Disney trashes ‘Poppins’ writer in ‘Saving Mr. Banks’
A young British woman named PL Travers, who wrote about the film “Snow White” in 1937, described Walt Disney as a shameless supplier of cheese ball crap as a film critic: “There is a deep cynicism,” she wrote, “at the root of especially its sentimentality . “
Travers would experience it in person: She is the author of the series “Mary Poppins” and the subject of the upcoming Disney film “Saving Mr. Banks” about the efforts of the studio – and Walts – to wrest the magical story from the gripping claws of the pesky maid who wrote it.
Or that’s the story Disney is selling, with the ultra-likable Tom Hanks in the roles of Walt and Emma Thompson, who play Travers, a woman the actress described in an interview as “so terrible and so irritating”. Another recent story in Variety called it “a pill no spoonful of sugar could sweeten”.
Can’t a resolute literary legend take a break?
Travers is one of the few writers to ever stand against the Disney juggernaut and demand a level of commitment and approval that most in their position have been denied. She did it at a time and in an industry where women were few and far between and had an uphill battle just to be heard. Above all, she invented the beloved character, a mysterious nanny who is blown into the life of the Banks family by the east wind, holding the iconic umbrella in the air. Without Travers’ wild imagination, there would be no Mary, no movie.
“I don’t think Disney had the slightest idea what to expect when she showed up [on the ‘Poppins’ set]Says Brian Sibley, a British writer who worked with Travers on an unrealized sequel to the film in the 1980s. “She was an immensely complex person. Amazingly independent and strong, very determined, very strong-willed. “
It turned out to be as strong-willed as Disney – a man who was used to getting his own way. “Disney took her to Hollywood and decided to get her to make this movie,” says Marc Eliot, writer of Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince.
“But she wasn’t very charming. She was a tough woman – not quirky or cute. She didn’t like American films and she hated animation more than anything. “
Travers demanded that the film contain no cartoon elements (a battle she ultimately lost). She thought songs like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” were stupid. And she resented the romantic relationship that had developed between Mary (Julie Andrews) and chimney sweep Bert (Dick Van Dyke).
The confident Travers, who was born Helen Lyndon Goff in 1899, had an anti-tide history that Disney almost certainly wasn’t aware of. She never married at a time when an unmarried woman was deeply stigmatized. She dated both men and women, ran with a host of British A-list poets, and had a deep and formative interest in mysticism, myths and fairy tales. She was an adventurer who grew up in the Australian outback; As an adult she changed her name, moved to London and worked as an actress, dancer, adult writer and journalist. She spent two summers on an Indian reservation studying culture.
She didn’t like to suffer from fools, and she was never happy with the cheerful and clean movie Disney ultimately made of her book.
Unlike the clean ending of “Saving Mr. Banks” – a happy ending, since this is also a Disney film – Travers was never convinced of the man, his studio staff or the film. She cried at the premiere of “Mary Poppins” in 1964, to which she was initially not even invited. In contrast to “Mr. Banks, ”it wasn’t tears of joy, but deep frustration. She spent the rest of her life slandering what she saw as the maudlin mess her Mary Poppins had become on the big screen.
Travers died in 1996 at the age of 96, irascible to the last. She once said she looked forward to hearing all the answers when she was old, but when asked about it at 94, she barked at a reporter, “Here I am in my chair and I don’t think I … I do will know all the answers. I am human! “
Now Disney is coming back to temper and romanticize the sharp-tongued, endlessly creative woman herself – as well as her shabby treatment of her opinions.
“Disney had no creative respect for this woman,” says Eliot. “He wanted a property, and when he got it, he completely ignored her submissions and any restrictions she’d agreed to. And that’s how the film came about.
“This revisionist story – that’s part of the Walt Disney myth.”
