Author PL Travers’ disdain for fantasy and animation is a little befuddling in the thoughtfully realized period drama “Saving Mr. Banks,” the 2013 film…
Author PL Travers’ disdain for fantasy and animation is a little befuddling in the thoughtfully realized period drama “Saving Mr. Banks,” the 2013 film that shows a deceptively jocular Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) patiently pursuing Travers (Emma Thompson) for the film rights of “Mary Poppins.”
It makes you wonder what Travers meant when she tells the animator-turned-mogul in one scene that the titular character of her eight-book series “is the enemy of sentiment and whimsy,” explaining in part why she found the novel’s big-screen iteration not to her liking.
In fact, while she agreed to the casting of the sublime Julie Andrews as the umbrella-toting nanny, she disapproved of the actress’ depiction of Poppins, whose big-screen persona is beloved for her sugar-and-spice niceness.
In her writings, Travers allowed herself to get carried away by her vivid imagination—which made her contempt for people’s “intrusive friendliness” ironic.
In her books, the stern but magical nanny ends up taking her young wards to a trip around the world with a compass (1934’s “Mary Poppins”), attend an upside-down tea party and visit a circus in the sky (1935’s “Mary Poppins Comes Back”), show up in an undersea garden party (1943’s “Mary Poppins Opens the Door”), crash a Halloween dance soirée with their own shadows (1952’s “Mary Poppins in the Park”), and visit the Man in the Moon (1988’s “Mary Poppins and the House Next Door”).
