O Mar, You Came Back!

“O Mar’, you came back!” 

“Honestly, Bert, don’t be absurd. Of course I came back.”

I rewatched Mary Poppins the other day (which in hindsight, was a mistake. There were tears). Here, have this illustration of the ship we all shipped before we even knew what shipping was.

What the heck, P.L. Travers? What. The. Heck.

So remember how I said I would compile a master list of every instance in the Mary Poppins books of these two being adorable? 

It’s all done. So now when all you Mary Poppins and Bert shippers meet P.L. Travers in the afterlife, you can ask her exactly what constitutes flirting and being in love! Because I don’t know about you, my all of my best guy friends have never given me regular flowers, let alone chalk ones that they drew for me.

I’m going to put it under a read more because it’s like 5 pages long in Word and I don’t want to make people scroll through all of it. So there you have it. Let’s get started, shall we?

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Ladies and Gentleman

May I present you...

The most beautiful Mary Poppins from Disneyland ❤☂️

(Photos are from DeviantArt)

Am I the only one who thinks that Italian Mary and Bert from musical are the cutest? 🥰

On the heels of the massive success of Mary Poppins, the Disney Company was understandably keen to reunite the stars of their biggest hit in years, Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke. Indeed, Disney had something of a reputation for recasting popular actors in their films and it was one of the last studios to persist with long term star contracts well into the sixties and even seventies with “house” actors such as Tommy Kirk, Hayley Mills, Dean Jones, and Kurt Russell. Though not under formal contract per se, Dick van Dyke appeared in a number of other Disney films in the immediate post-Poppins era such as  Lt. Robin Crusoe USN (1966) and  Never a Dull Moment (1968). Julie remained however the star with which Disney, like every other Hollywood studio of the time, most wanted to work and the prospect of reteaming her with van Dyke in the hope of striking Poppins box office gold one more time was too enticing for the company to ignore. In an earlier post here in the Parallel Julie-verse we discussed long gestating plans at Disney for a follow-up sequel to Mary Poppins which, at least in the initial stages, could have seen the Studio’s golden couple reteam. However, as was also mentioned in that entry, Walt Disney himself was reputedly resistant to the idea of a direct sequel, preferring to commit to new material and what he often called “breaking new trails” (Gabler, 415). To that end, creative personnel at Disney were charged with developing other projects that might serve as suitable vehicles for the manifold talents of Julie and Dick.  One project floated as a possibility with which to reunite the two Poppins stars was a new original screen musical, tentatively titled The Poet and the Nightingale. Loosely based on the biography of Hans Christian Andersen and his fabled unrequited love for the “Swedish nightingale,” opera singer Jenny Lind, the proposed film was the latest expression of a longstanding personal interest on Walt Disney’s part in the legendary Scandinavian author. Given Disney’s professional investment in reworking classics from the canon of European fairy tales, it’s not surprising the entrepreneurial filmmaker and his company would have had an interest in Andersen but it went well beyond simple investments in the Andersen oeuvre as general source material to a fascination with the author himself and his life.  In the late 1930s, Disney had already been toying with a number of Andersen’s tales as possible subjects for adaptation and the Disney Company had produced early concept plans for a raft of animated shorts and even feature films around such classic Andersen titles as “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Emperor and the Nightingale” and “The Little Mermaid”. Then in the early 1940s, it was announced that Disney was engaged in plans for a collaborative Andersen biopic with his friend and fellow Hollywood independent producer, Samuel Goldwyn. This major feature film was to have been a live-action account, albeit heavily fictionalized, of the storyteller’s life woven through with animated fantasy sequences based on Andersen’s fairy tales. Several draft screenplays were written for the proposed film— which was given the rather cumbersome working title, The Life and Stories of Hans Christian Andersen—and quite extensive storyboards were developed, including detailed concept sketches by famed Danish illustrator and one-time Disney staffer, Kay Neilsen, who, among other notable achievements, was responsible for the striking visual design of the “Night on Bald Mountain“ sequence in Disney’s 1940 film, Fantasia. (As an interesting aside, Neilsen’s concept sketches were reused in development on the much later Disney adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Little Mermaid in 1989, earning the graphic designer a posthumous film credit for his work almost half a century after the fact). Fate and economic woes intervened, however, and in the post-war period, the Disney company was in an extended financial slump. In addition, Disney was moving in different directions, so Samuel Goldwyn ended up proceeding alone with the project and his musical biopic, Hans Christian Andersen, finally reached the screen in 1952. With a lovely Frank Loesser score and the multitalented Danny Kaye in the lead role, the film used musical sequences and ballet in lieu of what would have been the animated sequences of the earlier Disney collaboration. The overall result was a bit loose and lacklustre, possibly exacerbated by alleged production problems and on-set squabbling, but the film did solid box office business on its initial release and, while it never quite attained popular classic status, it still circulates today on video and the occasional TV screening.

Disney didn’t give up on his interest in Hans Christian Andersen, however and, over the years, the Disney Company would be involved in a number of projects drawn from the Andersen oeuvre right up to and including the Company’s latest animated offering, Frozen (2013), based on Andersen’s classic fable, “The Snow Queen”. All of which brings us back to The Poet and the Nightingale which surfaced in the mid-sixties as a reactivated, if heavily revised, version of Disney’s earlier ambitions for a Hans Christian Andersen biopic. Public details on the project are sketchy and it’s not clear how far plans for the film actually proceeded. A rare online account of the background behind The Poet and the Nightingale was published in 2004 by Disney historian, Jim Hill on his popular, if occasionally controversial, weblog, jimhillmedia.com. Other snatches of information can be gleaned from various print sources and commentaries, some of which are listed at the end of this entry below. However, a comprehensive history of this tantalising project awaits someone with unfettered access to the Disney archives. If such a person happens to be reading, inquiring minds await with eager anticipation. In the meanwhile, what little is known about The Poet and the Nightingale is that it was conceived by Disney in 1965/66 as a big budget roadshow musical, focussed principally on a romantic comedy narrative between Andersen and his nightingale muse, Jenny Lind, played of course by Dick van Dyke and Julie respectively, interwoven with a range of light-hearted fantasy episodes, some of which would have involved live action/animation combinations. Furthermore, the project was envisaged as a vehicle to reunite not only Julie and Dick as stars but virtually the entire Disney creative team behind Mary Poppins: with a screenplay by Don DaGradi, direction by Robert Stevenson, choreography by Marc Breaux and DeeDee Woods, and a musical score from the Sherman Brothers, with musical arrangement by Irwin Kostal.  For various reasons, The Poet and the Nightingale never got off the ground. Due to the intense professional demands placed on her during this period, Julie was proving difficult to secure. Moreover, the bottom was quickly falling out of the market for big screen musicals and Disney suffered serious financial losses on two original musical films made in the wake of Poppins, The Happiest Millionaire (1967) and The One and Only, Genuine Original Family Band (1968). On top of which, Walt Disney died quite suddenly in December, 1966, leaving the company he founded reeling in shock and resulting in an extended period of industrial disorganization. Still, the Walt Disney Company didn’t give up on its ambitions to lure Julie back for another big screen musical and so the story is set to continue in subsequent posts…

Sources: Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn: A Biography. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998.

Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney. New York: Random House, 2006.

Hill, Jim. “A Very ‘Mary’ Christmas, Part II.” JHM: Jim Hill Media. <http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2004/12/22/514.aspx>

Solomon, Charles. The Disney That Never Was: The Stories and Art from Five Decades of Unproduced Animation. New York: Hyperion, 1995.

Solomon, Charles. Disney Lost and Found: Exploring the Hidden Artwork from Never-Produced Animation. New York: Disney Editions, 2008.

“The Story Behind the Story: Featurette on author Hans Christian Anderson." The Little Mermaid. Dir.: John Clusker and Ron Clements. Walt Disney Company. 1989. DVD (Platinum Edition).

Mary was NOT Berts nanny...

Okay, let´s face it.....I had this on mind for some time now and since I have been reading a lots of theories about this I feel like I need to say something (no one actually cares but I need to write it somewhere XD) In every theory I was reading they are saying that Mary was Berts nanny, but to all of you who belive this theory please let me kinda prove you wrong XD so I don´t think this theory about Mary being Berts nanny is right (of course there is nothing wrong to have your own opinion on their releationship XD) And I will tell you why. Many theories I read are saying that the line from Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is proving that she was his nanny, but have you ever tought that: „Yes, she might have taught him that word but not as his nanny but as his best friend, which she really is.“ (maybe more XD) in Mary Poppins Returns Mary said something like this: „Adults always forgets.“ But in the movie from 1964 there is Bert, he is an adult and he didn´t forget. She and Bert might be from the same world..As P. L. Travers said: „She is from world that is timeless.“ What if Bert is too? I mean Musical says it all He is in Love with her....deeply in love with her. But that´s not why I am writing this....maybe....but Bert may have younger sibilings whos nanny was Mary and considering they – Mary and Bert- are probably the same age he might have insist that he is too old for nanny so he helped her with his sibilings. Or maybe they were childhood friends and Bert was very upset because his dad was so mad at him for „not speaking“ and when he was on his outing with Mary or when he visited Uncle Albert with his dad (maybe they knew eachother) Mary told him that word, so his father would not be disapointed in him anymore. HE WOULD NOT BE SO FLIRTY WITH HER IF SHE WAS HIS NANNY IN THE PAST! As I put earlier in the post they were intended to be in love with each other...the article from newspaper from 1926 says it all. In the book Mary Poppins Opens the Door there is this bit: „Don´t bother ma´am,“ he advised Miss Lark. „A shilling would be no use to me. I´m doing it All for Love.“ And the children saw him lift his eyes and exchange a look with Mary Poppins as she strode out of the park. So yeah Miss Travers can say whatever she wants but this fandom is so strong...we can prove her wrong if we want to because everyone in this fandom have a special power produced by Berts love for Mary and Marys love for Bert. XD

 -Love ya  💞 💕