Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers & ISU connections, an interview on WGLT

Thanks to Judy Valente for her delightful interview of me on WGLT about Mary Poppins as both a delightful filmJulie Andrews as Mary Poppins and P. L. Travers, author of the book and a popular children's book as well as a small, but interesting connection of ISU to P. L. Travers. Judy is such a great interviewer.

Disney's Mary Poppins film was released 50 years ago this week. As we learned in the recent Disney film Saving Mr. Banks, P. L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins series, was never happy with the adaptation. Pamela Travers was opinionated, but thoughtful, and certainly had a wide range of interests including Zen Buddhism and mytical Sufism. 

In the WGLT interview, Judy asks why Mary Poppins, the film, has such a long-standing appeal with both adults and children. I think that it is partly because Travers understood that children whose lives are in even a small amount of dissarray fantasize about order and everything working out. But it is also because Walt Disney understood the humor and charm of the story and could add the studio's magic to make it wonderful entertainment. Finally, the film causes adults to not only reflect back on their childhood but to consider how they are as parents; are they fulfilling their own hopes and dreams for their family?  The film is more complicated than we perhaps realized when we saw it as children, but that, in turn, makes seeing it again just as fulfilling.

Thanks, again, to Judy Valente for the opportunity to thoughtfully reflect on the delightful film as it turns 50.

Illinois connection to Walt Disney and Mary Poppins

Walt Disney grew up, partly, in Illinois.  The first person to get P. L. Travers to admit that she didn't really like the Disney version of her popular book Mary Poppins was from Illinois State University.  I spoke about these connections to ISU's Media Relations in a nice article by Rachel Hatch.  Here's the link: http://mediarelations.illinoisstate.edu/report/1314/march4/disney.asp

Disney chat on WJBC

Today I am talking on WJBC radio about Walt Disney, the film Saving Mr. Banks, the exhibit Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives, presented by D23: The Official Disney Fan Club, the Museum of Science and IndustryWalt Disney's boyhood home in Chicago (MSI) in Chicago, and Disney's connections to Chicago.  

Here are a few links that might be helpful:

• Information about the Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives
• A timeline about the Disney company, from the MSI
• Chicago Tribune article about Disney's childhood home in Chicago

Also, a money saving tip for visiting museums is to support a local museum that has reciprocal exchanges with other museums.  If you are a member of either the Children's Discovery Museum in Normal and the Peoria Riverfront Museum, you can enter the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for free.  You just pay for tickets for special exhibits.

Walt Disney's office recreated at the Disney Archives exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

Walt Disney and posters from his film studio

 Annette Funicello's Mickey Mouse Club uniform

A costume that Julie Andrews wore in the Mary Poppins films 

Mary Blair's "It's a Small World"

Mary Blair's artwork and creative ideas for Disney are legendery.  She had a modernistic, more abstract vision that Walt Disney appreciated but was very different from the drawings in his animated films that are rounder, softer in town and cuter, in a different way.  Blair is so revered at Disney that she is lauded in a special section of Disneyland's museum area as a Creative Innovator.  She's in a hall of luminaries that includes astronauts, inventors, politicians, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney and others.

A chapter in my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, has a section critically analyzing a book recently published by Disney that uses Mary Blair's conceptual art for Disney's Alice in Wonderland film along with a text loosely adapted from Lewis Carroll's by children's author Jon Scieszka.  Here's a link to a presentation, with images, based on that chapter.

For this blog on our Disneyland trip, I am posting photos of the "It's a Small World" ride to show what it looked like during the Christmas 2010-2011 season.  The music had been changed to an amalgam of the original "Small World" tune along with Christmas carols.  The dolls and scenery within the ride had been decorated for Christmas to reflect the different culture's Christmas, or end of the year, celebrations. 

A panorama of "It's a Small World" at night

Floating along the front of the ride, while going into the ride buildingThe clock area where the dolls come out and walk around.

Floating into the ride during the day

The ride during the day. It's much whiter and doesn't have the same presence within the park as it does at night.

Inside the ride the colors are bright, the dolls look rather cute, slightly dated but still charming and over the top.

The music is constantly playing, a little like treacle. Note the poinsettias and other holiday decorations

Just happy to be in front of "It's a Small World"

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Disneyland!

Disneyland is still the most magical place on Earth I'm happy to report. Like so many kids who watched Disney's Sunday night TV show, I was fascinated with Disneyland in California.  My parents took our family once, in the late 1960s.  When we arrived in Disneyland, I wanted to go everywhere, see everything that I had seen on television.  Instead, my parents made us stop on Main Street.  Not to watch a parade, or wait in line to see Mickey Mouse, or anything interesting like that.  No.  My parents, always pharmacists, wanted to hang out in the drug store on Main Street USA.  It's not like they hadn't seen drug stores before.  They worked in them.  They even collected a few antique drug store items.  But they couldn't budge for what seemed like an hour as they looked at every detail of that drug store.  I don't remember them complaining something was wrong with it -- as Disney people work hard to get the essence right.  But I do remember being enormously disappointed at my introduction to Disneyland.

This year, my son, my wife and I visited Disneyland before going to MLA in downtown LA.  We have been wanting to go for years.  Some of us have never been and some of us hadn't been for a very long time.  So the experience was new and exuberant for us.  I'll post some of the photos from our trip over a few blog posts.There's always a light in the apartment above the fire station to remember when Walt Disney lived at Disneyland.

Main Street Disneyland at night. The drug store isn't there any more. We did have to check.The fireworks over the castle were particularly spectacular. The firework show told a story and featured a flying Tinkerbell.We had to get our photo taken with the Mad Hatter and Alice, of course.