glamorous. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:11 | |
You could imagine that's where you create stories of spies drinking martinis, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
and seducing beautiful women, | 0:04:14 | 0:04:16 | |
but this feels just the place for stories | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
about children creeping out of bed at night and having adventures. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
You can see sort of fields and sky, | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
so there's a sense of, you know, what lies out there beyond our little world. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:29 | |
It's quite Poppins-y. I like it. I'm glad it was written here. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
Despite the book being quintessentially English, | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
PL Travers was actually not English at all. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
She was Australian, | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
born and brought up in this small town in Queensland at the turn of the last century. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
And her real name wasn't Pamela Travers. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
She was christened Helen Lyndon Goff. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
Her father worked in the town bank, just like the father in Mary Poppins. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
But there were key differences. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:08 | |
Unlike Mr Banks in her story, PL Travers' father failed as a banker, and he struggled with drink. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:14 | |
He died young, in his early 40s, | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
almost certainly of alcoholism. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
PL Travers was just seven years old. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:21 | |
Her mother found it increasingly hard to cope, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:27 | |
and shortly afterwards, attempted suicide. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:31 | |
PL Travers always claimed her turbulent upbringing had little influence on the book. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:38 | |
"I don't know that it is based on my personal life. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
I think Mr Banks is a little bit like my father. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
And Mrs Banks, in her most flustered, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
is perhaps a little bit like my mother. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
But really I don't think it is based on my childhood." | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
But at the heart of the book was the character of Mary Poppins herself, | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
the clipped, strict, but ultimately mysterious nanny who had blown in on an east wind. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:07 | |
It's hard to find a modern-day book or article about hiring a nanny | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
that doesn't mention Mary Poppins. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
At Norland College in Bath, they train nannies in the art, or is it a science - | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
- it's certainly a mystery - | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
of looking after babies and children. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
We are going to show you the old way to do it with the blankets and the sheet. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:44 | |
-OK. -The seam is always away from the child. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
You need to make sure there is so much room for tucking in. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:49 | |
No sleeping with a hat on, no pillows for the baby. It needs to be completely flat. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
What about my granny's old rule - no cats in the nursery, or the child will be hairy? | 0:06:52 | 0:06:57 | |
We definitely wouldn't advise any pets in the nursery. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:02 | |
No, because it can make people grow fur like a cat. My granny knew this. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
It's not written about. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:07 | |
Because it's 2013, they need extra skills. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
Tae Kwon Do. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:16 | |
Kidnap defence. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:17 | |
Do not let go of the pushchair. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
And how to escape paparazzi in a high-speed car chase. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
Roadblock, roadblock. Paparazzi, quick, into reverse! | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
Maybe if PL Travers were writing today, Mr and Mrs Banks would have to have been Russian oligarchs. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:33 | |
Go, go, go. Go! | 0:07:33 | 0:07:35 | |
Go. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:36 | |
What do you think of Mary Poppins from the film? | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
Is that an inspiring figure? | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
-Definitely. -I like the bag. Fits everything in. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
It's a good bag. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:45 | |
In the books, the nanny rules the nursery, | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
and Mary Poppins just says this is how it is going to be, and the mum is terrified. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
Is that not the modern way? | 0:07:51 | 0:07:53 | |
Definitely not. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:54 | |
The old-fashioned nanny is quite a stern, sort of matronly type. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
I think that's how she is pictured in books and films, whereas we're not like that at all. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
The author of the books, PL Travers, let me tell you, would turn in her grave to hear that. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:07 | |
She never believed things should be geared around the children, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
and certainly not that there should be songs. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
It's all about making it fun. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
Obviously keeping everybody safe, and making sure what needs to be done is done, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
but doing it in the funnest, and most creative way possible. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
Is it recommended to put the children to bed, | 0:08:21 | 0:08:23 | |
and then get them up, and take them up on the roof for a dance? | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
-No. -No. -Not advisable. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
The character of Mary Poppins was inspired, at least partly, by a relative. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
After her mother attempted suicide, the young PL Travers latched onto a maiden great-aunt. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:45 | |
Aunt Ellie was reliable. She brought order and discipline. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
She was also formidable, she was bossy, and stern. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
Sound familiar? | 0:08:54 | 0:08:56 | |
PL Travers had strong views about the appearance of Mary Poppins. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:01 | |
She was no beauty, but rather plain, | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
similar to a doll that had belonged to the author as a girl. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
"The newcomer had shiny black hair, | 0:09:11 | 0:09:13 | |
rather like a wooden Dutch doll, and she was thin, | 0:09:13 | 0:09:17 | |
with large feet and hands, and small, rather peering blue eyes." | 0:09:17 | 0:09:23 | |
And mixed in with all this was her magic. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
When I was a child, I loved the magical potential in these stories. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
Like the Alice books, and the Narnia series, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
there was a sense in Mary Poppins that always a parallel magic universe was going on | 0:09:39 | 0:09:44 | |
you could slip in and out of, and there'd be no rules, and no bedtime. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
But like those other famous stories, Travers' books also had darkness in them. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:52 | |
There was fear, and sadness and loss. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
There's magic, but there is no forever. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
And I think children know there's no forever. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
They know about old age, they know about loss. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
The greatest works of children's literature always have dark shadows within them. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:09 | |
PL Travers' creativity all came together in that book of 1934, | 0:10:21 | 0:10:25 | |
a book that very nearly failed to see the light of day. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
It never occurred to me that anybody would want to publish it, | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
so I was writing it really for myself. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
And then a friend saw it, half written and said, | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
"I'll take this to a publisher", | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
and I thought, "Well, a publisher won't want this." | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
But apparently he did. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:48 | |
The publishing house was in London, so PL Travers would motor to Soho | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
in her beaten-up old BSA sports car. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
She was keen to take control of everything - | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
the artwork, the design of the cover, even the typeface. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
That autumn, the book came out. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
The initial print run sold out quickly. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
It was on the road to being a children's classic. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
Jenny Koralek, an author herself, knew PL Travers well. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:30 | |
She could be fun and funny, and bubbly, and a bit wacky. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
And the books have got that somewhere too. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
Was she an easy person to be friends with? | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
I get the sense she might have had a slightly mercurial temperament. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
No, she wasn't easy. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:48 | |
She was not at all easy. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
She kept parts of her life very private, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
and none of us realised she was Australian. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:56 | |
Until she finally confessed that she was! | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
Her dark secret? | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
She was a complicated, profoundly... unusual woman. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:07 | |
In the book, Mary Poppins arrives from nowhere, simply blown in by the wind. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:15 | |
PL Travers always maintained that the character had come into her mind in a similar way. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:21 | |
Mary Poppins was not her sitting down to concoct. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:28 | |
She appeared. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
She was very dramatic, and theatrical, and whimsical, | 0:12:30 | 0:12:35 | |
and when you were with her, and she said something like... | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
"She just came to me", and that's how she talked - | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
this creature sort of came up. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:43 | |
Out of God knows... As she puts it, God knows where. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
Jung would know where. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:48 | |
Mary Poppins was a nanny who slid up banisters. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
Even the author never knew what she might do next. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
To me it was a shock too when she rode up the banisters. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
I didn't know she was going to do it. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:04 | |
And again and again, when I read back over the books, I am surprised. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:10 | |
And I think to myself, | 0:13:10 | 0:13:12 | |
"Well, how did she think of that?" | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
PL Travers's imagination was broader than we might presume in a children's author. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:23 | |
Rather surprisingly, PL Travers also turned her hand to erotic writing. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:31 | |
Here she is in the literary magazine The Triad | 0:13:31 | 0:13:33 | |
inviting readers to imagine her taking off her underwear. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
"And then the silky hush of intimate things, | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
fragrant with my fragrance, | 0:13:43 | 0:13:45 | |
steel softly down, so loath to rob me of my last dear concealment." | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
Saucy... | 0:13:54 | 0:13:55 | |
In the end she went on to write six Mary Poppins books. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
Although they were marketed towards children, | 0:14:05 | 0:14:07 | |
she always saw them as books for grown-ups, too. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
Millions came to love her story of the magical nanny. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
It struck a chord with readers all over the world. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
This overseas success was to change everything for PL Travers. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
Over in Los Angeles, | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
a young girl called Diane had become a big fan of Mary Poppins. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
Diane was living an ordinary, all-American life... | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
..but for one important difference. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
Her father was Walt Disney. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
Disney had created a powerful new studio in Hollywood, | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
and was always on the hunt for source material. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
Thanks to his daughter's obvious enjoyment, he homed in on Mary Poppins. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:08 | |
Film historian Brian Sibley has investigated the life of Walt Disney, | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
and in particular, his relationship with PL Travers. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
In the 1940s, Disney was at the peak of his current success. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
He'd made Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
the first feature-length cartoon film with synchronised sound and colour. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
That film changed everything. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
More than 250,000 paintings like these | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
were created by Walt Disney and his band of artists | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
to make the most daring adventure in the history of motion pictures. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:47 | |
Dwarves' names fit their personalities. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:50 | |
This pompous-looking individual is Doc, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:53 | |
the self-appointed leader of the group. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:55 | |
He'd made it clear to people a film was capable of | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
carrying much more than just the comic antics of a mouse or duck. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
It could carry emotion, and character, and portray those things on the screen, | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
and also that it could play to an audience, not of children, | 0:16:04 | 0:16:08 | |
but a whole family audience. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:10 | |
And old sourpuss here is Grumpy, the woman-hater. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
Last but not least is Dopey. He's nice, but sort of silly. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:18 | |
He had an extraordinary nose for a good story. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
He really did. He sussed out a story the moment he read it. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
I think he instantly saw this would make a perfect motion picture. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
What do you think appealed to him? Was it just the principle of the magical nanny? | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
The true strength of the Poppins stories is the character herself, | 0:16:32 | 0:16:36 | |
because she comes from nowhere. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:38 | |
She's somebody whose magic is contained within her. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
It's something special and separate, and unfathomable in a way, | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
and I think he saw all those as very positive qualities he could make a story from. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:51 | |
What sort of image of family life do you think Walt Disney wanted to put out there? | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
What did he think about families, and what did he want to say about them? | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
Well, the interesting thing about Disney and families is that his own family, | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
as a child, was one that was quite a stressful and disturbing one, in many ways. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:06 | |
He had a father who was really quite brutal, and very severe and doctrinaire. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:13 | |
He had a loving mother, but it was a difficult childhood, | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
and I think he idealised the idea of the perfect family. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:20 | |
When he told his daughter he was going to get the rights to Mary Poppins | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
do you think he anticipated any trouble with that? | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
No, I don't think he did because, up till then, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
most of the stories that he had been working on, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
they were stories where the authors were not alive. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
You know, he was already toying with Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
His next film was Pinocchio, which... | 0:17:39 | 0:17:41 | |
All these authors were dead and buried. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:43 | |
As far as he was concerned, I don't think he saw that it was going to be a problem. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
But convincing this particular live-and-kicking author | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
would come to be Disney's biggest challenge. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
It was around this time that PL Travers attempted to create her own family. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
A real family. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
By now, after ten years of living together, | 0:18:04 | 0:18:06 | |
she and Madge had gone their separate ways. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
And as she neared her 40th birthday, | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
Pamela Travers decided to adopt a child. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
Her friends tried to stop her. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:23 | |
They thought she was crazy. They said she'd be an unsuitable parent. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
I think this is rather amazing. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
A 40-something single woman - possibly a gay 40-something single woman - | 0:18:31 | 0:18:34 | |
setting out to adopt a child, | 0:18:34 | 0:18:36 | |
determined to create a differently shaped family | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
in the teeth of social disapproval. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:41 | |
I think I thought that sort of thing started in about 2005. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
And yet here it is happening in 1939. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
We could make a documentary about her even if she hadn't written Mary Poppins. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
Her first attempt to create a family was completely bizarre. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
She tried to adopt the 16-year-old girl who cleaned her cottage. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
Despite her ingenious argument that the maid's parents had too many children as it was - | 0:19:14 | 0:19:18 | |
What's one kid give or take? - | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
the girl and her family refused. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
In a moment of pique, Travers sacked the maid. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:27 | |
Undeterred, the adoption fantasy remained lodged in her mind. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
A little while later, she heard of a new opportunity in Dublin. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:38 | |
PL Travers moved in Irish literary circles, | 0:19:41 | 0:19:45 | |
where she met the writer and critic Joseph Maunsel Hone, | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
biographer of WB Yeats. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:49 | |
His son and daughter-in-law were struggling to look after their large family. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:56 | |
Twin boys - Camillus and Anthony - had just been born. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:00 | |
The family couldn't cope financially or emotionally, | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
and decided to have them adopted. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
Quite naturally, they were keen the twins remained together, | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
but PL Travers would only agree to take one of the babies. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:18 | |
PL Travers believed in astrology, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
and asked her favourite astrologer to cast a horoscope for both the children. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
We've had a couple cast to see how they would have looked. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
The astrologer's conclusion was that the preferred baby would be Camillus, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:33 | |
saying, "All in all, it would be rare to find better cross rays between a child and it own mother. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:39 | |
So I would say, by all means, adopt him." | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
So PL Travers chose Camillus, and left his brother behind. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
But motherhood was far more demanding than she'd assumed. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:00 | |
Camillus cried most of the time, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:03 | |
and PL Travers even considered putting him in a babies' home. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
But she persevered, | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
and when he was old enough, she sent him to boarding school. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
PL Travers made the fateful decision | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
not to tell him that he was adopted, and had a twin brother. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:24 | |
After her own difficult upbringing, | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
with an alcoholic father and suicidal mother, | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
it seems she was sowing the seeds for a crisis in her new family later on. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:36 | |
A single mother. An adopted child. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:53 | |
Separated twins. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
This was all about as far removed as it could be from the traditional, nuclear family of PL Travers' books. | 0:21:55 | 0:22:00 | |
But those books don't necessarily show us a happy family. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
They're full of coldness and distance. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:07 | |
The lonely Banks children look to their nanny for love, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
but although she gives them magic, and she gives them order, | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
she never gives them tenderness. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
To please the apple-pie Disney contingent in America, | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
it might need jollying up for the screen. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
Walt Disney was bubbling with ideas for making Mary Poppins jollier, | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
but his plans were way too premature. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
He hadn't yet secured the film rights. | 0:22:39 | 0:22:41 | |
And PL Travers was not exactly his greatest fan. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:46 | |
Earlier, she'd written a scathing film review of Snow White. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
"Oh, he's clever, this Disney!" | 0:22:52 | 0:22:54 | |
Then I'll be fairest in the land! | 0:22:54 | 0:22:58 | |
"The very pith of his secret is the enlargement of the animal world, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
and a corresponding deflation of all human values. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
There is a profound cynicism at the root of his, as of all sentimentality." | 0:23:07 | 0:23:11 | |
Walt Disney's relationship with PL Travers was less of a walkover, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
more of a relentless trudge. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:23 | |
In 1959 he'd already spent over 15 years trying to persuade her to sell him the film rights to Mary Poppins. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:30 | |
But she kept saying no. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
By now she'd moved into London and was living in lovely Smith Street in Chelsea, | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
not unlike the Cherry Tree Lane of the books. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
PL Travers suspected the sentimental Disney would lighten up the darkness of her Poppins world. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:48 | |
For example, there's the story of Bad Wednesday. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:55 | |
Jane Banks has been a bit naughty | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
so Mary Poppins goes out and leaves her alone in the house, | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
and she's drawn by magic into an old Royal Doulton bowl. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:03 | |
In the bowl there's a big dark house with a strange old man cackling, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:08 | |
and saying to Jane, "You're very pretty. Why don't you live here with me?" | 0:24:08 | 0:24:12 | |
And Jane says, "I don't want to live here. I'm scared. I want to go home." | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
And the old man says, "You've gone into the past, there's no home. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:20 | |
Your family is not even born. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
You're going to be here with me forever." | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
And Jane screams and screams and screams, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
and Mary Poppins comes to get her. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
That's her punishment for having a tantrum. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
How dark is that? | 0:24:32 | 0:24:34 | |
It chilled my blood when I was a child, and the truth is, it still does now. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:38 | |
Bad Wednesday would surely never make it into a Disney film? | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
Walt Disney was not the only showman who tried to adapt Travers' books into a different art form. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:54 | |
It's a very sweet little crescent. | 0:24:56 | 0:24:58 | |
The world's most successful producer of stage musicals Cameron Mackintosh was keen to put on Mary Poppins. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:04 | |
The actual feel of that Cherry Tree Lane in the stage show | 0:25:04 | 0:25:09 | |
was taken from the street that we're in. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:11 | |
Ah, fabulous. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
He met PL Travers to try to win her over, | 0:25:14 | 0:25:16 | |
just as Walt Disney had tried many years before. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
It was about 1993, I finally went over to Cherry Tree Lane where Pamela lived, | 0:25:22 | 0:25:28 | |
and...or Ms Travers... | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
And you know, she was quite frail at that point, but sharp, | 0:25:30 | 0:25:36 | |
absolutely sharp. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:38 | |
And I soon found myself sort of like going back to school | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
as she sort of rigidly asked me questions, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:45 | |
and... | 0:25:45 | 0:25:46 | |
She was very suspicious that actually all I wanted was the title. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
And I made it very clear to her that my interests were actually because of her books. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:55 | |
She created a language for...for her characters which is unlike any other author. | 0:25:55 | 0:26:00 | |
She would never tell me when I kept saying about the characters... | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
I was trying to find the back story to Mrs Banks, | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
and if she didn't want to talk about something, she said, | 0:26:06 | 0:26:08 | |
"It just came to me", and that's it. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
No other explanation, she wouldn't give me any back story. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:14 | |
How do you see the character of Mary Poppins, who do you think that person is? | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
I think Mary Poppins was a mixture of herself, | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
Pamela, | 0:26:22 | 0:26:23 | |
and her aunt, that she brought up, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:25 | |
who was the one who had the great parrot umbrella. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:29 | |
She went sort of from pillar to post, | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
because you know, her father did drink a lot, | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
and did die young, and her mother she didn't really have much time for. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
I mean she was a very strange person as...you know, | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
because she wrote about an idealised kind of family life | 0:26:41 | 0:26:45 | |
in a way, that they never either had or knew about. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:50 | |
Did you feel any kinship with Walt Disney in his struggle? | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
Yes, I did in a way. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:55 | |
He pursued it for all those years, | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
and I think somebody like that needed to do it. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
She would never have volunteered it, and in fact, when it nearly all crashed | 0:27:00 | 0:27:04 | |
it was her lawyer who said, "Pamela, you must do this, | 0:27:04 | 0:27:08 | |
and I don't care - I'm going to force you to sign this contract." | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
In 1959, with the help of PL Travers' astute lawyer, | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
trans-Atlantic negotiations were re-opened in earnest. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
Disney hoped his perseverance might finally pay off. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
Disney made PL Travers his best offer yet. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
100,000 in cash! | 0:27:35 | 0:27:37 | |
5 per cent of the profits! | 0:27:39 | 0:27:41 | |
And script approval! | 0:27:41 | 0:27:43 | |
He rued the day he offered that. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:45 | |
After a 15-year stand-off, Travers agreed. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:52 | |
# For a spoonful of sugar | 0:27:56 | 0:27:58 | |
# Helps the medicine go down | 0:27:58 | 0:28:00 | |
# The medicine go down | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
# The medicine go down | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
# Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down | 0:28:04 | 0:28:09 | |
# In a most delightful way # | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
Thank you. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:14 | |
While Walt Disney was busy planning his cheerful version of the Banks family, | 0:28:22 | 0:28:26 | |
PL Travers' own small family of two was in full-blown crisis. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:30 | |
It all kicked off in 1956. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
Her adopted son Camillus - by then a handsome young man of 17 - | 0:28:36 | 0:28:41 | |
went for a drink in the King's Road. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:43 | |
Waiting in this pub was a man who has tracked Camillus down, | 0:28:44 | 0:28:47 | |
and has arranged to accidentally bump into him. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
His name was Anthony Hone. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:55 | |
The two have a lot in common. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:00 | |
They're the same age, they look strangely similar. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
Anthony knows he was adopted. | 0:29:06 | 0:29:08 | |
He knows he had siblings, and possibly a twin. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
They keep talking, keep drinking, and it all dawns on Camillus at once. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:16 | |
He's adopted, Pamela Travers is not his biological mother, | 0:29:16 | 0:29:20 | |
and this is his twin. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
It was a terrible shock for Camillus, and he had furious rows with his mother. | 0:29:26 | 0:29:31 | |
17 was a disastrous age to find out his life had been based on a lie. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
Kitty Travers is the daughter of Camillus, and the granddaughter of PL Travers. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:46 | |
Do you think that's something he came to terms with? | 0:29:47 | 0:29:51 | |
Well, it made him go completely bananas, | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
to have been lied to like that by someone you trust. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
He was absolutely devastated when he found out | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
that he was actually part of this huge, Irish family | 0:30:02 | 0:30:07 | |
of literary and artistic giants, | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
and to have been booted out of a family like that would be awfully hurtful. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:17 | |
I felt betrayed. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
Cheated. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:25 | |
Camillus died in 2011. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:29 | |
Nine years before his death, he took part in an Australian documentary. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
The thing about my mother was she was very hard to know | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
because she kept a great deal concealed. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
Even from her son, her only son. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
I couldn't believe that somebody I had loved and trusted for so long | 0:30:46 | 0:30:51 | |
could have been lying to me at the same time for so long. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
Once he found out he'd been adopted, that was the excuse for the kind of floodgates to open, | 0:30:57 | 0:31:02 | |
and to go at it, no holds barred. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:06 | |
And yeah... He never, never, never got over that, | 0:31:06 | 0:31:09 | |
and he always used is as an excuse for the rest of his life for all his bad behaviour. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:13 | |
How was her relationship with Camillus? | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
Do you think she could she see that he was still struggling with that finding out? | 0:31:16 | 0:31:21 | |
Do you think she felt guilty? | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
I certainly don't think she would have ever accepted any guilt. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
I really don't think so. I certainly never heard her express any guilt ever. | 0:31:28 | 0:31:32 | |
So what did she think? That he should count himself lucky to have been adopted? | 0:31:34 | 0:31:37 | |
That it was written in the stars that it was... | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
It was written in the stars that he was meant for her. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
Camillus hit the bottle hard. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:49 | |
In early 1960 he was caught drunk-driving, and lost his licence. | 0:31:49 | 0:31:53 | |
But that didn't stop him. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:57 | |
A few months later he was driving down a Middlesex Road | 0:31:57 | 0:32:01 | |
drunk again. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
The Police pulled him over, and he was arrested. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:05 | |
Camillus got six months in prison. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
# Oh, it's a jolly 'oliday with Mary... | 0:32:11 | 0:32:15 | |
Mary Poppins' jolly holiday was in sharp contrast to the life of the awful son. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:22 | |
# ..ordinary... # | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
His 21st birthday was spent in Stafford Maximum Security Prison. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:29 | |
Yet another brutal shock for Camillus and his mother. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:33 | |
The timing was horribly ironic. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:39 | |
This was all happening while PL Travers was finalising the deal with Disney | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
on the film about how best to bring up children. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:46 | |
Walt Disney was besotted with his new movie project. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
He filled rooms with drawings of Mary Poppins. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:58 | |
He was particularly excited by his plans to mix live action with animation. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:03 | |
But before filming could begin, | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
he was contractually obliged to give PL Travers editorial input. | 0:33:07 | 0:33:12 | |
In March, 1961, she arrived in sunny California, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:19 | |
a world away from dreary London. | 0:33:19 | 0:33:21 | |
This was Disney's world, where he controlled everything around him. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:27 | |
But she was undaunted, | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
and ready to find her corner. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:33 | |
These two characters actually had a lot more in common than you might suppose. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:40 | |
They both had difficult backgrounds, had come from hard childhoods. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
They were both used to getting their own way. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:46 | |
By the time they finally met and clashed, | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
they were both people who were not used to people telling them what they could and couldn't do, | 0:33:49 | 0:33:54 | |
and you've also got, inevitably with that, the fact they are going to have some kind of head-on collision. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:59 | |
Now, where is Mr Disney? | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
She's here! | 0:34:02 | 0:34:03 | |
Well, Pamela Travers. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:05 | |
It's the ensuing tussle of wills as Travers fought for the Mary Poppins of her book | 0:34:05 | 0:34:10 | |
against Walt Disney's version that forms the plot | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
of the new Disney film, Saving Mr Banks. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:16 | |
-It doesn't look like that. No, no, it's all wrong. -It's ALL wrong? | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
# Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious # | 0:34:18 | 0:34:22 | |
Stop! Mary Poppins is not for sale. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:24 | |
I won't have her turned into one of your silly cartoons. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:26 | |
Emma Thompson, something of an expert in the business of creating nannies, | 0:34:28 | 0:34:31 | |
plays PL Travers. | 0:34:31 | 0:34:33 | |
I could just eat you up. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
That wouldn't be appropriate. | 0:34:36 | 0:34:38 | |
You've never been to Disneyland, and that's the happiest place on earth. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:42 | |
There he is. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:43 | |
I think she didn't understand the film. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
She was very snobby about it. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
There was a time when film was considered a lesser art form. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:50 | |
That's long gone now, | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
but she felt that Walt Disney was shallow, | 0:34:53 | 0:34:56 | |
a moneymaking mogul. | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
I think that Travers really was frightened that it would all be taken away, | 0:34:58 | 0:35:02 | |
it would be destroyed. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
What she didn't know about Mary Poppins was that she would survive, | 0:35:04 | 0:35:08 | |
she would survive the clash of cultures, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:10 | |
she would survive being put into a different culture, | 0:35:10 | 0:35:13 | |
and interpreted in a wholly new way. | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
But how would you summarise the main changes from book to the film of the Mary Poppins character? | 0:35:15 | 0:35:22 | |
Well, she wasn't pretty. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:24 | |
She was based on this little Dutch doll with a square, stub nose. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:29 | |
You know, it's just not Julie Andrews. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
It is a plain person, and Julie was so beautiful, beautiful in it. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:37 | |
Shall we begin? | 0:35:37 | 0:35:39 | |
I remember as a child | 0:35:39 | 0:35:41 | |
seeing the Disney film, | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
and really noticing it wasn't as dark as the books. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
Thinking it was wonderful in its own way, but being sort of disappointed. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:48 | |
Even as a small person, I thought, "That's not the book", | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
but that's OK, because there were great songs. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:54 | |
Now, let us begin. | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
VOICEOVER: The Sherman brothers created a score that's quite extraordinary, actually. | 0:35:56 | 0:36:01 | |
No, no, no, no, no. Responstable is not a word. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:05 | |
We made it up. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:08 | |
Well, unmake it up. | 0:36:08 | 0:36:10 | |
There are some songs that seem to resonate with something in a collective psyche, | 0:36:15 | 0:36:20 | |
like Let's Go Fly a Kite is one of those songs that... | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
can't help but lift you up. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
It's not an annoying song, EVER. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
We had to do it so many times. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:32 | |
I thought we're going to want to kill ourselves at the end of the day, but we were still going... | 0:36:32 | 0:36:36 | |
SINGS LET'S FLY A KITE | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
We loved it. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:42 | |
The composers, the Sherman brothers, the script writer and the author | 0:36:46 | 0:36:49 | |
began discussions that lasted ten days. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
The Disney team had been adapting the episodic chapters of the books | 0:36:53 | 0:36:57 | |
into a neat, Hollywood narrative. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
PL Travers insisted that her conversations at Disney be taped, | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
so we can actually hear exactly what went on as the Sherman brothers | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
valiantly tried to sell the Disney vision. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:10 | |
It's quite an insight into PL Travers' character. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:13 | |
Now we come to my notes here, my typewritten notes. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:21 | |
It is integral to the book and to the story | 0:37:21 | 0:37:23 | |
in whatever form it's presented | 0:37:23 | 0:37:25 | |
that Mary Poppins should never be impolite to anybody. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:28 | |
We get the comedy out of this grey, quiet, polite person through which all the strange magic happens. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:36 | |
You say later on... | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
You see, obviously she sounds like a bit of a nightmare in a way, but I'm quite sympathetic. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:46 | |
She cared what she'd written. | 0:37:46 | 0:37:48 | |
She cared what they were doing with it. I think it was brave of her to speak up for herself. | 0:37:48 | 0:37:53 | |
We wouldn't say it like that. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:58 | |
But we have to be very precise about words, particularly in the script. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:02 | |
We must make the words mean exactly what they say, and no more, no less. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:07 | |
At times you can hear the discussion become quite strained. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:12 | |
Just a little something in the script. I'll help you with it later. | 0:38:12 | 0:38:15 | |
PL Travers certainly seems to know her own mind. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
My idea is, and probably you will agree with me... | 0:38:18 | 0:38:22 | |
The Sherman brothers frequently try to sweet-talk her. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
Leave it that way, please. | 0:38:26 | 0:38:28 | |
Because, truly, I think the other is false. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
-It's false. -I think it's an improvement. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
Hm, good. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:36 | |
The core of the disagreement was about sentimentality, | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
sprinkling sugar on everything, solving everything with magic, | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
making everything too sweet. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:45 | |
But within the film, one scene stands out as haunting and melancholy. | 0:38:55 | 0:39:00 | |
It's a poignant glimpse that's close to the spirit of the books | 0:39:00 | 0:39:03 | |
of a marginalised life that can't be improved or resolved by magic. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:09 | |
It's the Feed the Birds song at St Paul's Cathedral. | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
The Sherman brothers discuss the song in an audio interview. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:26 | |
It seems to have encapsulated what we were trying to do in Mary Poppins, | 0:39:27 | 0:39:31 | |
that is, to say to give that extra love, | 0:39:31 | 0:39:33 | |
and a tuppence signifies little, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
hardly anything, and feeding the bird | 0:39:37 | 0:39:39 | |
meant giving to the people in need. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:42 | |
And in this particular case, the Banks children needed | 0:39:42 | 0:39:45 | |
their father and mother's attention and their love. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
Walt loved this sentiment, and he felt it so deeply, and he'd look over at Dick, and he'd say, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:54 | |
"Play it." | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
I knew what he wanted. Sometimes he wouldn't even say anything, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
and he would just look out the window, and get a little misty-eyed, and we'd play it. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
# Early each day to the steps of St Paul's | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
# The little old bird lady comes | 0:40:11 | 0:40:16 | |
# In her own special way, to the people she calls | 0:40:17 | 0:40:22 | |
# Come buy my bags full of crumbs | 0:40:22 | 0:40:29 | |
# Come feed the little birds | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
# Show them you care | 0:40:33 | 0:40:36 | |
# And you'll be glad if you do | 0:40:36 | 0:40:42 | |
# Their young ones are hungry | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
# Their nests are so bare | 0:40:45 | 0:40:49 | |
# All it takes is tuppence from you # | 0:40:49 | 0:40:58 | |
It's interesting that Walt Disney was obsessed with this song. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
It seems so full of sadness and loneliness. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
When the children have gone, the old bird lady will still be there, | 0:41:05 | 0:41:08 | |
on her own, in the cold, pleading for tuppences. | 0:41:08 | 0:41:12 | |
It has the dark shadows that the film otherwise lacked. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
Maybe that's why PL Travers actually liked the song. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
But that was the exception. | 0:41:21 | 0:41:23 | |
By now, Walt Disney was largely ignoring her. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:31 | |
Although billed as a consultant, she was no longer being consulted. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
Take a look! | 0:41:36 | 0:41:38 | |
Disney was far more interested in | 0:41:39 | 0:41:41 | |
using his special effects to make Mary Poppins fly... | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
Perhaps it's a witch. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:46 | |
Of course not. Witches have brooms. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
..along with revolutionary animatronic techniques. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
This is a little robin we had in Mary Poppins, | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
and this little bird sang a duet with Julie Andrews. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
Maybe we can get a little response from it. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
Hello there. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:05 | |
(TWEETS) | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
# .. in a most delightful way # | 0:42:08 | 0:42:11 | |
After 20 years of struggle in the making, | 0:42:13 | 0:42:16 | |
the film was finally completed in 1964. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:20 | |
Mary Poppins! | 0:42:20 | 0:42:22 | |
It was now officially Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:28 | |
And the original author hadn't even seen it yet. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
COMMENTATOR: You've never seen such a crowd. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:41 | |
On August the 27th, a grand premiere was held in Hollywood. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
Here is Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins! | 0:42:45 | 0:42:49 | |
It was a glittering evening. Throngs of screaming people were greeted by Mickey Mouse, | 0:42:50 | 0:42:54 | |
Goofy, Snow White and her small entourage. | 0:42:54 | 0:42:57 | |
There were dancing penguins and Pearly Kings. | 0:42:57 | 0:43:00 | |
All I can tell you is the genius of Julie Andrews and Walt Disney | 0:43:02 | 0:43:06 | |
have made probably one of the all-time great motion pictures | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
we have ever made in this crazy town of Hollywood. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:11 | |
But so much tension remained between Disney and the genius author | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
that he hadn't even invited her, | 0:43:16 | 0:43:18 | |
though she wangled a ticket anyway. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:21 | |
PL Travers got rather lost in the crowd, | 0:43:23 | 0:43:25 | |
but despite the presence of Walt Disney, Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke, | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
the host of the evening still managed a brief interview with her. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
This is PL Travers. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
Hello. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
Hello to you. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:38 | |
I would like you to tell the people out there how all of this came about. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:42 | |
Ah, now you're asking for my secrets and you know, | 0:43:42 | 0:43:46 | |
one of the first things about Mary Poppins is | 0:43:46 | 0:43:48 | |
that she never, never explains. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:50 | |
I'm looking forward to seeing what he has done tonight, very much. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:53 | |
Well, I won't hold you any longer. | 0:43:53 | 0:43:55 | |
Thank you so much for coming to our microphone, the author of Mary Poppins. | 0:43:55 | 0:44:00 | |
Thank you. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:01 | |
Bye-bye. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:03 | |
PL Travers did not enjoy the film. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
There probably aren't words to describe your emotion. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:14 | |
Now, now, gentlemen. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:16 | |
She still resented many of the songs, and there are sixteen of them. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
She especially loathed the animation sequences. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
# It's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious | 0:44:24 | 0:44:29 | |
# Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious... # | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
Atrocious indeed. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:34 | |
There's a fascinating letter that PL Travers sent her lawyer after the premiere. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:39 | |
She says, "As chalk is to cheese, so is the film to the book. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
Tears ran down my cheeks because it was all so distorted. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
I was so shocked I felt I would never write - let alone smile - again." | 0:44:48 | 0:44:53 | |
# Supercalifragilisticexpilidocious | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
# Supercalifragilisticexpilidocious # | 0:44:56 | 0:45:00 | |
Her failure to understand the movie business helps explain | 0:45:06 | 0:45:09 | |
why she thought she could still change the completed film. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:12 | |
She went to the party after the show, | 0:45:14 | 0:45:16 | |
and she went up to Walt Disney and said, | 0:45:16 | 0:45:19 | |
"Well, you know, the...the... It's all right, I suppose. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
The...cartoons will have to go." | 0:45:22 | 0:45:24 | |
And Walt said "Pam, this ship has sailed". | 0:45:24 | 0:45:29 | |
And that was it. | 0:45:29 | 0:45:31 | |
Because, you know, he was a ruthless old sod as well. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
I remember seeing the film when I was a child and being disappointed. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:47 | |
I loved the books so much, and the film was... | 0:45:47 | 0:45:49 | |
You know, something was missing. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:51 | |
It was too trivial, too easy, and happy. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
There was certainly no Bad Wednesday. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:56 | |
On the other hand, it had cartoon penguins, | 0:46:02 | 0:46:05 | |
it had Dick van Dyke dancing, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
it had chimney sweeps on the roof tops of London. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
It was brilliant. So I was conflicted. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
Was PL Travers also conflicted? | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
Privately, she said it was all bad, that she was in tears because she hated the film so much. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
But was she at all moved watching this film about a happy united family flying a kite? | 0:46:24 | 0:46:30 | |
Did she think at all about her own complicated attempts to be a mother, and her troubled son? | 0:46:30 | 0:46:35 | |
Were some of the tears because of that? | 0:46:35 | 0:46:37 | |
She never said, but then she wouldn't have done, would she? | 0:46:38 | 0:46:40 | |
No sentimentality, remember. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
Despite PL Travers' misgivings, the film was a critical and audience hit worldwide. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:52 | |
It won five Oscars including one for Julie Andrews in her first film role. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:58 | |
And the winner is Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
As well as a Golden Globe. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:03 | |
Thank you very much for this lovely honour. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:06 | |
It's a wonderful memento of a very, very happy time. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
Mary Poppins eventually earned the Disney Corporation well over 100 million. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:19 | |
And remember, PL Travers was on a juicy 5 per cent cut. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:24 | |
She wrote to a friend that life would never be the same again. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:28 | |
She'll be wealthy forever. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:30 | |
A charity is set up, The Cherry Tree Trust, for disadvantaged children. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:34 | |
And with her own share of the fortune PL Travers sets up investments. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:40 | |
# Patiently, cautiously, trustingly invested in the... | 0:47:42 | 0:47:48 | |
# To be specific, in the Dawes | 0:47:48 | 0:47:52 | |
# Tomes, Mousely | 0:47:52 | 0:47:54 | |
# Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank # | 0:47:54 | 0:47:59 | |
Welcome to our joyful family of investors. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:02 | |
Give it back! Give back the money! | 0:48:03 | 0:48:05 | |
In the movie there's an underlying theme | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
that money is not all-important, | 0:48:08 | 0:48:10 | |
and charity begins at home... | 0:48:10 | 0:48:12 | |
..a message warmly received by the family audience. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
The great thing about the Disney film is that | 0:48:21 | 0:48:23 | |
it made Mary Poppins universally known throughout the world. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:26 | |
The sad thing about it is that it made Mary Poppins | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
into Walt Disney's Mary Poppins rather than PL Travers' Mary Poppins. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
And I think she was constantly seeking an opportunity to say, "How can I remind people that she's mine? | 0:48:34 | 0:48:41 | |
I'm here! It's over here! It's me. I really did it, you know." | 0:48:41 | 0:48:45 | |
And so she went on to write two more successful sequels to Mary Poppins, | 0:48:48 | 0:48:52 | |
helped by publicity from the hit movie. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
She wrote other children's books too, but they largely sank without trace. | 0:48:56 | 0:49:01 | |
In 1977 PL Travers featured on Desert Island Discs. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:11 | |
It was one of her rare interviews | 0:49:12 | 0:49:14 | |
and tellingly, she chose no music, only poetry. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:19 | |
"Quick now, here now, always." | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
The film was mentioned just once. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:28 | |
Mary Poppins became in 1964, I think it was, in the hands of Walt Disney, a very successful film. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:34 | |
Did you approve of the cast? | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
Oh, yes, well, I approved awfully of the chief character Julie Andrews. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:44 | |
Well, it's still being shown all over the world. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
Yes, so they tell me. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
I've seen it once or twice and I've learnt to live with it. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
That's gratitude for you. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:56 | |
It's glamorous and it's a good film on its own level, but I don't think it's very like my books. | 0:49:56 | 0:50:02 | |
Despite her reluctance to discuss the film, | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
PL Travers' life would always be overshadowed by Disney's Mary Poppins... | 0:50:08 | 0:50:13 | |
..as would the lives of those around her. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
Although rocky at times, her relationship with her adopted son Camillus gradually improved. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:30 | |
I'm not sure if the knowledge of a healthy inheritance motivated this reconciliation, | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
but I don't think it would've hindered it. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:38 | |
Camillus brought up three children with his wife Frances. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:45 | |
It wasn't an easy life. | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
He struggled with alcoholism, and his attempts at rehab were largely unsuccessful. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:51 | |
But he did have some kind of ongoing relationship with PL Travers. | 0:50:51 | 0:50:56 | |
We grew up having to come and visit her every weekend from the suburbs where we lived. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:03 | |
She wasn't the kind of grandmother who bakes you cakes, | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
and you sit on her knee, | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
and it made a big impression on us to have somebody | 0:51:08 | 0:51:12 | |
who leads this mysterious life, and you don't know why she hasn't got a husband, | 0:51:12 | 0:51:17 | |
and you don't know why she's sitting there | 0:51:17 | 0:51:19 | |
wearing all this extraordinary silver jewellery, | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
and these long flowing robes and stuff. | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
It's quite weird, don't you think, that she wrote books | 0:51:25 | 0:51:27 | |
about a nanny bringing up children in a practically perfect way, | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
all full of ideas about what children needed, | 0:51:31 | 0:51:33 | |
and then in real life was sort of hazy and distant. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
She wasn't interested in helping us in any kind of practical way. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:40 | |
When I was a baby my mum was pushing me in her pushchair, | 0:51:40 | 0:51:44 | |
and she stopped en route and asked if she could come and change my nappy, | 0:51:44 | 0:51:48 | |
and warm up my bottle. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
She stood in the doorway and said, "I'm having my lunch. It's not convenient." | 0:51:51 | 0:51:55 | |
And that was it, so, that's quite extraordinary. | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
Yet she wrote us these poems on our birthdays, and we've still got them, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:05 | |
and claimed that we were her best in all the world, | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
and that she loved us very much, which is very, very sweet, | 0:52:08 | 0:52:11 | |
but wasn't much help to my mum at the time. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
The contradictions are very interesting. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:23 | |
It's obvious with Walt Disney she was very controlling. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
We know from the tapes she tried to run everything, | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
and I quite admire that. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
I think that's a sign of an artist really caring about their work. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:33 | |
It really mattered to her. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:35 | |
And unusual for a woman at that time, so I admire that controlling instinct. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:39 | |
And yet Kitty Travers told us that she didn't feel guilty about any of the stuff with Camillus | 0:52:39 | 0:52:44 | |
because she thought it was just meant to be, | 0:52:44 | 0:52:46 | |
it was decided by the stars, it was down to fate, not her. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
And I think that's fascinating, that at one level | 0:52:50 | 0:52:52 | |
she wanted to run everything, and another level | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
she wanted to believe that everything was decided by cycles of nature beyond her control. | 0:52:55 | 0:53:00 | |
PL Travers lived a long life, | 0:53:03 | 0:53:05 | |
and the world that she'd written about was disappearing, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
if it had ever existed. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
But her character, Mary Poppins, is immortal. | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
She comes out of a world that is timeless, I think. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
And... | 0:53:21 | 0:53:23 | |
perhaps that is all one can say about her. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:26 | |
Her son Camillus had come to accept his mother's nature. | 0:53:28 | 0:53:31 | |
I could see that in a funny sort of way my mother was trying to be like Mary Poppins with me. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:38 | |
So she was trying to be kind, nurturing, and strict, | 0:53:38 | 0:53:44 | |
but at the same time I wouldn't end up hating her, | 0:53:44 | 0:53:49 | |
which indeed turned out to be the case. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
I ended up loving her. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:53 | |
Camillus visited her the day before she died. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
She was too ill to speak. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:04 | |
He sang her a lullaby, the one she used to sing to him as a boy. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:10 | |
# So lulla lulla lulla lulla bye-bye | 0:54:10 | 0:54:14 | |
# Do you want the moon to play with? | 0:54:14 | 0:54:18 | |
# Or the stars to run away with? | 0:54:18 | 0:54:23 | |
# They'll come if you don't cry | 0:54:23 | 0:54:27 | |
# So lulla lulla lulla lulla... # | 0:54:27 | 0:54:29 | |
Her ashes were scattered here at St Mary's Church in Twickenham, | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
but there's no memorial plaque. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:35 | |
It's as though even in death PL Travers is resistant to being identified. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:40 | |
After she died the Disney Corporation put adverts in the trade press showing Mickey Mouse in tears. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:47 | |
What would PL Travers have made of that, I wonder? | 0:54:47 | 0:54:50 | |
And what would she make of the new Disney film Saving Mr Banks, this time about Pamela Travers herself? | 0:54:51 | 0:54:57 | |
Mary Poppins and the Banks, they're family to me. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:03 | |
Mary Poppins was a real person? | 0:55:03 | 0:55:05 | |
So it's not the children she comes to save, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
it's their father... | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
It's your father. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:13 | |
Well, they've done it again. They've done it to her again. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
They've tidied it all up, they've smoothed off the rough edges, | 0:55:35 | 0:55:39 | |
they've given it a happy ending, they've given it structure and redemption. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:42 | |
They've completely cleaned up the messy story of Camillus. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
He simply doesn't appear. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
But here's the thing - it really...it really gets you. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:54 | |
That's what's ridiculous, | 0:55:54 | 0:55:56 | |
is that it's incredibly moving the way that they sort everything out, | 0:55:56 | 0:56:00 | |
and they give everything redemption... | 0:56:00 | 0:56:03 | |
is very powerful, and it knows it's doing it. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:06 | |
That's what's infuriating - it knows they're doing it. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:09 | |
There's a moment just near the end where Walt Disney says, | 0:56:09 | 0:56:14 | |
"That's what story tellers do, they restore order with imagination." | 0:56:14 | 0:56:19 | |
Life is messy, difficult, dark and complex. | 0:56:22 | 0:56:26 | |
Feuds can be "made up", but never completely solved. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:29 | |
Books can try to reflect this sadness and lack of resolution | 0:56:29 | 0:56:33 | |
as PL Travers' books did, even for children. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:36 | |
But Hollywood films take a different approach. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
In a way, it's like Hollywood itself is a Mary Poppins or an Aunt Ellie. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:47 | |
It's tidying up the nursery, it's finding a way through the chaos. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
We want to believe, as much now as we did in 1964, that redemption's possible. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:56 | |
And that is both the lie and the miracle of Hollywood films. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:01 | |
That it can all be neat and tidy at the end. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
At some deep human level it's that order we crave. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:08 | |
One last thing. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:28 | |
PL Travers specifically told Walt Disney before filming started | 0:57:28 | 0:57:31 | |
that the line "Let's go fly a kite" was grammatically incorrect. | 0:57:31 | 0:57:35 | |
It should be, "Let's go AND fly a kite". | 0:57:35 | 0:57:38 | |
Walt decided to keep it the way it was. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:41 | |
But I'm with her. | 0:57:41 | 0:57:43 | |
I think the wind's finally blowing west. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:47 | |
# Oh, let's go fly a kite | 0:57:49 | 0:57:53 | |
# Up to the highest height | 0:57:53 | 0:57:56 | |
# Let's go fly a kite | 0:57:56 | 0:58:00 | |
# And send it soaring | 0:58:00 | 0:58:04 | |
# Up through the atmosphere | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
# Up where the air is clear | 0:58:07 | 0:58:11 | |
# Oh, let's go fly a kite! # | 0:58:11 | 0:58:20 |