20. Walt Disney and Pamela Lyndon Travers
When Walt Disney promised his young daughters that he would make their favorite character – Mary Poppins – into a motion picture he gave himself a project which would take two decades for him to complete. The creator of the character, P. L. Travers (nee Helen Lyndon Goff) opposed the Disney version of her books far more stridently than as depicted in the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks. The portrayal of Disney in the film was largely fictionalized as well, Walt Disney was far less happy-go-lucky than the portrayal by Tom Hanks, and his company’s treatment of the author was less accommodating. Travers later said of the Disney version of Mary Poppins, “…I’ve learned to live with it”.
The unlikely pairing of Disney and Travers produced the classic 1964 film, but it was many years before the franchise could be built upon, in large part because of Travers’ continuing opposition. In her last will and testament, she specified what could and could not be done with her work in future adaptations, specifically excluding the Sherman Brothers (who had written the songs for the Disney film), from providing new songs in future adaptions of her work. Despite the strange pairing of Walt Disney and P.L. Travers, the odd couple produced one of the most enduring children’s films of the 1960s, which fifty years later threatens to expand into a film franchise, long after the deaths of Disney and Travers.
