A Spoonful of Sugar

Or how the ‘Making of Mary Poppins’ documentary included on the 25th Anniversary DVD restored my hope and sweetened my attitude toward life in general.

A few years ago, my daughter received a Mary Poppins Barbie doll for Christmas. It came dressed in that flowing white gown with the red corset waist, the one movie fans know so well, the doll’s slim plastic hands holding a white parasol, a broad white sun hat perched atop bouncing brunette curls. As soon as my daughter had the doll out of the box, I began singing “Jolly Holiday”. My daughter gave me a puzzled look. She most certainly did NOT pretend to glide across a pond on the back of an animated turtle. Of course, she had only seen the movie once, which was approximately 30 fewer times than me, so I couldn’t blame her for not knowing every bar of every refrain.

I’ve seen “Mary Poppins” so many times, I even know how to spell “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Repeated viewings have cemented the suffragette anthems deep into my soul. Still, during a recent viewing of the DVD extras disc with my niece and nephew Jane and Michael Banks, I learned about the making of the beloved and genre-bending classic.

(Full disclosure: my niece and nephew are not named Jane and Michael Banks. But wouldn’t that be cool?)

For example, I learned that Walt Disney spent years trying to woo P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins book series, into letting him purchase the rights to make a movie about the British nanny. I learned that “Feed the Birds”, written by the Sherman Brothers (who were also the fellows who suggested changing the time period of the story to the Edwardian era, a decision for which we fans of the costumes offer thanks!) was Mr. Disney’s favorite song. And the chirping animatronic bird who duets with Mary Poppins was a prototype for his theme park.

Even more time, money and creative energy went into the making of this film than I had realized. I suppose I had thought Walt Disney pulled the finished version from a magical carpetbag. Not so. The visionary filmmaker put together this enormous undertaking a chalk-drawing detail at a time, including the casting of Julie Andrews as the “practically perfect in every way” star.

Which brings me to my point.

Julie Andrews, she of angelic voice, started singing as a little girl in Vaudeville shows. She worked her way up the showbiz ladder, eventually landing the role of Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway musical “My Fair Lady” in 1956. And the attention she received as Eliza Doolittle helped her land the starring role in a television version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Cinderella”. This, in turn, led to her starring on stage in 1960 as Guinevere in “Camelot”. (I can practically smell the cardboard case of the cast recording vinyl record when I start humming “If Ever I Would Leave You”.) All of this is to say that Andrews was well-known and well-loved for her voice and acting.

But when Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, set about casting the film version of “My Fair Lady”, he hired Audrey Hepburn to play the role that Andrews had originated. It was a snub, certainly, but Julie Andrews, passed over for her role, was available to star in Walt Disney’s movie. He had seen her on stage in “Camelot” and thought she would be perfect. But his movie project, while ambitious, was more of a gamble. A gamble she was reluctant to take while pregnant. But Disney wanted the wholesome chanteuse to star as the magical nanny, and the production waited for her.

After the film was released and became a smash hit, the award nominations started rolling in. With delicious irony, both Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn were nominated in the “Best Actress” category. But it was Andrews who won the Oscar for “Mary Poppins” in 1964. And it was Andrews who won the 1965 Golden Globes “Best Actress” award for the same role. Footage of that awards ceremony on the extras disc shows a glowing, black and white Andrews accepting the statuette. She offers general thanks in her elegant way. And she closes her acceptance speech with these words: “And, finally, my thanks to a man who made a wonderful movie and who made all this possible in the first place, Mr. Jack Warner.”

To Warner’s credit, he chuckles when the camera pans to his face. The rest of the audience roars. They were expecting her to name Walt Disney, the man who gave her the job (and the opportunity to prove herself, an opportunity that likely helped her land lead roles in “The Sound of Music” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie”). But she was right (and clever) to give thanks: it was the snub, the passing over for “My Fair Lady” that made her available for “Mary Poppins”.

As I snuggled with my own Jane and Michael on the floor in front of the television, I was struck by this parable of “Mary Poppins”. There have been many times in my life when I expected certain outcomes, as Andrews likely expected an invitation to play Eliza Doolittle on film. When those outcomes, whether they be professional or romantic or familial or whatever, at times failed to materialize, I felt keen disappointment. Sometimes (okay, much of the time), I took such disappointments as omens of failure, signs that my life would continue to unfold in mostly gloomy ways. But upon closer viewing of my own life’s DVD extras disc, the one playing in my memory, I could see that some of my most appreciated opportunities came in the wake of keen disappointment.

Could the saying be true, that old cross-stitch phrase that when one door shuts, a window opens?

I’m still waiting for my Walt Disney call, sure, but I’ve started leaving my windows open, all the better to receive opportunities … and catch a sighting of any stray umbrella-riding nannies.