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The Nanny Enigma: How Mary Poppins Was Made
By Elizabeth Hazel, © April 2006
Where did she come from? How does she do that? Where can I get a tapestry bag like that? Would she come and care for my children? Everybody loves Mary Poppins. She hovers over childhood memories with an aura of delicious mystery. Many are familiar with the inimitable cinematic Mary Poppins, some with the nanny who has occupied bookshelves for seventy years. Many will have the opportunity to become familiar with a new Mary Poppins as she storms the Great White Way in 2006. The question of how she was made, however, can only be answered by the people who made her: author P. L. Travers, Walt Disney, and Julie Andrews.
P.L. Travers
Helen Lyndon Goff, later known to the world as P. L. (Pamela Lyndon) Travers, was born in Marysborough, Queensland, Australia on 9 August 1899. (VIEW CHART ) Many incidents told about her life are incorrect because she narrated the kind of background she wanted rather than the one she actually had. Travers purged all evidence of her adult intimacies, so details are speculative. What is known comes from her remaining diaries and letters of others.
Travers Robert Goff, her father, started the family tradition of recreating personal origins. He claimed to have been born into the landed Irish gentry in County Wexford. In truth, he was born in London, the second son of a shipping agent. An unhappy, dissatisfied wanderer, Goff was prone to bouts of drunken melancholy and maudlin rants. Suffering from broken dreams and the humiliation of being demoted from bank manager to clerk, Travers Goff became yet more unstable and unpredictable. He died sometime during the night of February 7, 1907. The doctor pronounced the cause of death to be an epileptic seizure delirium, but Pamela Travers later said that she “always believed the underlying cause was sustained heavy drinking.” His death left his wife and three daughters destitute.
Pamela’s mother, Margaret Morehead Goff, was raised by her wealthy, unmarried aunt, Helen Morehead, called Aunt Ellie. Unhinged by her husband’s death, Margaret attempted to drown in a creek in 1910. Seeing she wasn’t stable enough to raise her daughters alone, Aunt Ellie interceded. Margaret and her girls went to live with Ellie in the family mansion. Ellie paid for Pamela’s secondary education at a good high school. Both her mother and Aunt Ellie were horrified when Pamela joined an acting troupe after her graduation. She toured Australia in the rattletrap troupe truck, performing bit parts in a mish-mash of Shakespeare and sappy melodramas. She started supplying newspaper articles and poems during this period. Pamela’s sisters were more compliant, and succeeded in living non-descript lives.
Fed up with the provincial strictures of Australia, Pamela sailed for London on 9 Feb, 1924, at 11:30 a.m. (N. Node conjunct natal Mercury; Jupiter T conj. natal Saturn; Saturn T conj. natal Jupiter; Neptune T conj. natal Sun). Again, Aunt Ellie disapproved, but was ever open-handed: ‘What’s this I hear about you going to England? Ridiculous nonsense. You were always a fool. Well, how much is the fare? I’ll send you a cheque for it.’ She soon fell in with an esoteric crowd in Dublin, and was closely associated with poet/economist George (A. E.) Russell. It is thought that she became his lover although he was married.
Russell encouraged her to develop her literary talents. She wrote correspondence articles and reviews for newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, and submitted poetry, some quite erotic, to Russell’s magazine, The Irish Statesman. Russell introduced her to Yeats and other Irish remnants of the old Golden Dawn crowd. By the 1930’s, Travers had become a devotee of the Armenian mystic Gurdjieff.
As she approached forty, she decided to adopt a child. Through her Irish connections, she was offered a set of twins but would only accept one child. Anthony and Camillus Hone were born on August 15, 1939. Pamela had their horoscopes cast by Edward Johndro. His response about Camillus was, ‘All in all, it would be a rare thing to find better cross rays between a child and its OWN mother. So I would say, by all means, ADOPT HIM.’ Pamela transported Camillus to England in December 1939. The baby screamed constantly, and he was hospitalized for months. Evacuees and troops from London began to arrive in Surrey. The war in England had begun. On August 3, 1940, Pamela and Camillus boarded a ship for America.
An Afflicted Leo
Her father’s death and her mother’s harrowing suicide attempt left its mark on Pamela. Her father’s imaginary origins and her mother’s background as a wealthy orphan added a component of pretentious superiority to Pamela’s character. This haughty persona concealed her gnawing insecurity about money, even after she became a wealthy woman. Helen Lyndon Goff turned into Pamela Lyndon Travers through a desire to project a sophisticated and alluring facade. Beneath this mask lurked the need to reclaim her father while paradoxically abandoning her unhappy Australian origins.
Travers’ Sun is at the midpoint of Leo, a vortex of fixed fire energy that she manifested through her acting and writing. She craved applause and approval. With Venus in Leo square Jupiter, she was selfish and temperamental, and got worse with age; yet this very aspect gave her the strength to finish what she started and pursue it successfully. Travers’ dominated others, alternately charming and bullying to get her way. As a young woman, she used her sexuality to further her agenda and didn’t shrink from liaisons with inappropriate candidates. As an older woman, she became eccentric and reclusive, still highly responsive to attention from attractive men while being offhandedly rude to others.
Her Virgo Moon in a T- square configuration with Saturn and Pluto shows childhood traumas connected with her parents and family identity. Pamela severed and then denied her roots. Consequently, she was unable to make healthy permanent connections with others. When a relationship ended, she obliterated that person from her life and memory. Conversely, she endlessly mourned the alcoholic womanizers and married men that were never available to her. Erasing uncomfortable truths caused trouble. She neglected to tell Camillus he was adopted. Imagine his surprise when his twin found him. Pamela’s relations with him crumbled. Pamela stole credit from others and threw tantrums when thwarted in her relationships with women, even in public places.
A pattern of globe-trotting disguised as spiritual seeking dominated her adult life. Travers sought wisdom from gurus and answers from therapists, but none of this helped her find inner contentment. Neptune is tightly conjunct her South Node, and Mars squares the Nodal axis. Squares between Mars and the Nodes, either natal or progressed, are perilous. Anger sears every facet of life, prompting attacks and confrontations that destroy relationships. With her natal Mars in Libra, Pamela attacked with charm, and if that failed, shifted into a more brutal mode of interaction.
Favorable aspects between inner and outer planets gave Travers a gift for infusing her written works with metaphysical concepts and the numinous glow of myths and fairy tales. Yet she was singularly unable to apply this acquired wisdom to her own life. Natal Mercury in Virgo is retrograde and near the Moon, making self reflection difficult. Mercury squares Uranus and Chiron, positioned near Antares. Travers suffered from real and imaginary illnesses and from poisonous emotional wounds. With her Virgo Moon also square these Sagittarian placements, she was susceptible to chronic digestive and respiratory infections. Periods of incapacitating illness coincided with troubled relationships or career crises. Chiron-Antares illustrates Pamela’s retaliatory vengefulness when she felt others had wounded or betrayed her; but with Mercury retrograde, sometimes she got it wrong or made the mistake of attacking people more powerful and influential than she was. Chiron-Antares symbolizes wounds that are out of control. In bouts of Chironic over-compensation, her recovery periods were often times of literary inspiration.
Mary Poppins on Paper
In the winter of 1933, while struggling to overcome a bout of pleurisy, George Russell suggested that she write a fairy tale. Travers retreated to her home in Surrey, where she lived with long-time companion Madge Burnand, and pulled out her old articles for the Christchurch Sun. All writing contains an autobiographical component, and Mary Poppins was Travers’ attempt to rewrite her personal history: Aunt Ellie provided the basis for Mary Poppins; secondary characters are childhood acquaintances from Allora and Sydney; the Banks children are named for various Morehead relatives. Mr. Banks is the remote father figure that haunted her past and tainted her adult relationships with men.
During the winter of 1933-1934, Neptune traveled back and forth over Travers’ Virgo Moon, fertilizing her imagination with the spectre of a powerful feminine archetype. Jupiter in Libra made a series of inspiring sextiles to her natal planets in Leo and Sagittarius. The limitation of her circumstances, Saturn in Aquarius opposing her natal Sun through the winter, was also a prompt for writerly discipline. Her natal North Node, squatting like a fat, happy turtle on the Galactic Center, was trined by Uranus in Aries.
The book was published in the spring of 1934. The fertile wedge created by transiting Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus yielded an exceptional literary harvest in 1934, and books released that year include Goodbye, Mr. Chips, I, Claudius, Lust for Life, Murder on the Orient Express, Tender is the Night, and Tropic of Cancer. Travers was in illustrious company, and Mary Poppins was a hit with both children and adults. Ever the contrarian, Travers eschewed the idea of building a reputation as a children’s author. Her idea of important writing at that time was poetry. But Mary Poppins paid the bills, and a second book, Mary Poppins Comes Back, was published in 1935.
Cosmic Nuts and Mystic Bolts
Travers was often asked how she created Mary Poppins, and for every question, she had a different answer. What isn’t generally known is that Mary Poppins was created soon after Travers relocated in England. In 1926, Travers wrote a series of stories about children and their dreams, and this collection of episodes became the basis for the first Mary Poppins book. On 13 November 1926, the Christchurch Sun published “Mary Poppins and the Match Man,” a short story about Mary Poppins’ day out with her boyfriend Bert. (VIEW CHART )
The biggest change between the 1926 Mary Poppins and the 1934 version of this character is her relationship with men. In the original article, Mary is involved with Bert. But in the book, Mary is untouchable and distant, and (in Travers’ words) is most clearly understood by Mr. Banks. The 1926 Mary occupied a proper nanny’s place. The 1934 Mary supercedes the flighty and ineffectual Mrs. Banks in the household’s functioning: Neptune’s transit of Travers
Moon gave the 1934 Mary Poppins an Oedipal twist. This reflects Pamela Travers’ changing intimate relationships. Fresh off the boat from the antipodes, Travers was the frisky flirt of Fleet Street. Eight years later, her romantic interest had shifted to a father figure, George Russell, and her relationship with Madge Burnand. Travers’ orientation toward both men and women had changed, and Russell was neither her first nor last grasp at a replacement father figure.
Mary Poppins has a fund of snippy remarks and zero-tolerance for nonsense. Yet underneath this prickly exterior, there is unlimited capacity for helping children explore the world of imagination, even when the conditions aren’t always safe. With a Sun-Venus conjunction in Scorpio, Mary Poppins is mysterious, and self-contained, thoroughly vain and “practically perfect.” Sun-Venus trines Pluto in Cancer, the sign of nurturing and mothering. Although the adventures the Banks children have with Mary Poppins contain risks, the children feel secure and trust her to take care of them. But Pluto isn’t a safe planet, and when the wind changes Mary Poppins abandons the Banks children. She cannot be possessed.
Mars forms a noviles to Moon-Jupiter and Saturn. Noviles impose fated events that push the native into the vanguard of problem-solving. Mary Poppins presents the children with a series of situations that test character and imagination, or reprimand them for bad behavior in a manner that seems too advanced for young children to absorb without trauma. The time Mary Poppins spends with the Banks family is also a period of exile from her native habitat, wherever that is.
Mary’s Moon is conjunct Jupiter in Aquarius. Although not a cuddly moon sign, this gives her a gift for illuminating the magical wisdom of nature. With this powerhouse combination in a fixed air sign, Mary does indeed come out of the sky and breaks the laws of gravity with impunity. In various episodes, Mary is related (Moon) to quite a few secondary characters, including the planets and the stars. Birthdays (Sun) feature significantly in her world. The waxing Moon with Jupiter is a symbol of Mary’s ability to enact and reflect the projections of others, but the square between Moon-Jupiter and Sun-Venus enables her to shield her true inner self and her secrets. Venus and Jupiter are parallel, so this square functions more like a conjunction – Mary’s mysteries make her even more lovable.
During the winter of 1933, the Moon and Jupiter in the 1926 chart were transited by Saturn, and the 1926 OOB Mercury squared by Neptune. Mary Poppins was transformed from a young woman with a beau into a remote figure that was strictly hands-off to the men of her acquaintance, yet craved their admiration. Mary Poppins was an admired, beloved woman, but had become sexually unavailable. Travers later said that Mary Poppins is a special servant or handmaiden, “the nurse of Beauty, Truth, and Love” who knows “an awful lot about the stars.” Mary Poppins is twenty-seven, on the cusp of, but never reaching, her Saturn return; yet she has lived for centuries and participates in the growth and renewal of life on Earth. These supra-natural and other-worldly characteristics were also added to the simpler 1926 version, and expanded substantially (Moon-Jupiter) in the seven subsequent Mary Poppins books.
The Mythic Nanny
Mary Poppins shares qualities with a spectrum of mythic and fairy tale characters. Dr. Hastings calls her a Bird Woman because she can speak the special language of birds, animals and infants, pastes stars in the sky, and rides on the wind. The Bird Goddess/Nurse is an anthropomorphic image portrayed in Paleolithic and Chalcolithic figurines (7000-3500 BC). The bird woman holds a bird-masked child or carries a baby sack on her back. She is associated with the sky and life-giving rains, and figurines have been found on Crete inscribed with the word “E’ra” written in Linear B. This Bird Goddess is Hera before her unfortunate marriage to Zeus: the goddess of life-endowing and nurturing powers that lives in the sky with the stars and clouds. The collective unconscious recognizes and adores the 9,000 year-old Bird Woman, even when she’s tricked out with a tapestry bag full of tricks, splayed feet, and a parrot-handled umbrella.
A more contemporary archetype that relates to Mary Poppins is The Fairy Godmother. Mary Poppins shares many traits with this elusive creature: she pops in unexpectedly when there is a need to make order out of chaos, and pops out when she’s finished. She possesses extraordinary powers, great wisdom, undeniable glamour, and (almost always) a great wardrobe. But the tip-off in the Fairy Godmother litmus test is Mary Poppins’ unwillingness to explain anything about her magic, her origins, her motives, or the source of her powers.
The third character is one from Greek myth: Urania. One of the nine muses, Urania’s name means “Heavenly One.” In early tarot decks she was depicted as Isis-Urania, “both Earth and Star Goddess fully revealed.” This muse presides over the harmony of the spheres, a concept that amalgamates astrology, numbers, music and cosmic wisdom. Jung considers Urania a guy-friendly mother image because she builds bridges to guide feelings. In the female psyche she acts as a chthonic Earth Mother, a role often enacted by a grandmother or godmother. Urania’s relationship with the stars signifies immortality. Jung’s description of this archetype is a spot-on character assessment of Mary Poppins: “(she is) hostile to all that is dark, unclear and ambiguous, and cultivates the certain, clear, and reasonable. She transcends the erotic, and sees the world for the first time in the light of maturity with all the colors and enchanting wonders of youth and childhood....Her maternal quality is guided by cool intellect...(She is a) rare combination of womanliness and masculine understanding.”
Urania’s characteristics parallel Mary Poppins’ active influence on the Banks family as she inspires the children “to uncover mental treasures.” Demetra George states that the asteroid Urania brings inspiration to any planet that it touches. Indeed, in the chart for Mary Poppins, Urania is conjunct out-of-bounds Mercury in Sagittarius: she vigorously stretches the imagination of her charges by guiding them through travels and adventures that are outside of the boundaries of reality. In true Sagittarian form, the children grow and learn through each episode. In Travers’ natal chart, Urania is at 0Ò Leo, conjunct Venus, sextile Mars, square Jupiter, and trine Uranus. Urania’s spheres are twanging in the author’s chart, resulting in a loveable version of this unusual archetype.
The Hunter and the Hunted
By April 1934, the North/South Node axis moved to 16ÒAquarius/Leo, with the South Node conjunct Travers’ natal Sun. The publication of Mary Poppins was the start of an adventure for Pamela Travers that would shape the rest of her life. Although it drew her ever onwards she could never control the snake’s tail that she had grasped with the release of this book. Her first battles began with her publisher, Eugene Reynal. These were followed by tussles with the young artist she chose for the book, Mary Shepard, the daughter of Winnie the Pooh illustrator Ernest Shepard. Mary Shepard found the Dutch doll that inspired her drawings of Mary Poppins. Travers took the doll and the credit.
Pamela and Camillus struggled to adapt to New York City during World War II. Following bouts of illness and an expedition to Arizona, in 1944 the third book, Mary Poppins Opens the Door, was published. Travers flaunts mysticism and esoterica in this book, and the series begins to lose its flavor of joyful inventiveness. At the very same time, a little girl in California named Diane was reading the Mary Poppins books, and she told her father how much she loved the books.
Diane’s father was Walt Disney. His personal history reads much like Travers’. He was the youngest of four sons with a younger sister. His father was a capricious and violently abusive man who served, at times, as a fire and brimstone minister. Like Travers’ father, Disney’s father moved from place to place for employment. Walt escaped his home life early, leaving for France to serve in World War I as an ambulance driver. When he returned to America in 1919, he was employed as an apprentice in a commercial art studio in Kansas City. Walt was thrilled by the emerging technology of film, and quickly learned how to create moving cartoon images.
Walt Disney was born on 5 December 1901 in Chicago. (VIEW CHART ) His chart has a brilliant yet erratic Sun conjunct Uranus in Sagittarius. Like Travers, he charted his own path toward success, and was an uncompromising perfectionist and workaholic. In another strange similarity, the intimate details of Disney’s personal life have been hidden, obscured, or sequestered by the Disney Corporation.
Because Disney is an extremely famous person, there are basic facts about his life that are known. Disney and Ub Iwerks started their own cartoon-making company in 1920, and moved to California in 1923. By the late 1920’s, the Disney Studio had a contract for a series of cartoon shorts. Mickey Mouse first appeared in Steamboat Willie on 18 November 1928 in New York. Walt did the voice-over for Mickey. Disney wasn’t limited to film for very long: the first licensed Mickey Mouse watch was sold in June 1933. Income from secondary merchandising and licensing rights kept the company afloat.
The Disney Studio
The Disney Studio’s first feature film, Snow White, premiered on 21 December 1937. The film cost $1.5 million dollars to make, and from its opening to 1993 grossed $100 million dollars. Pinocchio and Fantasia were released in 1940; Dumbo in 1941, and Bambi in 1942. This was the last feature film made by the studio until 1950; the studio was co-opted by the Department of War to produce Navy training films during WWII.
The cost of animation was high and Walt was a tightwad. Disney Studios had continual problems in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s with cartoonist strikes. In the late ‘40’s, Disney began to pursue live-action films, starting with a series of nature documentaries. These proved both cheap and popular. Disney produced Treasure Island in 1950. The studio continued with animation, but the live-action films and secondary merchandising were the bread and butter money-earners. Walt Disney produced 63 live-action films before his death.
The man behind the “Uncle Walt” persona was a complicated, difficult, and driven man. He was a three-pack a day smoker and suffered from insomnia and facial and eye tics. His favorite breakfast was donuts dipped in Scotch. This nervous behavior and consequential self-medication is distinctly Sun-Uranus. He was an obsessive hand-washer. This strange relationship with his body stems from his Virgo Ascendant and his Sun-Uranus opposition Pluto. By 1948, Disney was dependent on sleeping pills and alcohol to mute his emotional pain.
Disney didn’t shrink from playing hardball, a trait necessary for successful film producers in the early rough-and-tumble Hollywood community. Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are packed in Capricorn, showing Walt’s determination to succeed at any cost. Even a gentle biographer was compelled to write, “Unabashed, he would take chances and sometimes go beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior in order to further his company.” His employees referred to his strict office policies as “Waltitarianism.” Biographers took off the kid gloves after the Freedom of Information Act made available papers that document Disney’s deep involvement with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Hoover made Disney the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) in Hollywood. Disney pursued Communists with rabid fervor, and filed dozens of reports on subversive activities.
Walt Disney equated labor unions with Communism, and fought the unionizing of his studio. He wanted exclusive influence over his employee policies, yet was unwilling to suffer an uneven playing field in film marketplace, and was part of a lawsuit that broke the monopoly of the major studios. This paradoxical behavior seems to be reflected in his natal Libra Moon square Mars in Capricorn. He chose his battles with an emotional bias about what was fair or right, but failed to see his own contradictory stance on victimizing others versus situations where he felt victimized.
By July of 1953, Walt’s health had deteriorated. He was under a great deal of stress because of lawsuits and stockholder dissatisfaction. His arthritis got worse, his hair thinned dramatically, and his facial skin wrinkled. He buried his internal misery in workaholic fervor, living and sleeping in his office for weeks at a time. He secretly purchased land in Anaheim and sought financing for his Disneyland theme park. On 17 July 1955, Disneyland was opened to the public, followed by the premiere of the Mickey Mouse Club on television in October 1955. Kids all over the country clamored to visit Disneyland, and profits far exceeded expectations.
As Saturn transited Sagittarius in the late 50’s, Walt became obsessed with death. True to form, he went to work and produced the finest films of his career in the last years of his life. Sleeping Beauty, Disney’s most elaborate and expensive animated feature, opened on 29 January 1959. As Jupiter moved to join Saturn in Capricorn, repeating of his natal conjunction, Disney produced an astonishing 13 films in 1960 and 1961. He was at the peak of his powers as a studio head, flexing his magical ability to choose story material with public appeal.
Mary Meets Mickey
Walt lusted for the film rights to Mary Poppins. Travers was bombarded by offers for film rights, but staunchly refused to sell because she “disapproved of the vulgar art of movies, particularly Hollywood.” The unassuming Roy Disney met with her in person in New York in 1944, but Travers remained unconvinced. Walt wasn’t discouraged in the least, and he wooed Pamela over a fifteen year campaign of attention, flattery, transcontinental telegrams and visits. She ignored him.
Walt made a personal visit to Pamela Travers in London. The undeniably charismatic Disney worked his magic on Travers (then 61). Always susceptible to a handsome man, she found him clever, charming and persuasive, and Lawson states, “she fell into Walt’s embrace like a lovesick fool, but the fortune he gave her almost made up for the betrayal.” She was not, however, totally lost to her hormones, and the deal between Disney and Travers was extremely favorable to her in comparison to what other book authors typically received.
On 3 July 1959, her attorney, Arnold Goodman, wrote her a letter that outlined the proposed contract. The Poppins deal contained two conditions upon which Travers refused to compromise: it could not be an animated film, and she was allowed final approval over the story treatment (unprecedented at Disney Studios; but notice, she had approval over the treatment, not the shooting script). She would consult on making of the film, giving input on casting and other artistic considerations. The financial end of the deal was even sweeter, as she received $100,000 US as an advance against her 5% of the producer’s gross. The contract was signed in April 1960, and Mary Poppins was swallowed by the Disney movie-making machine.
The initial meeting between Walt Disney and Pamela Travers was fiery Sag-Leo consummation, but the relationship quickly cooled. Her 1930’s English family and their nanny were Americanized beyond her endurance. Reviewers criticized Disney for damaging literature in pursuit of a buck, and for presenting fantasy and magic devoid of mysticism. He made films with a distinctly theological vocabulary (faith, trust, belief), but strictly sectarian in content; the “fruit without the root.” His manipulation of the American consumer market was unsurpassed by offering the public a “swindle of fulfillment.” Ever more consumed by his obsession with death, Disney latched onto Mary Poppins as his grand finale.
Disney selected the crack team of Robert and Richard Sherman for the musical score, writers Bill Walsh and Don Da Gradi to prepare the script, and British director Robert Stevenson to head the Mary Poppins project. Walsh was an all-round organization man, and “knew what the public wanted, and knew how to gut a book.” The writers prepared a treatment based on the 1934 book, but had hurdles to overcome. The book is a loose sequence of events and adventures, fine for reading but unsuitable for cinematic story-telling. They changed the setting to London 1910. They hyped the drama by making Mr. Banks was cold and distant and Mrs. Banks a flakey suffragette. The children were neglected and out of control. “We made it a story about a dysfunctional family,” Sherman said. “And in comes Mary Poppins—this necessary person—to heal them.”
In early 1961, Travers received a copy of the working script, and didn’t like it. Disney invited her to Hollywood (all expenses paid) to work with the creative team. When she arrived, she met with Walt in his office, surrounded by his 25 Academy Awards. Travers wasn’t awed by this blatant display of corporate power, and stuck by her guns with her objections to the Walsh-Da Gradi script. After their initial meeting, Disney abandoned the creative team to Pamela’s tender mercies. “We had no idea she was coming to town,” Richard Sherman recalled, chuckling. “Walt told us two days before she came—and then he went to the ranch in Palm Springs. He said he had to read some scripts.” Da Gradi and the young songwriters were left to deal with her. They could listen to Travers’s ideas, and pitch their own, but they had no power to agree to anything that she wanted.
The Disney archives contain transcripts of audio tapes made during the ten days of meetings. Travers made an impassioned but pointless assault on the Disney material. The Sherman brothers pushed the Disney version, while Travers, wrapped in a cloak of “oppressive self-righteousness, interrupted, corrected, bullied, and shamed them.” Travers didn’t understand that her original details would be lost in the process of film-making. The tapes are a long, horrible episode dominated by Travers’s booming, imperious voice.
The meeting did result in the elimination of the glaring anachronisms and deviations in the original film treatment. But the writers ignored most of her complaints. Mary Poppins had to be desperately needed by the Banks family, and the writers chose devices they thought would work in the film. Travers found these devices obnoxiously Freudian. In truth, the Disney team was too far along with the development process to cede much to Travers. She unhappily gave her approval to a second, revised treatment she received a few months after her visit.
Mary Poppins in the Flesh
Walt Disney was referred to as “the great convincer,” a visionary with the rare ability to motivate others to mold his vision into a reality, and inspire others to fashion a product good enough to warrant the Disney name. Having worked his magic with the frumpy, humorless P. L. Travers, Disney cast around for his next target – an actress to play Mary Poppins.
Like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954) starring Kirk Douglas and a cast of prominent actors, Disney felt he needed a “name” to play the role of Poppins. Many actresses were considered, including Bette Davis and Doris Day. Walt went to see Julie Andrews in the Broadway production of the musical Camelot in the spring of 1962. He visited her backstage after the show, and offered her the role the next day.
Julie Andrews, born 1 October 1935, was a musical child prodigy. (VIEW CHART ) Her parents divorced when she was a small child, and her mother remarried Ted Andrews, whose name she took. When her parents, both vaudevillians, realized that young Julie had a tremendous, large, adult singing voice, they promptly put her into voice lessons. By age 13, Julie was supporting her family. As her mother and stepfather’s acting careers had dwindled, and they nursed their woes with alcohol. As the child of alcoholic parents, Julie became the adult of the family. This young Libran displayed all the drive and energy of her Sun sextile Mars in Sagittarius, becoming overly serious at a young age (Venus opposition Saturn) because she was burdened with inappropriate responsibilities. While other children went to school, Julie was on the road doing shows.
Her efforts paid off with a meteoric splash; within a short five-year span, she became one of the brightest lights in the New York scene. In the summer of 1954, she made her Broadway debut in The Boyfriend. Recognized instantly as a great new talent, she was offered the plum role of Eliza Dolittle. In January 1956 she began rehearsals for the original production of Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins. As this production prepared to close, she was offered the leading role of Queen Guinevere in the original production of Camelot (opened in 1960). Her co-stars were Richard Burton as King Arthur and a very young Robert Goulet as Lancelot.
Once again, Julie hit her mark, and it was at this high point of her theatrical career that Disney found her. Warner Brothers had secured the film rights for My Fair Lady, but chose to cast the very lovely (if non-singing) Audrey Hepburn in the role of Eliza, using Marni Nixon to voice-over the songs. Julie was devastated by the rejection, and her good friend Carol Burnett worked to convince her to take the part with that “cartoon person.” Walt Disney, once again, had to persuade a resistant woman to go along with his plans. And once again, he used an all-expenses paid trip to Hollywood to bag his Poppins, with a personally guided tour of Disneyland thrown in for good measure. Her Libran scales were tipped by the music; she loved the old English vaudeville flavor conveyed by the Sherman brothers’ songs. She signed a contract for $150,000 (but no percentage). Disney got his Mary Poppins for a bargain price: Hepburn received $1 million for her performance as Eliza Dolittle.
Concerned that a theatrical star might not be able to carry the film alone, Disney chose Dick Van Dyke, popular star of the Dick Van Dyke Show, to co-star as Bert. But another problem beset Disney’s offer to Julie Andrews: she was pregnant. Disney agreed to wait until she had recovered to begin filming, and sugar-coated his offer by hiring her husband, Tony Walton, as the film’s art designer. Disney’s relentless reliance on family values overcame her last objections.
Julie and Tony Walton returned to London after Camelot closed so they could be near their families when their child was born. They met with Pamela Travers for lunch. Andrews said “I adored her. She was so honest and direct.” The Waltons and Pamela Travers had several more lunches together before they left for California. Travers was thrilled with Julie as Mary Poppins. “I hadn’t spoken to her for five minutes before I realized she had the inner integrity for the part.” Andrews was even the perfect age: twenty-seven.
Emma Kate Walton was born on 27 November 1962. The young family moved to Hollywood in June 1963. The cast of the film included many wonderful (and mostly British) actors: David Tomlinson as Mr. Banks, Glynis Johns as Mrs. Banks, Arthur Treacher as Constable Jones, and Ed Wynn as Uncle Albert. Dick Van Dyke had, unbelievably, no dancing experience. The intense choreography for Step In Time took ten weeks to learn, and occupies almost 14 minutes of screen time.
Julie became aware she was Travers’ only contact with the progress of the production. She received letters from Pamela in England, and responded with a letter to let her know how things were going with the film. The letter reassured Pamela that everything was going well, and that they were “working like fiends.”
The production of Mary Poppins received more personal attention from Walt Disney than any film since the 1945 combined live-action/animation film, Three Caballeros. Walt had long since delegated the production work to his creative teams. His real talents were for choosing material, formulating ideas, and developing characters, and of course, for making big money deals in the shark infested waters of Hollywood. But with Mary Poppins, he obsessed over each and every detail. He worked on the film day and night for months, and lived in his office.
Disney demanded perfection, from the blossoms on the trees on the Cherry Lane set (designed by Tony Walton), to the blend of live-action and animation in the Jolly Holiday sequence. Money and time were irrelevant to Walt, and it was fortunate that his leading lady was a trained-from-childhood stage trouper who happened to share his Virgo Ascendant. Neither Andrews nor Van Dyke had much film experience – Mary Poppins was Julie’s first and Van Dyke’s second film. They had much to learn, and were more tolerant of the repetitive re-takes Disney demanded than experienced film stars would have been. Filming ended in early 1964, and a late summer premiere was planned.
Film Premiere
Walt’s obsessive, frenzied attention to detail shows in every frame of Mary Poppins. The Jolly Holiday sequence is a flawless merger of action, animation, music, and choreography. Julie’s crystal clear voice, perfect diction, and personal charm combined to create an unforgettable performance. Where most Disney features focus on the attainments of children or animals, Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins celebrates the liberation of the story’s adults, and their triumph over the rigidity of age and habit.
Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins premiered on 27 August 1964 at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. (VIEW CHART ) Everyone seemed to be invited...except for Pamela Travers, who shamed a Disney executive into providing an invitation. The film received a five-minute ovation. Few people noticed the author weeping in her seat as they exited the theater. Although Travers’ biography states that she congratulated Walt after the showing, Richard Sherman describes a somewhat different encounter: “...she tracked down Disney at the after-party, which was held in a giant white tent in the parking lot adjoining the Chinese Theatre. “Well,” she said loudly. “The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney looked at her coolly. “Pamela,” he replied, “the ship has sailed.” And then he strode past her, toward a throng of well-wishers, and left her alone, an aging woman in a satin gown and evening gloves, who had traveled more than five thousand miles to attend a party where she was not wanted.”
The film was a Disney triumph, and became one of the studio’s most popular and beloved films. Its initial release grossed a whopping $45 million, making it the sixth highest grossing film ever produced. It was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards. In a strange twist of fate, My Fair Lady opened in October, 1964, and was nominated in many of the same categories as Mary Poppins – except for Best Actress. The non-singing Audrey Hepburn was snubbed. At the 37th Annual Academy Awards (27 Feb 1965) Julie Andrews, in a blaze of beginner’s luck, won the Best Actress Oscar and the public’s adoration.
Julie Andrews and Mary Poppins
The connection between these charts is dramatic. Both Mary and Julie have natal Moon-Jupiter conjunctions and Julie’s Moon-Jupiter is conjunct Mary’s Sun-Venus in Scorpio. Julie’s Mars conjuncts Mary’s Mercury; this pair sextiles Julie’s Sun and Mary’s Vesta in Libra. Vesta important because it shows a conduit or pathway for Libran information – a character conduit, in fact, with Julie’s first house Sun.
Vesta is reinforced by a square to the Nodal Axis in Mary’s chart; natal nodal squares present a special challenge that has to be expressed through the energy of the planet that forms the aspect. Vesta in Libra is graceful and pleasing in manner, attractive to men but enshrined in her sacred duties. Beauty and privilege are balanced with total concentration on rituals and service. Vesta serves as a conduit to the gods, but this service is impersonal, and in Libra, acts as an idealized representative image. Through Julie’s solar abilities to project a character through acting and singing, Mary’s Vesta-Node imprint finds expression.
Early in the film’s development there were clear difficulties in conveying the need for nanny to Americans. Julie Andrew’s connections to the 1926 Mary Poppins chart indicates a phenomenal ability to project this unusual, primordial Goddess-Nurse archetype in the act of transforming family dynamics. Mary’s regulatory function becomes unmistakable through Julie’s Sun.
Julie’s chart also has a Nodal configuration: Neptune-Pallas in Virgo and Moon-Jupiter in Scorpio form a Wedge with the Nodes. Mary’s Sun-Venus participates through Julie’s Moon-Jupiter, emphasizing a Scorpionic form of transformation. There is an exchange of identity and emotion, and Julie’s superb talents and artistic skills (Neptune-Pallas) reinforce the potential for mutual benefit through a sextile.
On 27 August 1964, Julie and Mary Poppins’ progressions made equally strong exchanges. Progressed-to-progressed charts show the current status of a relationship between two people, and are catalyzed by transits. Mary’s progressed Sun joined her progressed Ascendant. Her Venus conjuncts Julie’s Mars in Capricorn, echoing the transiting Venus-Mars conjunction in Cancer on Mary’s progressed Midheaven. Julie’s Moon P is conjunct Mary’s Mercury P, which are conjunct Travers’ natal Uranus-Chiron. It isn’t surprising that Travers’ felt that Walt Disney had “done a strange kind of violence to her work.” Mary’s Mars P in Taurus is trine Julie’s Mars P – they were on a roll and weren’t going to stop for anybody, including the author.
On the evening of the premiere, transiting Urania was conjunct the North Node at 28Ò Gemini, a nexus of navigational stars at the edge of the Milky Way. Mary’s Ascendant P and Sun (at 27Ò Sag), churn the milky star nursery of the Galactic Center and Travers’ natal North Node as well. The transiting, exalted Moon at 5Ò Taurus aligns with Julie’s Uranus P and Mary’s Mars P, bringing to light a startling and compelling presentation of a powerful female archetype that was instantly taken to heart by audiences. Julie gave a voice (Taurus=throat) to Mary Poppins, and did so in a manner that utilized advanced technology (Mary’s Uranus P).
Mary, Julie and Pamela
Unfortunately, Mary and Julie’s shared characteristics, especially in the sensitive emotional areas, makes a direct challenge to Travers’ natal Sun in Leo. The T-square formed between the author, actress, and character of Mary Poppins guarantees a dynamic relationship...where Travers is bound to feel left out of the mix! Her Leo pride is at stake in this encounter, and her creation, Mary Poppins, found a new outlet that was a more effectively dramatic means of transmission.
The cinematic Mary Poppins reveals her origins – and these origins, the product of Pamela’s 1926 article – did not entirely match the later literary Mary Poppins. The relationship and attractions between Mary and Bert, even with the coy distance Mary maintains, is clear in the film, and was the basis of the original article. During the development sessions at the Disney studios, Travers vociferously insisted that Mary’s primary relationship was with Mr. Banks, but this was an arrangement that evolved slowly in the books and in Travers’ mind. In Mary’s natal chart, Saturn squares Neptune, and in Julie’s natal chart, Venus opposes Saturn. Mr. Banks (Saturn, the father) is a remote, emotionally unavailable man. Mary’s natal Mars (men) is in the fifth house of lovers and retrograde: Mary has plenty of male admirers, but only on her terms.
Travers’ hypersensitive Virgo Moon is squared by Mary’s Mercury and Julie’s Mars. The author felt betrayed by the intimacy Julie Andrews found with the original Mary Poppins. Mary and Julie were lovable and attractive, and it is possible that Pamela envied these traits because she clearly lacked them. The Leonine vitality and sexual magnetism she had so exuberantly expressed in her twenties was lost to her in later years through a series of painful and frustrating relationships with both men and women. The cinematic Mary Poppins was a harsh reflection of these losses, a part of her self and a time of her life she could not recapture. Greater resentment and pain emerged because she was bound to her role as the creator of this character. She wanted to be accepted as a “serious” writer, and this children’s book gave her mixed feelings from the start. As the film splashed across the screen in all its delightful action and sound, Travers (now age 65) was forced to realize that this was going to be what she was remembered for, and what the public wanted from her. The simple fact was the public found Mary Poppins much more attractive than they found Pamela Travers, the grumpy frump. She had been outclassed by her own act.
Walt, Julie and Mary
Walt Disney, on the other hand, couldn’t lose. Walt shared his Ascendant with Julie Andrews, and Julie’s Sun was conjunct Walt’s Moon. Mary Poppin’s natal Uranus conjuncts Julie and Walt’s Descendants. Julie’s Venus-Neptune trines Walt’s Jupiter-Saturn, an earthy link that guarantees the manifestation of a brilliant artistic product. Walt’s Jupiter-Saturn opposes Mary’s 1964 progressed Moon-Pluto in Cancer, indicating that he could produce a transformed yet representative reflection (Moon in Cancer) through the resources of his empire (Jupiter-Saturn in Capricorn). Walt’s Neptune at 0ÒCancer is at the Aries Point, and mingles its cinematic energies with Mary’s progressed Sun (27Ò Sag). It is common to see powerful connections with Neptune when a piece of classic literature is revived, especially through film. Transiting Urania was conjunct Disney’s Neptune, and it was the perfect time for him to develop and present the Goddess/Nurse image to the public in his own inimitable (if sometimes dubious) manner. This cluster of planets at the edge of the Milky Way axis (0ÒCancer-Capricorn) also ties into Travers’ Neptune-Node, but her Mars-Node T-square revives her conflicts through Disney’s film.
Endings
Walt Disney’s abysmal habits took their toll. He was diagnosed with cancer and died on 15 December 15 1966, after pathetically demanding that his brother Roy see his new theme park in Orlando through to completion. Walt Disney World opened on 1 October 1971, after which Roy promptly dropped dead from a heart attack on 20 December 1971.
Julie Andrews went on to make another great film about a singing nanny in The Sound of Music. It premiered in March 1965. Critics deemed it a miserable woof-woof but shouldn’t have wasted their time - the public was pleased to ignore them. It quickly surpassed Gone With The Wind as the most popular movie of all time, and held this position until the Star Wars series was released in the late seventies. Julie was nominated for Best Actress but lost to Julie Christie, who won for her role in Darling; but the film won Best Picture.
After back-to-back smash hits, Julie was box office gold. Sadly, she followed with a string of box office flops. She divorced Tony and married Blake Edwards, and took a much needed break after fifteen years of non-stop work. She spent time in therapy and emerged a happier and more confident person. In recent years she has returned to the silver screen, and she released an autobiography in the autumn of 2006. She enjoys some of the most dedicated fans in the industry.
With the wealth gained from Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins, Pamela traveled around the world, and gave lectures and interviews. She was author-in-residence at Radcliffe and Smith Colleges during the 1970’s, but this was largely unsuccessful because her mix of charm and abrasiveness put off the students, and she resented the all-female educational environment. She also was a contributing editor for Parabola Magazine for many years. The final installment of Mary Poppins was published in 1989.
Her relationship with her son was tenuous – he, too, had drinking problems and seemed to be aimless. The old Gurdjieff crowd provided some company, but in the end, she was a reclusive invalid reliant on a string of nurses for caretaking. Travers alternately praised and excoriated Walt Disney, and actually presented a treatment for a second Poppins film to the Disney Studios in the late 1980’s. Although the project had popular support, it failed to manifest.
In a last-ditch effort to control her creation, Travers sold theatrical rights to producer Cameron Mackintosh in 1994. Mackintosh was highly respected for his productions (Cats, Les Mis, Miss Saigon, and Phantom of the Opera). Although many possible scripts were created, there was a question about Disney’s option to a theatrical presentation, and any show would need to use the Sherman brother’s music. A stalemate resulted, and Travers’ hopes floundered. She died in London on 23 April, 1996, at the age of 96.
In December 2004, Mackintosh and Thomas Schumacher (president of Disney’s theatrical division) finally arrived at an agreement to co-produce a musical. Mary Poppins opened at the Prince Edward Theatre in London, and premiered on Broadway in the autumn of 2006. The musical’s book is by Julian Fellowes, and presents a more faithful rendering of the books and their pithy, no-nonsense Mary Poppins.
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