Travers’ disapproval had to sting a little bit since Walt really had assigned his best people to bring Mary Poppins to the screen. Travers lived to be 96 years old, dying in 1996, and while she had come to terms with some parts of the film, she still hated cartoons. Suffice it to say for now that Travers disagreed with almost every choice Walt and his team made, from the cast to the music to the animation.
Travers is legendary, so much so that the studio made a whole self-mythologizing movie about it that will eventually appear in this column. The behind-the-scenes drama between Walt Disney and P.L. Travers’ side), he finally got her to say yes. After years of flattery and cajoling (and presumably an increased need for cash on Mrs. But Walt Disney was nothing if not persistent and persuasive. He first tried to obtain the rights back in 1938 as part of his post- Snow White shopping spree, only to be turned down flat by Mrs. It had been a particular favorite of Walt’s daughters. The one movie that he had wanted to make for years was an adaptation of P.L. But even though audiences ate them up, they weren’t quite what Walt had in mind when he branched out into live-action. Walt certainly wasn’t embarrassed by movies like Son Of Flubber or The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones. And while the studio was still capable of putting out a sizable hit, they weren’t exactly the kinds of movies that brought invitations to the Academy Awards. Their last animated feature, The Sword In The Stone, was noticeably different from earlier classics in both style and tone and the response to it had been lukewarm. But the studio barely made cartoons anymore.
Sure, people were still buying merchandise, watching the TV show and visiting Disneyland. As the first fair season came to a close in October, almost five million guests had visited the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion to get the song “It’s A Small World (After All)” stuck in their heads.īut back in Hollywood, the name “Walt Disney” had lost a little bit of its magic. The Audio-Animatronics developed by WED Enterprises’ team of “Imagineers” were the toast of the fair. These were groundbreaking feats of engineering and entertainment. On April 22, the New York World’s Fair opened and four Disney exhibits quickly became must-sees for every visitor: Carousel Of Progress, Ford’s Magic Skyway, it’s a small world, and Walt’s passion project and personal favorite, Great Moments With Mr. The only trouble was they weren’t for his films.
When Mary Poppins premiered in Los Angeles on August 27, 1964, Walt Disney was riding high on some of the most enthusiastic reactions of his career.