Mary Poppins is a 1964 American musical comedy directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney. Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi wrote the screenplay, adapting P. L. Travers’ book series for the screen. The film blends live-action with animation and marks Julie Andrews’ feature film debut in the title role of a magical nanny who arrives to restore order to a troubled London family. Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, and Glynis Johns appear alongside her. Despite being set in London, every scene was captured at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, with the city recreated through elaborate sets, painted backdrops, and more than a hundred glass and matte paintings.
Walt Disney first pursued the film rights to Mary Poppins in 1938, after his daughters developed a fondness for the books. P. L. Travers refused him repeatedly over the following two decades, doubting that a film could do justice to her characters. Disney eventually secured the rights in 1961 after years of persistence that included a personal visit to Travers at her London home. She negotiated the right to review scripts and participated as a consultant during production, but she took strong exception to several decisions, particularly the use of animation, alterations to Mary Poppins’ personality, and the original songs. Disney ultimately overruled most of her objections.
The Sherman Brothers were instrumental in shaping the film’s musical identity and proposed relocating the story from the 1930s to the Edwardian era. They wrote all of the film’s songs, including “A Spoonful of Sugar,” which grew out of something one of Robert Sherman’s children mentioned. The child had received the polio vaccine on a sugar cube rather than through an injection, and the experience gave Sherman the idea that an unpleasant necessity could be made more bearable through something sweet.
Disney considered a number of actresses for the title role, among them Angela Lansbury, Mary Martin, and Bette Davis, before settling on Julie Andrews. Andrews had built her reputation on Broadway and had not previously appeared in a feature film. When Disney offered her the role, she informed him she was pregnant. Rather than recast, Disney delayed production until after she had given birth. He also brought on her then-husband, Tony Walton, to contribute to costume and production design.
Dick Van Dyke had no formal dance training before the film, and the choreographers essentially taught him from the beginning. The extended chimney-sweep number “Step in Time” required six weeks of rehearsal followed by a full week of filming.
Van Dyke also played a second role in the film: the elderly bank director Mr. Dawes Sr. His involvement was kept out of the credits under the alias “Navckid Keyd,” which is his name spelled backward. The child actors, Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber, were not told they were interacting with Van Dyke in disguise, which made their reactions to the seemingly ancient bank director entirely unscripted. Van Dyke later came back to the franchise in the 2018 sequel Mary Poppins Returns.
The filmmakers also withheld information from the child actors about how certain magical effects were achieved. Dotrice and Garber were kept in the dark about the mechanics behind the magical carpet bag and the color-changing medicine, so the surprise on their faces when those moments occurred was genuine.
The nursery-cleaning sequence was accomplished through an ingenious reversal technique. The room was filmed in its tidy state first, and then objects were scattered across the floor. Playing the footage in reverse produced the illusion of everything flying back into place at Mary Poppins’ direction.
David Tomlinson, who played George Banks, also supplied the voice of Mary’s parrot-headed umbrella handle. He therefore appears in the film both as one of its principal human characters and as the voice coming from one of its most distinctive magical props.
“Chim Chim Cher-ee” contributed to a remarkable awards performance. The film received thirteen Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and won five: Best Actress for Andrews, Best Film Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Song.
Mary Poppins opened on August 27, 1964, and became the top-grossing film in the United States that year. It was also the highest-earning film in Disney’s history at the time, with worldwide theatrical revenue eventually surpassing $100 million.
The profits the film generated helped fund Walt Disney’s ambitions in Florida, including the development that became Walt Disney World. The name MAPO, associated with one of Disney’s theme park development companies and technologies, was drawn from the title of the film.
Years after production, Disney’s chief archivist went looking for the original snow globe used in the film. He eventually found it in a janitor’s office. A janitor had pulled it from a trash bin because he could not bring himself to throw something so beautiful away.
In 2013, the Library of Congress selected Mary Poppins for preservation in the National Film Registry, recognizing it as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. That same year brought the release of Saving Mr. Banks, a biographical drama about the difficult negotiations that preceded the film’s production. A sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, arrived in 2018.