This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt.
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That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.
Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosures. Yeah. Time for a sofa upgrade? Introducing Anibay sofas, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.
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More than a half century after Mary Poppins premiered on August 27, 1964, it is still one of the most beloved films of all time. Here's Greg Hengler with the story. You may have seen the 2013 period drama Saving Mr. Banks, starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks, as filmmaker Walt Disney who attempts to obtain the screen rights to P. L.
Travers' Mary Poppins novels. Whether you've seen the movie or not. We thought we'd kick it up a notch and hear from the people who were actually there.
Now Let's begin with television and screen legend, Dick Van Dyke. I think all would agree that Mary Poppins truly is Walt Disney's crowning glory. Like Mary Poppins herself, the film is practically perfect in every way. The perfect creative team. Perfect songwriters, the perfect cast, and the perfect person to put it all together.
Walt Disney. But getting started wasn't that easy. Here's Disney animator Andreas Dejas and P. L. Travers biographer.
Valerie Lawson. I remember him being interviewed for it and he said that his daughter Diane had read the books. And she actually was the one who said, Dad, maybe there is something for you here. And he loved the books too.
So it was something very personal to him from the start. P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins was published in 1934 in London. But it wasn't until about four years afterwards, in 1938, that Walt Disney went after the rights.
misses Travers, however, wasn't too keen. Allegedly she said she'd seen other books that had been turned into movies and she didn't like the way they'd been treated by Hollywood, but Walt never ever gave up on a good idea and in 1944 he tried again. Walt sent his brother to try and convince Pamela, who was in New York, that she would release the rights to him. But she wouldn't.
Now over the next few years there are several offers made and as many refusals. And this these conversations they had are all recorded.
Now we come to my notes here, my typewritten notes, and this is what I want to make very clear. The book should be read very carefully for atmosphere. It is integral to the book and to the story that Mary Poppins should never be impolite to anybody. You brought your references, I presume. May I see them?
Oh, I make it a point never to give references. A very old-fashioned idea to my mind. Here's song composer and lyricist for Mary Poppins, Richard Sherman, and film historian Brian Sibley. No, no, no, no, no, no, don't make it like that. There were so many hesitations in her.
acceptance of the idea that the father and mother change and become warmer and more loving. She said, Not a change of heart, because he's always been sweet, but worried with the cares of life. I think she had 30 days to consider. On the 30th day, she relented, but she had to be the consultant. It seems unbelievable after all that had gone on, but almost 20 years from the point when Walt Disney had set out on this quest, Mrs.
Travers agrees on certain conditions that the film might be made. We were considering a number of people to play the part of Mary Poppins. We had Mary Martin, and we were thinking of Betty Davis, and then we were also thinking of Angela Lansbury. But it wasn't until one evening when the Ed Sullivan show had an excerpt from Camelot and a young woman named Julie Andrews and Richard Burton sang, what do the simple folk do? And I called my brother.
I said, Bob, oh my God, she's absolutely perfect.
Next day we walked into DeGrati's office and Don DeGratti says, did you see the Ed Sullivan show last night? I mean, it was just, wah!
So we walked down the hall, the three of us, we wanted to see Walk. Here's Tony Walton, Mary Poppin's costume and set designer, and his then-wife. Mary Poppins herself Julie Anders. Piel Travers had approval pretty much of everything in her contract, so Walt said that Julie would need to be. auditioned or passed by the author of the stories.
I met her very briefly in London. She, I think, was fond of me and approved of my doing Poppins. Uh I know she said that I had the nose for it. Mm-hmm As I expected. Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.
She was quite happy with Julie Andrews though. She was more than happy. She loved her performance. Rooming for everyone, gather around. The constable's responsible.
Now, how does that sound?
Well, Disney was reading in a newspaper an article about what people thought about the cinema today, and he came across a comment by Dick Van Dyke, which said that he personally did not like the way in which modern day movies were trending towards, as he put it, dirty pictures.
Now this was something that Walt himself felt very, very strongly about and he thought, oh this man's a man after my own heart. Instantly they liked one another and almost instantly Walt was offering him the part to play Bert. I'd only been in one movie myself.
So I was about as green as anything. And Julie, despite the fact it was her first film, Was perfectly professional. She had a camera personality. She knew where the camera was, she knew where the lights were, as if she had done it all her life. She was thoroughly professional from the beginning.
Of all the wonderful things that Walt was coming up with for this movie. One of the greatest moments in my Songwriting career was: We had finished this song. Jolly holiday. And we were playing it for the first time for Walt. And Don DeGratti had developed a bunch of beautiful sketches for this thing.
And there's a section in the song where four waiters were gonna come out. And Walt said, hold it. And he said, Waiters have always reminded me of penguins.
So they made them penguins. That would have never occurred to any human being except Walt Disney. He had this wonderful, whimsical way about him. Walt said, as a matter of fact, we'll animate everything in that sequence except for the principal characters. You know, we can do that.
We have this sodium vapor process that IWorks has created. You feel so great. You're all It was a high point of my life when I saw that finally put together with the real animation in there. And what a masterful job it was. Walt took all of his little bag of tricks that he developed over 35 years and put them into this picture.
And you've been listening to the story of Mary Poppins and how it came to be. And it's really simple, actually. The relentless pursuit. By Walt Disney of P. L.
Travers' Book. when we come back. More of the remarkable story of how Mary Poppins came to be here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. And all of our history stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that matter in life.
If you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to hillsdale.edu. That's hillsdale.edu. Awkward time to ask this, but hey, did you download the trail map? Yeah, no, I don't need to.
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On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks.
Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC.
Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com. com slash disclosures.
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And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Mary Poppins, which premiered in August of 1964, but is still loved. generations later. Let's pick up where we last left off. Here's Karen Dutris, who played the young Jane Banks. I think the one thing that comes off with Disney movies of the old days and especially Walt himself was his love of innocence.
And I think that's what Walt revered. In We Children, and that's what he wanted to send us away with still. And he succeeded. Oh. Ellen, we had the most glorious meeting.
When we were casting the film, Walt immediately said, I know the perfect person to play the mother, and that is Glynnis Johnson. She's just absolutely right. And we all agreed she's absolutely perfect. Gracious, Kate and Anna, you're not leaving. What will Mr.
Banks say? He's going to be close enough as it is to come home and find the children missing. Here's Glennis Johns, who played Mrs. Winifred Banks. I said to Walt it might give me an incentive if I could have my own little number.
Walt reached Dorothy and said, But Glynnis, the boys are just finishing a great number for you. You're going to love it. Wait till you hear it.
So he says, all right, all right. I'll have to hear it and if I like it, then I might consider doing the part.
So she left. Walt said, get on this thing. You've got to write something for her. But we had this song that we had written called Practically Perfect.
So we said, hmm. That could be a suffragette song. By the time I got back to the Chateau Marmont, the telephone was ringing. And it was Walt. He said, listen to this.
I heard the first... few bars of sister suffragette. We're clearly soldiers in petty coats and dauntless crusaders for women's votes. Though we adore many Individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid. Glennis was interested then.
When I think now of how nearly I didn't do it, it's amazing because I'm so proud to be part of it. It was the only time I've ever been working on a project. Where At the end of each day, I walked away saying, this is so good. I knew from the very beginning, after everyday shooting, how good that movie was going to be. Our songwriters Dick and Bob Sherman.
We asked Walt if we could have a half an hour of his time, and we played a few song ideas we had. He was very. impressed with what we were coming up with and at the end of this meeting He said, play me that bird woman song again. Come feed the little bird. Let's show them.
Maybe you can. It was about charity, about giving somebody something that they didn't ask for but that they could use love. Please may refeed the birds. Waste your money on a lot of ragamuffin birds, certainly not. Walt, from the time he heard it, just loved that song.
Never said it to us, but he would like a Friday afternoon he'd call us up and say, Come over and five thirty, six o'clock. We'd come over to his office and he'd say, play it. And I'd play Feed the Birds and sing it for him. Feed the birds, Toppins a bed. Yeah.
I need Yep, that's what it's all about. Have a good weekend boys and maybe send us home. He loved that song. It was his favorite. It's super calorifragilistic, expi alley docious.
The musical style was really boiled beef and carrot. It's boiled beef and carrot. It's an old English folk song. Super calor fragilistic, expi alley docious. And any old iron, any old iron.
It's silly little songs that they wrote in those years and we wanted to feel like that and yet be original and totally our own. When the film was released, audience response was overwhelming. and it became an instant phenomenon. It was the biggest hit in the history of the studio. Mary Poppins had worked her magic on the world.
Mary Poppins premiered on August 1964. at Grauman's Chinese Cinema on Hollywood Boulevard. They tell me this could be one of your biggest pictures, Mr. Disney.
Well, I haven't retired yet. And the reaction was... Wonderful. What an ovation I got at the end. The reviews were fantastic.
I never read reviews like that. They were all glowing, thrilling reviews. It was a remarkable success, a very, very big popular success. Which I mean, that is the greatest thing I think anybody could have, seeing people enjoying and laughing and crying. To your work, it's just the one most wonderful thing in the world.
For the best actress in a musical or comedy, the nominees are... At the Golden Globe Awards in February 1965, Julie Andrews was nominated for Mary Poppins, opposite Audrey Hepburn for My Fair Lady. And suddenly, I don't know how it came about, maybe Bill Walsh brought it up, but we suddenly realized that if Jack Warner had asked me to do My Fair Lady, which I missed out on, I would never have been able to do Mary Poppins. The winner is... Julie Andrews.
Thank you very much for this lovely honour. It's a wonderful memento of a very, very happy time. I took an enormous gulp and said... Finally, my thanks to a man who made a wonderful movie and who made all this possible in the first place, Mr. Jack Warner.
Everybody screamed. It was like a thunderous scream, and everyone's laughing. Including Mr. Warner, so I was home and safe. And that was her little sweet revenge.
It was great. Congratulations. Thank you very much. When a few weeks later the Academy Award nominations were announced, Mary Poppins received an amazing 13 nomination. Among the nominations include Best Picture, Director, Actress, Screenplay, Cinematography.
Art direction, visual effects, original song, and score. There probably aren't words to describe your emotion.
Now, now, now, now, gentlemen, please. On the contrary, there's a very good word: super caliphraginistic expialidace. The magic of it had escaped me, pounding it out every day. When it was all put together, there was. Yet there was something else besides what we put into it.
I don't know what serendipity came along, but there was a wonderful magic aura about that movie that nobody expected. And it's just as I say, every time I see the film, I think it's better and better. And now each generation is going to enjoy it in a different way. Father Kite needs a proper tale, don't you think? It was such a contribution.
to family entertainment. And I know that it's going to be around for a long time. It stands as the perfect Walt Disney movie, as far as I'm concerned. I had the pleasure, the honor really, of being asked to help dedicate the Walt Disney statue at Disneyland. It was his hundredth birthday.
And so I was I have to do that. And they said, Would you play a couple of songs? And I said, Okay. And I played a couple of things, and I said, I'm now going to play Walt Disney's favorite song. and it's just for him.
And I sang and played, Feed the Birds, Tuppence of Egg. I finished my song and I blew a kiss to the Walt statue like that. I said, Happy birthday, Walt, and I got down. And they told me afterwards, just toward the end, Out of the clear blue sky, one bird flew down right over. where I was playing and off again into the clouds.
Well, that moves me very much. That was war. Saying thanks. And a terrific job on the production, storytelling, editing, and narration. by our own Greg Hengler.
What a story he told. My goodness, the dick van Dyke. Said what he said about the making of the movie. He said, I knew how good the movie was going to be each and every day of the movie shoot. That doesn't happen very often.
And my goodness, that story about Walt Disney's favorite song dedicated to him on the unveiling of his statue on his 100th birthday. But going back to the movie set, where what Walt Disney would do was invite the cast in on Fridays, And all he would do Is play his favourite song, Feed the Birds The audience all respond that it was the biggest hit. the history Of Walt Disney's studio. 13 Oscar nominations. Each generation will enjoy it.
In their own way this movie makes Mary Poppins. It stands. As the perfect Walt Disney movie, Dick Van Dyke said to close things out. The story of the making of an American classic. Here.
on our American stories. This is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time. And one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate.
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