In the movie version of “Mary Poppins,” Mr. Banks & Mary have a rather famous exchange. After dozens of chimney sweeps have come spilling out of Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the enraged banker then turns to the nanny and says:
Mr. Banks: Just a moment, Mary Poppins. What is the meaning of this outrage?
Mary Poppins: I beg your pardon?
Mr. Banks: Will you be good enough to explain all this?
Mary Poppins: First of all, I would like to make one thing quite clear.
Mr. Banks: Yes?
Mary Poppins: I never explain anything.
You know who else never explained anything? “Mary Poppins” creator P.L. Travers.
Ms. Travers was a notoriously difficult interview. Over the course of her extremely lengthy life (P.L. passed away in 1996 at the ripe old age of 96), hundreds of reporters beat a path to her door. Hoping that they’d then be the one who’d finally be able to get this woman to open up, reveal how she’d come to create the world’s most famous nanny.
But Ms. Travers … She was extremely tight-lipped. And often downright evasive. Take — for example — P.L. ‘s standard response whenever she was asked where she’d been born. When asked this particular question, Ms. Travers would invariably reply “I was born in the British Commonwealth” or “the British Empire.” Which might make you think that this author was born in the U.K. But — truth be told — this author was actually born in Australia. Maryborough in Queensland, to be exact.
Mind you, her real name was Helen Lyndon Goff. Helen took P.L. Travers as her stage name in the 1920s, back when Ms. Goff was still trying to find her way. Trying to decide whether she wanted to work as an actress or a dancer or an author.
Obviously, this wasn’t the sort of information that Travers typically would have shared with journalists. Which is why it took someone truly dedicated — like Valerie Lawson, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald — to actually unearth all of this info, to pull together a detailed portrait of this deeply private person.
Copyright 2006 Simon & Shuster
After four years of research, the end result was “Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers” (Simon & Shuster, October 2006). A somewhat downbeat biography that casts Ms. Travers as this person who — while her books may have entertained millions — never truly seemed happy herself.
In her book, Lawson suggests that P.L.’s somewhat pessimistic take on the world might have been the result of her father passing away when Travers was only seven. Raised by her rich elderly Great Aunt Ellie, P.L. really struggled from that point forward to find her proper place in the world. First working as an actress in Australia, then trying her hand at newspaper writing as well as poetry.
It wasn’t ’til P.L. emigrated to the U.K. in 1924 and befriended noted Irish poet George William Russell that things slowly started coming together for this struggling Australian author. Working first as a journalist and then as a theater critic, Travers made some connections within the literary community. Which eventually gave P.L. the opportunities she needed to make her big break-through.
Once that first “Mary Poppins” book was published back in 1934, most of P.L.’s money troubles were cleared up. But this woman still struggled to fill that internal void. Which is why Travers traveled extensively, experimented with spiritualism. She even adopted an Irish baby boy. But none of this ever truly seemed to make that woman happy.
This may explain why Walt Disney found P.L. Travers so difficult to deal with. (Dick Sherman recalled how Walt once deliberately dodged a meeting with P.L., telling that composer “You handle her. I can’t stand all of that negativism”). Which is why it took Disney Studios decades before it was finally able to acquire the movie rights to the “Poppins” books. Given how Travers seemed to find fault in everyone & everything, she just couldn’t see how Walt was going to be able to do her literary creation justice.
“Mary Poppins, She Wrote” does a fine job of retelling that oft-told story about the production of “Mary Poppins.” To be specific, that seemingly endless series of meetings that had to happen before P.L. would finally officially sign off on a shooting script for this film. What particularly made these meetings difficult is Travers seemed to insist on revisions of virtually every scene in the screenplay.
Of course, what’s great about a book like “Mary Poppins, She Wrote” is that Lawson also shines a light of some lesser known aspects of the Disney “Poppins” legacy. Like how P.L. struggled to keep her mouth shut in 1965, reportedly out of fear of upsetting Walt Disney. Which might then result in the studio cancelling production of the proposed sequel to this 1964 Academy Award-winner. Or — for that matter — Travers’ eagerness to cash in on the “Mary Poppins” TV series that the Walt Disney Company wanted to produce back in 1984.
While hardly the definitive biography of P.L Travers (I just wish that Lawson had had the chance to talk with author Brian Sibley before she finally finished writing “Mary Poppins, She Wrote.” Brian actually worked with Travers on the screenplay for the “Mary Poppins” sequel that Disney was thinking about producing back in the mid-1980s. In fact, if you head over to Brian’s site right now, Sibley’s got a story up about the entertainer that Mouse House execs had wanted to hire to play Barney, Bert’s brother in “Mary Poppins Comes Back.” You’re never going to believe who these suits envisioned as Dick Van Dyke’s possible replacement), there’s still enough new material here to entertain & inform all of you Disney history buffs. Which is why I suggest that you pick up a copy of this Valerie Lawson book.
You see, while “Mary Poppins, She Wrote” may not explain everything & anything about P.L. Travers, it still offers considerable insight into the life & time of this somewhat troubled, deeply private person.
Your thoughts?