Mary Poppins (1964) Facts
| Director(s) | Robert Stevenson |
| Producer(s) | Walt Disney (uncredited), Bill Walsh |
| Featured Cast | Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns, Hermione Baddeley |
| Total Facts | 82 |
"Feeding the birds" at Saint Paul's Cathedral, seen as a charitable act of kindness in the film, became forbidden by law in the 21st century, having resulted in excessive defecation from the expanding avian population.
Dick Van Dyke had his heart set on playing Mr. Dawes, Sr., and said they didn't have to pay him, he just really wanted to do it for the fun. Although Walt Disney had offered him the part of Bert right out, he made him audition for the part of Mr. Dawes, Sr.
David Tomlinson (Mr. Banks) also voices several of the animated characters that Bert and Mary Poppins encounter in the chalk drawing, including a penguin waiter and the jockey who allows Mary Poppins to pass on her carousel horse. He also voices the Parrot Umbrella Handle at the end of the movie. Original choices for George Banks included Richard Harris, Terry-Thomas, George Sanders, James Mason and Donald Sutherland.
David Tomlinson was nervous about not being good enough for the part of Mr Banks as he had never sung professionally before.
Matthew Garber was paid 10 cents for every time they filmed the tea party scene. He was afraid of heights, so somebody offered to pay him a "bonus" 10 cents for every take.
Ed Wynn's character, Uncle Albert, was originally written as having a Viennese accent. Wynn, however, didn't attempt the accent - or even an English accent, for that matter. He was just himself, ad-libbing many of the lines he says while laughing on the ceiling in the "I Love to Laugh" scene.
Robert Wise and Ernest Lehman visited the set to view rushes of Julie Andrews' performance. She was cast immediately in the lead for The Sound of Music on the strength of that visit.
Marni Nixon: voice of the singing geese during the "barnyard singalong" segment of "Jolly Holiday".
Walt Disney cast Julie Andrews for the lead after seeing her in "Camelot" on Broadway. When she mentioned she was pregnant, he offered to wait until she had her baby to start filming and offered her then-husband, Tony Walton, the job of designing costumes and some sets for the film. Disney also gave the couple a personally escorted tour of Disneyland and the studio to help them make up their minds.
Walt Disney first attempted to purchase the film rights from P.L. Travers as early as 1938. Travers rejected his advances as she didn't believe a film version would do justice to her creation. Another reason for her initial rejection would have been that at that time the Disney studios had not yet produced a live action film.
Walt Disney regarded Mary Poppins as one of the crowning achievements of his career.
Walt Disney was so determined to cast Julie Andrews that he offered to delay filming until the summer of 1964 if Andrews was cast as Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady. Since Audrey Hepburn was cast as Eliza, both movies began filming around August/September 1963. (When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Hepburn, over at the Warner Bros. studios, was hit particularly hardest by the news. She was inconsolable for a few days.)
Julie Andrews initially hesitated in taking on the part of Mary Poppins as she was hoping that Jack L. Warner would ask her to star as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. That call never came, prompting Andrews to cheekily thank Warner in her Golden Globe acceptance speech.
Julie Andrews provided the whistling for the animatronic Robin during the song "A Spoonful of Sugar".
Julie Andrews was determined to nail the lullaby "Stay Awake". She took nearly 50 takes (most reports suggest 47) in the Disney recording studio to create the perfect "soft" voice quality for the song. Dick Van Dyke, on the other hand, took only one take to record his verses as Mr. Dawes, Sr. on "Fidelity, Fiduciary Bank".
Julie Andrews was left hanging in mid-air during one particularly long camera setup. The stagehands unwittingly lowered her wire harness rather rapidly. "Is she down yet?" called a grip. "You bloody well better believe she is!" fumed Andrews.
Julie Andrews wore a wig in the movie.
Stanley Holloway was originally cast as Admiral Boom, but because he was working on My Fair Lady, he turned it down.
Larri Thomas: the woman in the carriage who blows a kiss at Bert during "Chim Chim Cheree" was Julie Andrews stand-in.
P.L. Travers finally relented and sold the film rights to Walt Disney in 1961, although she retained script approval rights. One of the reasons prompting her to do so was a decline in her book sales.
P.L. Travers so detested this film adaptation of her novel, she left the premiere in tears. Reportedly, she most objected to the altering of Mary Poppins' character from cold and intimidating in the novel to warm and cheery in the film. She also took issue with the film's perceived anti-feminist ending, in which Mrs. Banks gives up her campaigning for women's rights to stay at home as a housewife.
P.L. Travers wanted the animated chalk-drawing sequence removed from the film, but Walt Disney refused.
P.L. Travers was a stickler about details in the script, driving many of the Disney writers to distraction about Poppins minutiae. After seeing the final film, she devised a list of changes she wanted. Her requests went unheeded after Walt himself pointed out that although she had SCRIPT approval, she didn't have FINAL DRAFT approval. Among the things that she disliked was the Sherman Bros. score. She wanted the only music in the movie to be period pieces such as "Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay" or "Greensleeves".
A sequence known as "The Magic Compass", consisting of four songs, was dropped from the film in preproduction. One of those songs, "The Beautiful Briny", later resurfaced in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The melody for another song from this sequence, "The Land of Sand", was used for "Trust in Me (The Python's Song)" in The Jungle Book, using completely different lyrics.
A song about Admiral Boom was written for the film. Although the song does not appear in the film, the music can be heard in the score.
All 4 of Disney's sound stages were used during production.
Although Dick Van Dyke considers this the best film he has appeared in, he nevertheless maintains to this day that he was somewhat miscast as Bert. He has suggested that either Jim Dale or Ron Moody would have played the part better.
At the time, the most expensive film produced by the Disney Studios.
Bert's jobs in the film are a one-man band, a chalk artist, a chimney sweep, and a kite salesman.
Filmed entirely on soundstages under heavy studio lighting.
For her interaction with the animatronic robin, Julie Andrews had yards of control wires hidden under her costume and running up her sleeve.
His role as Constable Jones became the last on-screen role for Arthur Treacher.
In addition to Mary Martin, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury was also considered for Mary Poppins, while Danny Kaye, Fred Astaire and even Cary Grant were briefly considered for the role of Bert.
In her 2004 autobiography "'Tis Herself", Maureen O'Hara says she pitched the idea to Disney of making a film version of the book "Mary Poppins", which was rejected. Soon after, Walt Disney purchased the rights to the book.
In the transition from page to screen, the Banks family manages to lose a set of twins, John and Barbara.
Lyricist Robert B. Sherman had searched for nearly two weeks for a catchy phrase that could be Mary Poppins' anthem. He came across the perfect title when his seven-year-old daughter Laurie came home from school one day and announced that she had just received a polio vaccine. Thinking that the vaccine had been administered as a shot, Sherman asked, "Did it hurt?" She replied, "No. They just gave it to me on a cube of sugar and I swallowed it down." Sherman tried the idea on his brother the following morning, Richard M. Sherman put the phrase to music and "A Spoonful of Sugar" was born.
Many of the nannies in the large queue of applicants for the job at the start of the film were actually men in drag.
Mary Poppins and Mrs. Banks never speak to each other in the film.
Mrs. Banks's first name was originally Cynthia. It was changed to the "more British-sounding" Winifred at P.L. Travers's request.
Not only was "Feed the Birds" Walt Disney's favorite song in the film, but it is said that anytime he visited the Sherman brothers (Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman) during the rest of his life, all he would have to do was say, "Play it," and they knew he wanted to hear "Feed the Birds".
On an episode of National Public Radio's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" (broadcast October 25, 2010) Dick Van Dyke was asked by host Peter Sagal about his notorious accent in this film. Van Dyke stated that his vocal coach was Irish-born J. Pat O'Malley, who had an even worse British accent.
One of Julie Andrews' favorite songs was "Stay Awake". When she heard that there were plans to delete it, she wrote a letter of concern to P.L. Travers who instantly insisted that the song remain in the film.
Ordinarily a stickler for keeping to the script, director Robert Stevenson allowed Ed Wynn free rein to improvise.
Original author P.L. Travers was adamant that in the film there should be no suggestions of any kind of romance between Mary Poppins and Bert. This is explicitly referenced in the song "Jolly Holiday".
Originally Walt Disney had considered Mary Martin, Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury for the part of Mary Poppins based on the cold characterization portrayed in the P.L. Travers books. The Walt Disney Studio (with the Shermans and co-writer Don DaGradi acting as the studio's sort-of 'advance' team) first considered 'Julie Andrews' after seeing her on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town in January 1961 do excerpts from 'Camelot', the show she was appearing in on Broadway. About a month later, Walt Disney himself went to New York, caught the show, and sounded out Julie backstage after the show. (The show was of double interest to Disney because his The Sword in the Stone animated feature was based on the first book of T.H. White's "The Once and Future King." "Camelot" was based on the 4th book of the same novel.) It was at that February 1961 backstage meeting that Disney first sounded Andrews out, including inviting Julie's husband at the
Originally in the movie, there was a scene when all of the toys in the nursery come alive. Since it proved to be too scary for children, it was cut out. However, in the Broadway musical of Mary Poppins, the toys coming alive idea is used.
Over 100 glass and matte paintings were used to recreate the London skyline of 1910.
Premiered at the Graumann Chinese Theatre in 1964.
Re-Premiered at the famed Radio City Music Hall in New York City in 1966.
Prior to the 1964 premiere, Walt Disney had not personally attended a studio premiere since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.
Quotes John Keats' "Endymion" when she comments "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," as she pulls a potted plant out of her carpet bag. Incidentally, the same quote is used by Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.