CHRISTMAS BOOKS FOR DISNEY LOVERS

From All of Us to All of You: The Disney Christmas Cards

by Jeff Kurtti

Disney Editions; $50.00

This is a book I have wanted to own for about the last 20 years! It’s actually a book that I had once entertained hopes of putting together myself; and it’s only the fact that it has finally reached us via the skilled editorship of my friend and fellow Disneyphile, Jeff Kurtti, that I am able to supress my envy!

Disney and Christmas have always got on rather well together – Christmas-themed movies, TV specials, music, books and comics – and the official Christmas greetings that, from 1931 onwards, the studio sent to its ever-growing number of friends and associates represents an imaginatively documented capsule history over eighty years of Disney history.

The cards in Jeff Kurtti’s seasonal mailbag, being annual bulletins from the Mouse Factory, give a visual chronicle of the studio’s output: from Mickey and the Gang, via Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the other features of the Golden Age, to the war years, the post-war renaissance, the Disneyland park and TV years to Poppins and the decades from Walt’s death to Walt Disney World, EPCOT and beyond.  

More than that, they provide a fascinating insight into the way in which the Studio saw and publicly presented itself and, as a parallel theme, the changing styles of popular graphic art.

This project could so easily have been simply produced as a book of pictures (and, indeed, some years ago, a book of Disney postcards was published based on many of these very images), but what Kurtti has done that makes this volume both collectable and informative is to place each card within the context of the Studio’s annual development.

The book is further enhanced by profiles of some of the artists responsible for the card designs including Hank Porter, Mary Blair, Bob Moore, John Hench and Paul Wenzel. There are also a number of special features covering such topics as the cards designed by the studio for Nelson Rockefeller as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and, a few years later, for the Toys for Tots Christmas charity.

The author has been ably aided by the book’s talented designer, Paul Wolski, whose ‘wide-screen’ format (encased in a holly-green gate-fold binding) allows the cards to be shown to their very best advantage – especially since a number of the originals opened out horizontally and/or vertically. Fronts, backs and interiors are all simultaneously visible and, printed with shadows, appear to be lying on the pages of the open book – as if ready be picked and arranged on your Christmas mantelpiece! And, as a bonus, there are ten special envelopes slipped into the book containing additional cards featuring seasonal Disney artwork from a variety of sources including film posters and comic book covers.

 

The book’s surtitle, ‘From All of Us To All of You’, is a references the famous Disney animated television special of the same name, first presented on ABC in December 1958. The show, comprising clips from Disney classic shorts and features, was hosted by Jiminy Cricket and based around the theme of Christmas cards from the characters featured in the clips.

Just as that TV special enjoyed a number of an annual re-runs, Jeff Kurtti’s beautifully produced, joy-infused and smile-inducing book will become a treasured part of every Disney fan’s holiday season for many Christmases to come!

Practically Perfect in Every Way: A Magical Carpetbag of Countless Wonders by Jeff Kurtti

Disney Editions; $50.00

Unless you have been living in a remote Neolithic cave for the past year, you will know that everybody’s favourite nanny is about to make a comeback! Mary Poppins Returns will open this Christmas and, once again, we will be exposed to the magic that is unique to that mysterious figure who flies in on the east wind and is universally known by her carpetbag and parrot-handled umbrella.

To accompany this long-awaited movie sequel, Jeff Kurtti has conjured up an engaging and enlightening collection of articles and essays in celebration of all things Poppins.

Kurtti traces the history of the Poppins books and their enigmatic author, P. L. Travers; tells the astonishing saga of how Walt Disney managed, against the odds, to acquire the film rights and take Mary Poppins from book to the movie. He also examines the movie’s triumph both as a film and a merchandising phenomenon; and recounts how Mary Poppins’ went on to recreate her unique brand of magic on the West End and Broadway stage before, bringing the story up to date, with background insights into the making of the sequel.

The book is profusely and sumptuously illustrated with original concept art, film stills and archive photographs – although, oddly, you will look in vain for an image of Julie Andrews that isn’t from an animator’s sketch or from posters, record sleeves and book covers.

Jeff Kurtti has cleverly interwoven his telling of Mary Poppins journey from page to screen, to stage and back, again, to screen with contributions from Cameron Mackintosh, Tom Schumacher and the first stage Bert, Gavin Lee, as well as essays from (to quote the jacket blurb) “renowned Disney authorities” Jim Fanning, Paula Sigman Lowry, Craig D. Barton, Greg Ehrbar – and, I am bound with a blush to admit, the present writer!

The 1964 film is generally regarded as Walt Disney’s greatest triumph and it remains, over fifty years on, beloved by several generations; now Mary Poppins Returns to entrance new audiences and Jeff Kurtti’s Practically Perfect in Every Way is the absolutely perfect way to commemorate a literary and cinematic legend.  

The Art of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse by Jessica Ward

Disney Editions; $40.00

As part of the Mouse’s 90^th birthday celebrations, Jessica Ward has produced this lavish book that begins with a commemoration of Mickey’s extraordinary career through a comprehensive filmography and a milestone-by-milestone examination of his life and times on and off the screen.

All of this is, however, is but a prelude to the remaining 115 pages featuring an exhilarating and imaginative Picture Gallery of artistic interpretations of Mickey by creative working for Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media.

Using pencil, pen and ink, watercolour, acrylic digital and mixed media, the artists present Mickey in may forms and artistic styles – cubist, minimalist, pointillist, abstract and pastiche –– look out for homages to Rockwell, William Stout and Frank Frazetta.

This diverse imagery reinforces a great truth that, if after 90 years we haven’t yet understood, we never will: Mickey Mouse is an enduring icon and his worldwide identifiable silhouette is so much part of our popular culture that it remains instantly recognisable and perennially beloved.

They Drew As They Pleased – The Hidden Art of Disney's Mid-Century Era: The 1950s and 1960s by Didier Ghez

Chronicle Books; $45.00

The indefatigable Didier Ghez has produced the fourth volume of his exceptional They Drew As They Pleased series with a retrospective exploration of a intriguing period in the Disney Studio’s history: the post-war era noted for its optimism of spirit and, in the graphic arts, for the emergence of a new modernism that challenged the old-school style that had been the touchstone for Disney’s success during the so-called Golden Age of Animation.

As with the earlier volumes, Ghez’s aim is to profile the work of those – often unsung – concept artists who, in every era, helped set the mood and frame the style of the Studio’s shorts and features: men and women who, as the title (taken from the 1948 book devoted to the work of Albert Hurter) suggests, were allowed to draw as they pleased. All the books in the series have featured rarely seen or previously unseen artwork and, along with the artists’ stories and the historical contextualising that are Ghez’s forte, this is what makes this series such a joy for the Disney reader – and of incalculable benefit to Disney research.

Among the five artists whose work is explored in this book is one – Mary Blair – who has, in recent years, been probably more chronicled, celebrated and exhibited than any other member of the Disney concept team, but there are newly revealed images from film classics like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan that merit the inclusion of her memorably stylised work.

The other artists are Mary’s husband, Lee Blair (responsible for superb work on Disney’s South American features); Tom Oreb (brilliant modernist takes on the cut 'Jabberwock' sequence in Alice and examples of his work for Disney-created TV commercials); John Dunn (lively, cartoony ideas for the new, ‘limited animation’ style adopted for TV programmes such as Man in Flight and Mars and Beyond); and Walter Peregoy (bold early designs for The Sword in the Stone and Jungle Book and a balletic approach to the unmade Chanticleer).

 

The highest compliment one can pay Didier Ghez is to say, on closing the cover on his latest volume, “When’s the next one coming?”

And, finally for now, there’s this behemoth...

But I have yet to read it – or, indeed, develop sufficient muscular strength to even lift it out of its box!


 

PRACTICALLY PEERFECT

A post-script to my tribute to Robert Sherman, here is one of my treasured possessions: the large format Golden Press Mary Poppins film book...



...signed by Bob and Dick when I first met them in 1987; Julie Andrews, following an interview at the Dorchester in 2007...


...and Peter Ellenshaw when I interviewed him on stage at London's National Film Theatre in 1979...


Still hoping to, one day, meet Dick Van Dyke!

MARY POPPINS AND THE CAPTAIN

So, I was telling about how I wrote what might have been a film sequel to Mary Poppins...

Every now and again, during the process, there were stray conversations about who might play Barney – the ice-cream seller in the park who was to replace Bert as the leading male character in the film.

One such exchange was quintessentially ‘Hollywood’, by which I mean that it was so typical of Moviedom that it may easily have betokened a genuine cast-iron idea or nothing more than a wild and passing whim...

Anyway, this is what happened...

I'm taken to lunch by a Studio Executive at a ritzy restaurant on Rodeo Drive and, during the meal, I am suddenly confronted with a totally unexpected question:

“So," begins the Exec, "is it essential for Barney to be ‘Caucasian’?”

I look blank…

“I mean, does he have to be white?” he translates.

My failure to instantly respond is, of course, not because I don’t know the meaning of the word 'Caucasian', but simply because I can’t imagine why I am being asked…

For one thing, black people in Edwardian London were far and few between and whilst it was just possible, perhaps, to find a black footman serving in some big household,meeting a black ice-cream seller in a London park would have been an extremely unlikely occurrence.

And – apart from anything else – Barney is supposed to pass for Dick Van Dyke's younger brother!

Why do they want to know, I ask.

"Well,” comes the reply, “it just so happens that Michael is very keen to work with the Studio on a project..."

I interrupt: “Michael…?”

"Yes!" responds the Exec, as if dealing with a complete idiot, "Michael JACKSON! Having made Captain Eo for Disneyland, he's now a part of the Disney family..."

I can't help it – I laugh!

Exec is not amused. He becomes emphatic: "Look! He sings! He dances! He'd be PERFECT!"

I stop laughing: he's in earnest!

What's more, he's still enthusing: "Listen! Just think of the marquee-billing: JULIE ANDREWS -- MICHAEL JACKSON -- MARY POPPINS! It’s a BRILLIANT line-up --- AND a hands-down BOX-OFFICE CERT!"

As it turned out, Mary Poppins never did come back - not, at least, on film - but if she had, then it's anyone's guess whether we might also we have seen Captain Eo selling strawberry ices in Cherry Tree Lane…

MARY POPPINS (NEARLY) COMES BACK!

 
This post takes up a story that I began a few weeks ago...

Of course, it all happened a long time ago: twenty-four years ago, to be precise, in 1987...

For several years, I'd been friends with P L Travers the author of the 'Mary Poppins' books and, over tea one Sunday afternoon, we were discussing the latest in a long line of requests from Disney that they be allowed to make a sequel to their hugely successful, multi-Oscar winning movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.




This particular proposal was for a film in which the magical nanny would make a return visit to help the children of either the grown-up Jane or Michael Banks. It was a clever idea, reminiscent of J M Barrie’s idea of having Peter Pan come back to London in order to take Wendy’s daughter - another ‘Jane’ - off to Never Land.

For Pamela Travers, however, it was totally unacceptable, since she resolutely maintained that all she knew about her heroine was whatever was to be found in the published stories. It was pointless asking Pamela who Mary Poppins was or where she went and what she did when she left the Banks family. Her answer was always the same: “I don’t know! I didn’t invent Mary Poppins, I discovered her!”

Knowing that I would be incapable of changing the author’s mind about the Disney offer, I merely observed that there were a great many people who loved the original film and would be incredibly pleased to see Mary Poppins fly back into the cinema one more…

“Well,” said Pamela whose prickly views of the Disney film of her books were widely known (and which you have read on this blog), “I would only agree if I was to be completely involved in the process of making the film and if I could work with someone whom I could trust.”

Then, after a lengthy pause, she looked at me and said, “But if you want to suggest to Disney that you and I might work on a film story for them, then go ahead and see what they say…”

So I did!

I didn't believe for a moment that it would actually happen, but I wrote to Walt’s nephew, Roy E Disney whom I had met and interviewed several times, and then forgot all about it.

This was in the days before e-mail, so it took a week for my letter to reach the Mouse Factory. At the time I was living with my parents and returning home late one night, I was greeted by mother telling me that there had been a message for me to ring Disney. Assuming she meant the studio's London office, with whom I had lots of dealings, I replied that I'd call first thing in the morning.

"No," insisted my mother, "you have to ring the American office, now!"

"But who do I have to ring?" I asked, "there are thousands of people working there!"

My mother looked at me as if I was an idiot and simply said, "Mr Disney, of course!"

Within half an hour I was having a conversation with an enthusiastic Roy Disney and within a matter of weeks, Pamela Travers and I were contemplating starting work on the project.

Before we began, I suggested it would be a good idea if we watched the original film together and I arranged for a screening at the Disney office, then in London's Soho Square. There were just the two of us in the small viewing theatre and, as the lights went down, I asked Pamela when she had last seen the film? "At the premiere," she replied and my heart sank.


That was twenty-three years earlier: if she was critical of the film based on two-decade-old memories, what would her attitude be on seeing it again? Might this not deal a death-blow to the whole project?

Not so, as it happened. The film ran and Pamela kept up a running commentary with some predictable complaints but a great many positive observations.

"That's something we should incorporate..." she whispered.

"That's good!" she announced, "Let's find an idea that recalls that moment..."

"Use that song as a reprise," she instructed. "Make a note of it!" And I did!

Days later, Pamela Travers and I were hard at work, drafting an initial outline, following the approval of which we went on to produce the first of two developed treatments.

One afternoon, the pair of us and our mutual agent entertained Jeffrey Katzenberg who had flown into town for the premiere of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was winter and the electric fire in Pamela's front room was running at full throttle, pumping out heat and making the atmosphere heavy and sleepy.

I learned an important lesson about powerful people being just like the rest of us as I watched Mr K fighting jet-lag and the oppressive heat while Pamela laid down demands about a series of issues such as the requirement that Mary Poppins must not (as she did in the first film) display her undergarments!

By sometime in the middle of 1988, to my enormous astonishment, I found myself in Los Angeles writing a Hollywood screenplay for a film to be called (after the second book in the series) Mary Poppins Comes Back!

The story was to take place a little while after Mary Poppins' first visit. Mrs Banks had now given birth to twins, called (as in Travers’ books) John and Barbara, and during her pregnancy, had given up the cause of women's suffrage - an embellishment in the original film which Pamela had hated.

Mrs B was, nevertheless, as dizzy as ever, and not coping with her enlarged family; while Mr B was very wrapped up in his new position at the Bank and gravely concerned over problems resulting from various imprudent investments that had brought the bank to near ruin.

The children, predictably, were being fractious and troublesome...

One day, in the Park, Jane and Michael were having difficulty with their fly-away kite until - helped by Barney the Ice-Cream-Man - they finally managed to reel it in only to discover that holding on to the other end of the kite-string is the supercalifragilistic Miss Poppins!

Disney were hopeful that Julie Andrews might agree to reprise the title role - and, indeed, at that time she could easily have done that - but there were question-marks over the rest of the cast who were either grown up, too old or - er - dead!

When we began working on the project, P L Travers and I were expecting Bert to remain an important character - although Pamela was adamant that the romantic implications of the first film should not be repeated. However, in an early round of discussions with the Studio they suggested we look for an alternative character to act as "a pointer to Mary Poppins", which was PLT's phrase to describe Bert's function in the story.

We eventually decided to use the Ice-Cream Man, a minor character in the books, named him Barney and made him Bert's younger brother adding, by way of explanation, that Bert had gone on to "'igher things" and was now "sweepin' the chimblies of the rich and famous!"

Here – hitherto unseen – is the second outline on which the two versions of then screenplay I wrote were based...

Changes in personnel at the studio led to the project being reviewed and passed to the Howze sisters (Penny and Randy) who had written the screenplay for Disney's 1988 movie, Mystic Pizza. Pamela and I were retained as advisers but, eventually, after another two draft screenplays, the project was shelved.

One small, but significant, plot feature from our original story finally made its way (without acknowledgment, obviously!) into the script of the stage musical of Mary Poppins, so – in a humble kind of way – our efforts were not entirely in vain!

Check out some interesting videos about Mary Poppins on my Sibley blog posting Something About Mary.

MARY POPPINS AND THE SEA-CHANGE

Having recently written on this blog about P L Travers, I decided to revisit my 'archive' (one of many cardboard boxes!) and found a couple of items that may be of interest to Disneyphiles and Poppinsites.

My correspondence with P L Travers began in 1972 when I was writing Disneydust, a never-published biography of Walt Disney.

I had been working on this book in my spare time (I was then an employee of a finance company) for four years, inspired to redress what I saw as the skewed portrait of Walt in Richard Schickel's The Disney Version.

Considering I was on the wrong side of the Atlantic, I achieved quite a lot original research and contacted a number of veteran Disney artists and employees, several of whom would later become longstanding friends.

Being something of a bibliophile, I also wrote to the authors of some of the books that had been made into films by the Disney studio, including Dodie Smith, Mary Norton, Margery Sharp –– and P L Travers, from whom I received the following letter...

Over the years, there has been much quoted comment about what was Pamela Travers' view of the the film. Here is how she expressed it in 1972...

Following her request, the statement was included in Disneydust in its entirety and Pamela read the chapter on the making of Mary Poppins and annotated it – extensively! As I have said, Disneydust never saw the light of day: abandoned by the publisher despite having advertised it in his catalogue of forthcoming titles – without my having a contract.

Fifteen years passed and I found myself working with Richard Holliss on The Disney Studio Story, for which I did have a contract! I wrote to Pamela asking if I could use her original statement in the forthcoming book. This is how she responded...

Well, obviously, I was "minded to talk about the matter" and made the call that led to that first visit I have already described on this blog.

Part of Pamela's original statement eventually appeared in The Disney Studio Story (although heavily truncated since one-third of the text was lost in the edit) and my visits to 29 Shawfield Street continued and became more frequent until the day came when the subject of "another film" came up.

But that is a subject for another post...

TEA WITH MISS ANDREWS

It's one of those occasions when you have to pinch yourself and ask, "Is this really happening?"

I'm sitting in a suite in London's Dorchester Hotel with Julie Andrews - yes, the Julie Andrews – Mary Poppins! – who is asking, "Shall I be mother?" and pouring me a cup of tea.

"Sugar?" Just a spoonful...

Thirteen years ago, 1998.

Radio producer, Malcolm Prince, and I are finally about to have an interview for which we've waited weeks. It's been on, it's been off and, now, it's back on again...

Julie is in London, rehearsing with the cast of the new musical, Doctor Dolittle, in which she is providing the voice of Polynesia the Parrot, and she's agreed to give us an interview for a radio series we're making on Disney's Women - the real and fictional women in the life and films of Walt Disney.

The evening of the interview eventually arrives. We are on time - well, absurdly early, of course! - but Miss Andrews is delayed. Detained at rehearsals....

An hour passes. Then another... We sit in the Dorchester bar, drinking over-priced orange juice, not daring to risk any alcohol - just in case the interview actually happens! I'm unaccountably nervous. It feels how, I imagine ,it would feel if you were waiting for an audience with the Queen...

I look at my watch. It's getting late. Miss Andrews is now stuck in traffic. The interview will definitely get rescheduled... Then the call to go up to her suite.

If possible, I am now even more anxious: at the end of a long day of rehearsals, she'll be tired, she'll be hungry. She's certainly never going to be able to give us the promised hour of her time...

In the suite we sit and wait some more. So near and yet so far... I hum to myself: "Fa - a long, long way to run..." How true.

Then the door opens and in comes Mary Poppins - spit-spot, hurry up, no dawdling...

She greets us with a big, warm smile and instantly defuses all anxiety. "Gentlemen! I am terribly sorry to be so late and to have kept you waiting!"

We shake our heads. Was she late? Had we been kept waiting? Really? We hadn't noticed!

Malcolm ventures that we'll try not to keep her too long. Again: the reassuring, I-have-confidence-in-sunshine, smile...

"I think we said an hour. Let's do it!"

Always the trouper, her on-with-the-show, vaudeville origins coming to the fore.

"But first, I need to freshen up - and then I think we all need a cup of tea!"

She vanishes into the bathroom, an assistant phones room-service and in a twinkling - only Disney magic could have done it quicker - a tray with a silver tea-pot and bone china tea-cups materialises before our eyes.

Then she's back, settling herself beside me on the sofa and asking if she should be mother...

Perfect! In fact, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

The interview - which flows effortlessly and runs for well over an hour- passes in a kind of hazy, pink blur...


Disney's Women was duly broadcast - to considerable acclaim - and, subsequently part of the interview relating to Mary Poppins found its way into an essay I contributed to A Lively Oracle, a book about Poppins' creator, P L Travers - which also published one of Andrews' fascinating (and revealing) letters sent to Travers from the Disney sound stage in Burbank.

When, a few years back, I wrote (with Michael Lassell) my book Mary Poppins: Anything Can Happen If You Let It, I'd planned to include part of what Julie had said about Walt, Mrs Travers and playing the practically perfect nanny. But word came down from on high in the Mouse's Kingdom that the Andrews references and quotes would have to go.

The only reason I supposed that this curious decision had been taken - for Julie's presence in the film was crucial not just to the movie itself, but also to her own future career - was that, for some time she had been reportedly working on her autobiography. Maybe she was anxious that we didn't preempt her own book... Who knows? Anyway, the problematic passages were excised and that was that.

And, once again, I waited for Miss Andrews - or, rather, this time, for her book!

When Home: A Memoir of my Early Years eventually arrived, it was, as you'd expect (as you probably know), a charming read. But it's much more than that, being uncompromisingly honest - whilst remaining, as she would say, "polite and decent".

Home proved to be jam-packed with insightful stories: the benefits and pitfalls of being a born-in-a-trunk child star; singing (aged 13 years) for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Elizabeth at a Royal Command performance on the stage of the London Palladium; appearing on radio with Peter Brough and his wooden-headed companion, that other Andrews - Archie...


Getting the role of Polly Browne in the first Broadway production of Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend (as a result of a recommendation from fellow Educating Archie regular, Hattie Jacques); and, later, her fairy-tale romance with Tony Walton; playing opposite Richard Burton and Roddy McDowell in Camelot and becoming friends with T H ('Tim') White, the idiosyncratic author of The Once and Future King, the book on which the musical was based.

And, of course, there were the chapters that will doubtless excite most interest - her experiences during the creation of Lerner and Loewe's classic musical, My Fair Lady. It was fascinating to learn, incidentally, that they nearly called their show Fanfaroon - a man who blows his own trumpet! All things considered it's probably just as well that they didn't...

In those chaptrers, Julie revealed the monstrous egocentricities of Rex Harrison, the lovableness of Stanley (Alfred Doolittle) Holloway and Robert (Colonel Pickering) Coote, the utter beastliness of designer, Cecil Beaton and the devoted, nurturing care and attention which director Moss Hart showed towards his inexperienced young star at a point when everyone - and, in particular, the monstrous Rex - considered her a total liability and the show's undoubted ticket to the graveyard of theatrical flops and failures...

"She'll be fine," Hart told his wife after 48 hours of ceaseless coaching, "she has that terrible British strength that makes you wonder how they ever lost India."

Of course, what I was most interested in was what she would say about Poppins? Would it differ in some crucial way from my own interview account? But, no! There it is, virtually word-for-word as it was told to me over the teacups in the Dorchester...

The first volume concluded with Andrews getting the Poppins role, so there's plenty more to come in volume two: The Sound of Music, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Star!, Darling Lili, Hitchcock and Torn Curtain, Blake Edwards, S.O.B. and Victor/Victoria and the story of what happened to that extraordinary voice - not to mention the Shrek and Princess Diaries movies.

Anyway, since the book is now long published, it's probably safe to reveal that expurgated text.

So, here it is...

It was Walt's secretary, Tommie Wilck, who suggested Julie Andrews, the young British singer who had achieved stage stardom in London and New York as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, and who was currently appearing on Broadway as Queen Guinevere in the musical, Camelot.

Towards the end of 1961, returning from a visit to Europe, Walt stopped off in New York to see a performance of the Arthurian romance. As Julie Andrews sang, danced and whistled her way through the show stopping number 'What Do the Simple Folk Do?', Walt was convinced that he had found his Mary Poppins.

Backstage, after the show, Walt talked enthusiastically about his plans for the film. “There was no preamble,” Julie recalls, “he said he’d loved the evening and he wanted to talk to me about a project he had in mind for the film of Mary Poppins. I said, ‘Well that sounds lovely’. I don’t remember having had doubts other than ‘Can I make a movie?’ This would be my very first picture and as much as I’d always wanted to go into film I thought, ‘Gosh, would I be able to do it justice? Would I be any good at it?’ and so on.”

However, Walt was persistent and Julie agreed that, once Camelot had ended its run, she would visit the Disney studio with her then husband, designer Tony Walton. Meanwhile, she read the books and began to have doubts not just about her own ability but also about the possibility of adapting the source material for the screen.

“The books were so perfectly written,” she recalled, “but they were so boxed-in with their primness and rigid discipline that I thought ‘Now, how are they going to make that into a musical?’ And, of course, it was miraculous the way that they did.”

Any lingering anxieties were dispelled when she and Tony Walton arrived in Burbank at what Hollywood referred to as ‘The Mouse Factory’: “The minute I walked into the studio and saw what Walt had prepared, I could tell that Poppins had something special about it.”

Looking at the storyboards and hearing the songs convinced Julie that she should accept the role: “The thing that was wonderfully appealing was that my background, long before I had been on Broadway, was vaudeville and music-hall. And the songs they played me on that first day, were wonderfully reminiscent. They had that knock-down, drag-out quality of the good old vaudeville songs and I loved them!”

About one song only, Julie had reservations: it was the ballad 'The Eyes of Love' which the Sherman brothers had come to think of as Mary Poppins' theme. She, however, thought the song too sentimental and not very 'Poppinsish'. In an attempt to find an alternative, the composers drew on an experience of Robert Sherman's younger son who had recently been given an inoculation at school that had been disguised with a spoonful of sugar. The resulting song became one of the most popular in the film.

Walt hoped to clinch the deal by offering Julie $125,000 and asking Tony Walton to be the film's design consultant, but there was one lingering issue: she was still under consideration for the role of Eliza Doolittle in the screen version of the show that had made her name My Fair Lady.

Julie wished more than anything to play on film the role she had created on stage, but Walt wanted her to be Mary Poppins and was so eager for her to commit to the film, that he promised to release her from her contract if Warner Brothers offered her the part in My Fair Lady. In the event, Jack Warner decided that casting Julie was too big a box-office gamble (having Rex Harrison play Professor Higgins was even thought risky) and opted, instead, for the glamorous, but non-singing, Audrey Hepburn. Warner's loss was Disney's gain.

P L Travers had described Mary Poppins as being thin, plain and “rather like a Dutch doll”, with “large feet and hands, and small, rather peering blue eyes.” Although Julie Andrews, at twenty-seven, was considerably prettier, she skilfully captured much of Poppins’ enigmatic personality, described by the author as “a mixture of arrogance and poetry and, underlying both, a certain invincible integrity.”

Julie, who was pregnant, returned to England to give birth and, thirty-six hours after the arrival of her daughter Emma, she received a phone call in hospital: “They said, ‘There’s a Mrs Travers on the line for you,’ and I thought, ‘Oh I’d better speak to her, doesn’t anybody know that I’ve just given birth and I’m feeling a bit weary.’ And she came on, she said, ‘Hello, this is P L Travers, is this Julie Andrews? Talk to me! I want to hear what you sound like.” I said, ‘Well what can I tell you, Miss Travers, I’m very thrilled, I believe I’m going to be doing a film based on your books.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ve got the nose for it that’s for sure; you’re too pretty, but you’ve got the nose for it.’”

Later, Julie went to afternoon tea with Pamela and still remembers her assessment of the author: “I liked her, she was an eccentric and rather tough old girl but a good hearted one I felt.” Pamela was equally responsive to Julie and - whatever her subsequent reservations about the film - was unfailing in her praise of the actress, describing her as having “integrity and a true sense of comedy” and her performance as showing that she understood “the essential quality” of Mary Poppins.

There!

That's what you didn't read in the Poppins book although, in her autobiography, Julie Andrews has told the tale in her own words - which are pretty much just about the same!

Home only takes the Andrews story as far as the Walt Disney engaging her to play Mary Poppins and that curious maternity wing telephone conversation with P L Travers...

I actually wrote quite a bit more written about the filming and the Oscar-winning success of Mary Poppins, but since Ms A is at work on a second volume of autobiography, I guess I'd better - for the present - keep that to myself!