The Secret Life of Mary Poppins: A Culture Show Special

in 1964 the disney film mary poppins was released to worldwide and that's lucky too the film told of a magical world where chimney sweeps are happier than bankers where you can jump into living pictures on the pavement or should that be sidewalk it made an international star of julie andrews overnight and it changed forever our concept of what a nanny is or should be and the souls who can forget the songs but one person hated the film's cheery tone the author of the mary poppins books pl travers in contrast with the practically perfect world of the movie her own life was complex and troubled as a single woman pl travis adopted a baby who knew that was allowed in the 1930s but it all went horribly wrong and she nearly tore her own family apart fifty years later the disney corporation has made another movie about her would pl traverse of like this one will it set the record straight can her bumpy quirky controversial life story be told on film at all i think all i know is those guys can dance or is it too strange for hollywood even now good luck thank you everybody everyone's heard of mary poppins but far fewer can name its author many have no idea of the real origins of the world's most famous nanny mary poppins began life as a book in 1934 this atmospheric cottage in sussex was the rented home of pl travers who had just turned 35. when she was younger she'd wanted to be an actress this is her playing titania in midsummer night's dream but she'd moved on to become a well-established poet and art critic now she was starting her first novel at the time she was cohabiting with a friend maj bernande biographers have speculated they were romantically involved and that pl travis had unconventional romances with men and women throughout her life but she never wrote or talked about this in her writing piel travers created a more conventional family the bank's family she chose us her subject one of the great english preoccupations nursery life and she located a relatively untapped seem the relationship between a nanny and her charges mary poppins eyes were fixed upon him and michael suddenly discovered that you could not look at mary poppins and disobey her there was something strange and extraordinary about her something that was frightening and at the same time most exciting i like the cottaginess of this room i went to goldeneye once where ian fleming used to write it was very glamorous you could imagine that's where you create stories of you know spies drinking martinis and seducing beautiful women this feels just the place for stories about children creeping out of bed at night and having adventures you can see sort of fields and sky so there's a sense of you know what lies out there beyond our little world it's quite poppinsy i like it i'm glad it was written here despite the book being quintessentially english peele travers was actually not english at all she was australian born and brought up in this small town in queensland at the turn of the last century and her real name wasn't pamela travers she was christened helen lyndon gough her father worked in the town bank just like the father in mary poppins but there were key differences unlike mr banks in her story pl travers father failed as a banker and he struggled with drink he died young in his early 40s almost certainly of alcoholism pl travis was just seven years old her mother found it increasingly hard to cope and shortly afterwards attempted suicide pl travis always claimed her turbulent upbringing had little influence on the book i don't know that it's based on my personal life i think i think mr banks is a little bit like my father and mrs banks in her most flustered is perhaps a little bit like my mother but really i don't think it's based on my childhood but at the heart of the book was the character of mary poppins herself the clipped strict but ultimately mysterious nanny who'd blown in on an east wind it's hard to find a modern day book or article about hiring a nanny that doesn't mention mary poppins at norland college in bath they train nannies in the art or is it a science it's certainly a mystery of looking after babies and children and the sheet okay the seam is always away from the child you need to make sure there's so much room for tucking in mostly with a hat on no pillows for the baby it needs to be completely flat and what about my granny's old rule no cats in the nursery or the child will be hairy yeah they definitely wouldn't advise any pets in the nursery no because it can make people grow fur like a cat my grandma knew this it's not it's not written about because it's 2013 they need extra skills taekwondo kidnap defense do not let go of the push chair and how to escape paparazzi in a high-speed car chase frankie we've got a roadblock roadblock paparazzi quick introversion maybe if pl travelers were writing today mr and mrs banks would have to have been russian oligarchs go go go more power go go and what do you think of mary poppins from the film then is that an inspiring figure definitely i like her bag it fits everything in it's a good bag in the books the nanny rules the nursery and mary poppins just says this is how it's going to be and you know the mum is terrified yeah is that not the modern way no definitely not the old-fashioned nanny is quite a stern sort of matronly type i think that's how she's pictured in books and films whereas we're not like that at all see now the author of the books pl traverse let me tell you would turn in her grave to hear that she never believed that things should be geared around the children and certainly not that there should be songs it's all about making it fun obviously keeping everybody safe and making sure what needs to be done is done but doing it in the funnest and most creative way possible is it recommended to put the children to bed and then get them up and take them up on the roof for a dance not advisable the character of mary poppins was inspired at least partly by a relative after her mother attempted suicide the young pl travers latched onto a maiden great aunt antelli was reliable she brought order and discipline she was also formidable she was bossy and stern sound familiar piel travers had strong views about the appearance of mary poppins she was no beauty but rather plain similar to a doll that had belonged to the author as a girl the newcomer had shiny black hair rather like a wooden dutch doll and she was thin with large feet and hands and small rather peering blue eyes and mixed in with all this was her magic when i was a child i loved the magical potential in these stories like the alice books and the narnia series there was a sense in mary poppins that always a parallel magic universe was going on that you could slip in and out of and there'd be no rules and no bedtime but like those other famous stories travis books also had darkness in them there was fear and sadness and loss there's magic but there's no forever and i think children know there's no forever they know about old age they know about loss the greatest works of children's literature always have dark shadows within them pl travers creativity all came together in that book of 1934 a book that very nearly failed to see the light of day it never occurred to me that anybody would want to publish it i was writing it really for myself and then a friend saw it half written and said well i'll take this to a publisher and i thought well a publisher won't want this but apparently he did the publishing house was in london so pl travis would motor to soho in her beaten up old bsa sports car she was keen to take control of everything the artwork the design of the cover even the typeface that autumn the book came out the initial print run sold out quickly it was on the road to being a children's classic jenny korelek an author herself knew pl travis well she could be fun and funny and bubbly and a bit wacky and in the books sort of got that somewhere too was she an easy person to be friends with i get the sense she might have had a slightly mercurial temperament oh no she wasn't easy she was not at all easy she kept parts of her life very private and none of us realized she was australian until she finally confessed that she was her dark secret she was a complicated profoundly unusual wound in the book mary poppin simply blown in by the wind pl travers always maintained that the character had come into her mind in a similar way mary poppins was not her sitting down to concoct she appeared she was very dramatic and theatrical and whimsical and when you were with her and she said something like she just came to me and that's how she talked this creature sort of came up out of god as she puts it god knows where young would nowhere mary poppins was a nanny who slid up banisters even the author never knew what she might do next for me it was a shock too when she wrote up the banisters i didn't know she was going to do it and again and again when i read back over the books i'm surprised and i think to myself well how did she think of that pl trevor's imagination was broader than we might presume in a children's author rather surprisingly pl travis also turned her hand to erotic writing here she is in the literary magazine the triad inviting readers to imagine her taking off her underwear and then the silky hush of intimate things fragrant with my fragrance steel softly down so loath to rob me of my last dear concealment saucy in the end she went on to write six mary poppins books although they were marketed towards children she always saw them as books for grown-ups too millions came to love her story of the magical nanny it struck a chord with readers all over the world this overseas success was to change everything for pl travis over in los angeles a young girl called diane had become a big fan of mary poppins diane was living an ordinary all-american life but for one important difference her father was walt disney disney had created a powerful new studio in hollywood and was always on the hunt for source material thanks to his daughter's obvious enjoyment he honed in on mary poppins film historian brian sibley has investigated the life of walt disney and in particular his relationship with pl travis in the 1940s disney was at the peak of his current success he'd made snow white and the seven dwarfs the first feature-length cartoon film with synchronized sound and color and that film changed everything more than 250 000 paintings like these were created by walt disney and his staff of artists to make the most daring adventure in the history of motion pictures dwarfs names fit their personalities this pompous looking individual is doc the self-appointed leader of the group it made it clear to people that a film was capable of carrying much more than just the comic antics of a mouse and a duck it could carry a character and portray those things on the screen and also that he could play to an audience not of children but of a whole family audience an old sourpuss here is grumpy the woman hater and last but not least is dopey he's nice but sort of silly had a an extraordinary nose for a good story i mean he really did he sussed out a story the moment he read it and i think he instantly saw this would make a perfect motion picture and what do you think appealed him was it just the principle of a magical nanny what did he want from the stories the true strength of the pop in store is it's the character herself because she comes from nowhere she's somebody whose magic is contained within her it's it's something special and separate and unfathomable in a way and i think he saw all those as very positive qualities that he could make a story from what sort of image of family life do you think walt disney wanted to put out there what did he think about families and what did he want to say about them well the interesting thing about disney and families is that his own family as a child was one that was quite a stressful and disturbing one in many ways he had a father who was really quite brutal and very severe and doctrinaire he had a loving mother but it was a difficult childhood and i think he he idealized the idea of the perfect family when he told his daughter he was going to get the rights to mary poppins do you think he anticipated any trouble with that no i don't think he did because up till then most of the stories that he had been working on they were stories that where the authors were not alive you know he was already toying with alice in wonderland and peter pan his next film was pinocchio which all these authors were dead and buried as far as he was concerned i don't think he saw that it was going to be a problem but convincing this particular live and kicking author would come to be disney's biggest challenge it was around this time that pl travis attempted to create her own family a real family by now after 10 years of living together she and maj had gone their separate ways and as she neared her 40th birthday pamela travis decided to adopt a child her friends tried to stop her they thought she was crazy they said she'd be an unsuitable parent i think this is rather amazing a 40-something single woman possibly a gay 40-something single woman setting out to adopt a child determined to create a differently shaped family in the teeth of social disapproval i think i thought that sort of thing started in about 2005 and yet here it is happening in 1939 we could make a documentary about her even if she hadn't written mary poppins her first attempt to create a family was completely bizarre she tried to adopt the 16 year old girl who cleaned her cottage despite her ingenious argument that the maid's parents had too many children as it was what's one kid give or take the girl and her family in a moment of peak travers sacked the maid undeterred the adoption fantasy remained lodged in her mind a little while later she heard of a new opportunity in dublin pl travers moved in irish literary circles where she met the writer and critic joseph manselhone biographer of w b yates home's son and daughter-in-law were struggling to look after their large family twin boys camillus and anthony had just been born the family couldn't cope financially or emotionally and decided to have them adopted quite naturally they were keen the twins remained together but pl travers would only agree to take one of the babies pl travers believed in astrology and asked her favorite astrologer to cast a horoscope for both the children we've had a couple casts to see how they would have looked the astrologers conclusion was that the preferred baby would be camillus saying all in all it would be rare to find better crossrays between a child and its own mother so i would say by all means adopt him so pl travers chose camillus and left his brother behind but motherhood was far more demanding than she'd assumed camillus cried most of the time and pl travis even considered putting him in a baby's home but she persevered and when he was old enough she sent him to boarding school pl travis made the fateful decision not to tell him that he was adopted and had a twin brother after her own difficult upbringing with an alcoholic father and suicidal mother it seems she was sowing the seeds for a crisis in her new family later on a single mother an adopted child separated twins this was all about as far removed as it could be from the traditional nuclear family of pl travis books but those books don't necessarily show us a happy family they're full of coldness and distance the lonely bank's children look to their nanny for love but although she gives them magic and she gives them order she never gives them tenderness to please the apple pie disney contingent in america it might need jollying up for the screen walt disney was bubbling with ideas for making mary poppins jolia but his plans were way too premature he hadn't yet secured the film rights and pl travis was not exactly his greatest fan earlier she'd written a scathing film review of snow white oh he's clever this disney the very pith of his secret is the enlargement of the animal world and a corresponding deflation of all human values there is a profound cynicism at the root of his as of all sentimentality walt disney's relationship with pl travis was less of a walk over more of a relentless trudge in 1959 he'd already spent over 15 years trying to persuade her to sell him the film rights to mary poppins but she kept saying no by now she'd moved into london and was living in lovely smith street in chelsea not unlike the cherry tree lane of the book piel travers suspected that the sentimental disney would lighten up the darkness of her poppins world for example there's the story of bad wednesday jane banks has been a bit naughty so mary poppins goes out and leaves her alone in the house and she's drawn by magic into an old royal dalton bowl in the bowl there's a big dark house with a strange old man cackling and saying to jane you're very pretty why don't you live here with me and jane says i don't want to live here i'm scared i want to go home and the old man says oh you've gone into the past there's no home your family is not even born you're going to be here with me forever and jane screams and screams and screams and mary poppins comes to get her that's her punishment for having a tantrum how dark is that it chilled my blood when i was a child and the truth is it still does now bad wednesday would surely never make it into a disney film walt disney was not the only showman who tried to adapt travis books into a different art form it's a very sweet little crescent the world's most successful producer of stage musicals cameron mcintosh was keen to put on mary poppins the actual feel of the cherry tree lane in the stage show uh was taken from the from the street that we're in just as walt disney had tried many years before it was about 1993 i finally went over to cherry tree lane where pamela lived and or mrs travers um and you know she she was quite frail at that point um but sharp absolutely sharp and i soon found myself sort of like going back to school as she sort of rigidly sort of asked me questions and what you which means she's very suspicious that actually all i wanted was the title and i made it very clear to her that my interests were actually because of her books she created a language for for her characters which is unlike any other author she would never tell me when i kept saying about the um the characters i was trying to find the back story to mrs banks and if she didn't want to talk about something she said it just came to me and that's it there's nothing no other explanation she wouldn't give me any backstory how do you see the character of mary poppins who do you think that person is i think mary poppins was a a mixture of herself pamela and her aunt that she brought up who was the one who had the great um parrot umbrella she went sort from pillar to post because you know her father did drink a lot and did die young and her mother she didn't really have much time for i mean she was a very strange person you know because she wrote about an idealized kind of family life in a way that they never either had or or or knew knew about did you feel any kinship with walt disney in his struggle with you yes i did in a way and he pursued it for all those years and and i think somebody like that needed to do it she would never have volunteered it and in fact when it nearly all crashed uh it was her lawyer who said pamela you must do this and i don't care i'm going to force you to sign this contract in 1959 with the help of pl travis astute lawyer transatlantic negotiations were reopened in earnest disney hoped his perseverance might finally pay off disney made pl travers his best offer yet a hundred thousand dollars in cash five percent of the profits and script approval he rue the day he offered that after a 15-year standoff travis agreed full of sugar helps the medicine go down the medicine go down a medicine go down just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way thank you while walt disney was busy planning his cheerful version of the bank's family pl travis own small family of two was in full-blown crisis it all kicked off in 1956 her adopted son camillus by then a handsome young man of 17 went for a drink in the king's road waiting in this pot was a man who's trapped camillus down and has arranged to accidentally bump into him his name was anthony hohn the two have a lot in common they're the same age they look strangely similar anthony knows he was adopted he knows he had siblings and possibly a twin they keep talking keep drinking and it all dawns on camillus at once he's adopted pamela travis is not his biological mother and this is his twin it was a terrible shock for camillus and he had furious rows with his mother seventeen was a disastrous age to find out his life had been based on a lie kitty travers is the daughter of camillus and granddaughter of pl travers do you think that's something he came to terms with i well it made him go completely bananas to have been lied to like that by somebody you trust he was absolutely devastated when he found out that he was actually part of this huge irish family of literary and artistic giants and to have been booted out of a family like that would be full i felt betrayed cheated camillus died in 2011. nine years before his death he took part in an australian documentary the thing about my mother was she was very hard to know because she kept a great deal concealed even from her son her only son i couldn't believe somebody that i'd loved and trusted for so long could have been lying to me at the same time for so long once he found out he'd been adopted that was the excuse for the kind of floodgates to open and to go at it no holds barred and yeah he never never never got over that and he always used it as an excuse for the rest of his life for all his bad behavior and how was her relationship with camillus do you think she could see that he was still struggling with that finding out do you think she felt guilty i certainly don't think she would have ever accepted any guilt i really don't think so i certainly never heard her express any guilt ever so what did she think that he should count himself lucky to have been adopted that it was written in the stars that it was written in the stars that he was meant for her camillus hit the bottle hard in early 1960 he was caught drunk driving and lost his license but that didn't stop him a few months later he was driving down a middlesex road drunk again the police pulled him over and he was arrested camilla scott six months in a jolly prison with mary mary poppins jolly holiday was in sharp contrast to the life of the author's son his 21st birthday was spent in stafford maximum security prison yet another brutal shock for camillus and his mother the timing was horribly ironic this was all happening while pl travis was finalizing the deal with disney on the film about how best to bring up children walt disney was besotted with his new movie project he filled rooms with drawings of mary poppins he was particularly excited by his plans to mix live action with animation but before filming could begin he was contractually obliged to give pl travers editorial input in march 1961 she arrived in sunny california a world away from dreary london this was disney's world where he controlled everything around him but she was undaunted and ready to fight her corner these two characters actually had a lot more in common than you might suppose because they both had difficult backgrounds had come from hard childhoods they were both used to getting their own way by the time that they finally met and clashed they were both people who were not used to people telling them what they could and couldn't do and you've also got inevitably with that the fact that they are going to have some kind of head-on collision now where is mr disney she's here well pamela it's the ensuing tussle of wills as travis fought for the mary poppins of her book against walt disney's version that forms the plot of the new disney film saving mr banks stop mary poppins is not for sale i won't have her turned into one of your silly cartoons emma thompson something of an expert in the business of creating nannies plays pl travis i could just eat you up that wouldn't be appropriate you know you've never been to disneyland and that's the happiest place on earth there he is i think that she didn't understand film i think she was very snobby about it i mean there was a time when film was considered a lesser art form that's long gone now but um she felt that walt disney was um shallow a money-making mogul i think that travis really was frightened that it would all be taken away it would be destroyed what she didn't know about mary poppins was that she would survive she would survive the clash of cults she would survive being put into a different culture and interpret it in a wholly new way but how would you summarize the main changes from book to film of the mary poppins character well she wasn't pretty she was based on this little dutch doll with a square stubbed nose and you know it's just not julie andrews it's it's a plain person and julie was so beautiful beautiful in it shall we begin because i remember as a child i remember seeing the disney film and really noticing it wasn't as dark as the books thinking it was wonderful in its own way but being sort of disappointed even as a small person i thought well that's not the book but that's okay because there were great songs now let us begin the german brothers created a score that's quite extraordinary actually no no no no no responsible is not a word we made it up well unmake it up there are some songs that seem to resonate with something in a collective psyche like let's go fly a kite is one of those songs that can't help but lift you up it's not an annoying song ever we had to do it so many times i thought i was going to want to kill ourselves at the end of the day but no we were still going out there the composers the sherman brothers the scriptwriter and the author began discussions that lasted 10 days the disney team had been adapting the episodic chapters of the books into a neat hollywood narrative pl travers insisted that her conversations at disney be taped so we can actually hear exactly what went on as the sherman brothers valiantly tried to sell the disney vision when insight into pl travis character now we come to my notes here my typewritten move it is integral to the book and to the story in whatever form is presented that mary poppins should never be impolite to anybody we get the comedy out of this gray quiet polite person through which all the strange magic happens he asks her a few things you see because you say later on he thought at the beginning there was something obviously she sounds like a bit of a nightmare in a way but i'm quite sympathetic she cared what she'd written you know she cared what they were doing with it i think it was brave of her to speak up for herself but we didn't say it but we have to be very precise about words and particularly in them in the script we must make the words mean exactly what they say and no more and no less at times you can hear the discussion become quite strained just a little something in the script i'll help you with it later pl travis certainly seems to know her own mind my idea isn't probably you'll agree with me the sherman brothers frequently tried to sweet talk her we'll leave it that way please because truly i i think the other full this is an excellent improvement the core of the disagreement was about sentimentality sprinkling sugar on everything solving everything with magic making everything too sweet but within the film one scene stands out as haunting and melancholy it's a poignant glimpse that's close to the spirit of the books of a marginalized life that can't be improved or resolved by magic it's the feed the bird song at saint paul's cathedral the sherman brothers discussed the song in an audio interview it seems to have encapsulated what we were trying to do in mary poppins that is to say to give that extra love and toughness signifies little hardly anything and feeding the bird means giving to the people that need and in this particular case it was the bank's children they needed their father and mother's attention their love walt loved this sentiment and he felt it so deeply and he'd look over the dick and he'd say play it yeah and i knew what he wanted and sometimes he wouldn't even say anything you just look out the window and get a little misty eyed and we'd uh play it early each day to the steps of saint paul the little old bird lady comes in her own special way to the people she calls you'll be glad if you do the young ones are hungry their nests are so bare all it takes is east happens from you it's interesting that walt disney was obsessed with this song it seemed so full of sadness and loneliness when the children have gone the old bird lady will still be there on her own in the cold pleading for tuppences it has the dark shadows that the film otherwise lacked maybe that's why pl travers actually liked the song but that was the exception by now walt disney was largely ignoring her although billed as a consultant she was no longer being consulted take a look disney was far more interested in using his special effects to make mary poppins fly perhaps it's a witch of course not which set probes along with revolutionary animatronic techniques this is a little problem that we had in mary poppins and this little bird sang a duet with julie andros maybe we can get a little response from it hello there after 20 years of struggle in the making the film was finally completed in 1964 it was now officially walt disney's mary poppins and the original author hadn't even seen it yet you've never seen such a crowd on august the 27th a grand premiere was held in hollywood here is julie andrews mary poppins it was a glittering evening throngs of screaming people were greeted by mickey mouse goofy snow white and her small entourage there were dancing penguins and pearly kings all i can tell you is the genius of julie andrews and the genius of walt disney have made probably one of the all-time great motion pictures that we've ever made in this crazy town of hollywood but so much tension remained between disney and the genius author that he hadn't even invited her though she wrangled a ticket anyway pl travis got rather lost in the crowd but despite the presence of walt disney julie andrews and dick van dyke the host of the evening still managed a brief interview with her this is p l travers hello hello to you i would like you to tell the people out there how all of this came about ah now you're asking for my secrets and you know one of the first things about mary poppins is that she never never explains i'm looking forward to seeing what he has done tonight very much well i won't hold you any longer thank you so much for coming to our microphone the author of mary poppins thank you bye bye p.l travers did she still resented many of the songs and there are 16 of them she especially loathed the animation sequences it's super fragilistic even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious atrocious indeed there's a fascinating letter that pl travis sent to her lawyer after the premiere she says as chalk is to cheese so is the filth to the book tears ran down my cheeks because it was all so distorted i was so shocked i felt that i would never write let alone smiles her failure to understand the movie business helps explain why she thought she could still change the completed film she went to the party after the show and she went up to walt disney said well you know it's all right i suppose the uh cartoons will have to go and walt said pam the ship has sailed and that was it because you know he was a ruthless old sort as well i remember in the film when i was a child and being disappointed i loved the book so much and the film was you know something was missing it was too trivial too easy and happy there was certainly no bad wednesday on the other hand it had cartoon penguins it had dick van dyke dancing it had chimney sweeps on the rooftops of london it was brilliant so i was conflicted was pl travis also conflicted privately she said it was all bad that she was in tears because she hated the film so much but was she at all moved watching this film about a happy united family flying a kite did she think at all about her own complicated attempts to be a mother and her troubled son were some of the tears because of that she never said but then she wouldn't have done would she no sentimentality remember despite pl trevor's misgivings the film was a critical and audience hit worldwide it won five oscars including one for julie andrews in her first film role as well as a golden globe thank you very much for this lovely honor it's a wonderful memento of a very very happy time mary poppins eventually earned the disney corporation well over a hundred million dollars and remember pl travers was on a juicy five percent cut she wrote to a friend that life would never be the same again she'll be wealthy forever a charity is set up the cherry tree trust for disadvantaged children and with her own share of the fortune pl travis sets up investments welcome to our joyful family of investors give it back give me some money in the film there's an underlying theme that money is not all important and charity begins at home a message warmly received by the family audience the great thing about the disney film is that it made mary poppins universally known throughout the world the sad thing about it is that it made mary poppins into walt disney's mary poppins rather than pierre travis mary poppins and i think she was constantly seeking an opportunity to say how can i remind people that she's my i'm here it's over here to me i really did it you know and so she went on to write two more successful sequels to mary poppins helped by publicity from the hit movie she wrote other children's books too but they largely sank without trace in 1977 pl travis featured on desert island discs it was one of her rare interviews and tellingly she chose no music only poetry quick now here now always the film was mentioned just once mary poppins became in 1964 i think it was in the hands of walt disney a very successful film did you approve of the cast oh yes uh well i approved awfully of the chief character uh julian julianders well it's still being shown all over the world yes so they tell me i've seen it once or twice and i've learned to live with it best gratitude for you it's glamorous and it's a good film on its own level but i don't think it's very like my books despite her reluctance to discuss the film pl travis life would always be overshadowed by disney's mary poppins as would the lives of those around her although rocky at times her relationship with her adopted son camillus gradually improved i'm not sure if the knowledge of a healthy inheritance motivated this reconciliation but i don't think it would have hindered it camillus brought up three children with his wife francis it wasn't an easy life he struggled with alcoholism and his attempts at rehab were largely unsuccessful but he did have some kind of ongoing relationship with pl travers we grew up having to come and visit her every weekend from the suburbs where we lived she wasn't the kind of grandmother who bakes you cakes and you sit on her knee and it made a big impression on us to have somebody who leads this mysterious life and you don't know why she hasn't got a husband and you don't know why she's sitting there wearing all this extraordinary silver jewelry and these long flowing robes and stuff that's quite weird don't you think that she wrote books about a nanny bringing up children in a practically perfect way all full of ideas about what children needed and then in real life it was sort of hazy and distant she wasn't interested in helping us in any kind of practical way when i was a baby my mum was pushing me in her pushchair she stopped on route and asked if she could come and change my nappy and warm up my bottle so she stood in the doorway and said i'm having my lunch it's not convenient and that was it so that's quite extraordinary yet she wrote us these poems on our birthdays and we've still got them and claimed that we were her best in all the world and that she loved us very much which is very very sweet but it wasn't much help to my mum at the time the contradictions are very interesting it's obvious with walt disney she was very controlling you know we know from the tapes she tried to run everything and i quite admire that i think that's a sign of an artist really caring about their work it really mattered to her and unusual for a woman at that time so i admire that controlling instinct and yet kitty travis told us that she didn't feel guilty about any of the stuff with camillus because she thought it was just meant to be it was decided by the stars it was down to fate not her and i think that's fascinating that at one level she wanted to run everything at another level she wanted to believe that everything was decided by cycles of nature beyond her control pl travers lived a long life and the world that she'd written about was disappearing if it had ever existed but her character mary poppins is immortal she comes out of a world that is timeless i think and perhaps that's all one can say about it her son camillus had come to accept his mother's nature i could see that in a funny sort of way my mother was trying to be like mary poppins with me so she was trying to be kind nurturing and strict but at the same time i wouldn't end up hating her which indeed turned out to be the case i ended up loving camillus visited her the day before she died she was too ill to speak he sang her a lullaby the one she used to sing to him as a boy does you want the moon to play with or the stars to run away her ashes were scattered here at st mary's church in twickenham but there's no memorial plaque it's as though even in death pl travis is resistant to being identified after she died the disney corporation put adverts in the trade press showing mickey mouse in tears what would pl travers have made of that i wonder and what would she make of the new disney film saving mr banks this time about pamela travers herself mary poppins and the banksies they're family to me mary poppins was a real person so it's not the children she comes to save it's their father it's your father well they've done it again they've done it to her again they've tidied it all up they've smoothed off the rough edges they've given it a happy ending they've given it structure and redemption they've completely cleaned up the messy story of camillus he simply doesn't appear but here's the thing it really um it really gets you that's that's what's ridiculous is that it's incredibly moving the way that they sort everything out and they give everything redemption is very powerful and it knows it's doing it that's what's infuriating it knows it's doing it there's a moment just near the end where walt disney says that's what storytellers do they restore order with imagination life is messy difficult dark and complex feuds can be made up but never completely solved books can try to reflect this sadness and lack of resolution as pl travis books did even for children but hollywood films take a different approach in a way it's like hollywood itself is a mary poppins or an antelli it's tidying up the nursery it's finding a way through the chaos we want to believe as much now as we did in 1964 that redemption's possible and that is both the lie and the miracle of hollywood films that it can all be neat and tidy at the end at some deep human level it's that order we crave one last thing pl travis specifically told walt disney before filming started that the line let's go fly a kite was grammatically incorrect it should be let's go and fly a kite walt decided to keep it the way it was but i'm with her i think the wind's finally blowing west oh let's go fly a kite up to the highest height let's go fly a kite and send it is you

Channel: Molly Ipek

Views: 374,402

Rating: 4.7908735 out of 5

Keywords: Mary Poppins (Film), Emma Thompson (Author), Cameron Mackintosh, Victoria Coren (Author)

Id: WSnhq1R6IWA

Length: 58min 28sec (3508 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 07 2013