I've decided not to post a lot of the messages I've received agreeing or disagreeing with my views of Saving Mr. Banks. Instead, I'm going to just discuss this one from one of the best Disney experts I know. My pal Jim Korkis is wise about All Things Walt and he sent this message to me…
On your recent posting, I think just like Harlan Ellison's rant on YouTube about the film, you undercut your point by not paying attention to the details. You talk about Travers throwing away green apples from her fruit basket but they were pears. Pears turn out to be a significant memory to her when she goes to buy some and returns to find her father dead. Harlan yells that in the name P.L. Travers that her middle initial stands for "Goff". These are all casual errors that often occur in the heat of trying to make an argument but often result in hesitation from a reader questioning "If they were incorrect on that easily checked fact…." what else are they wrong about?
As you know, I wrote a chapter about the Walt and Travers war over Mary Poppins in one of my latest books, The Vault of Walt: Volume Two. Yes, Travers was a bit different in real life. She was truly a "pill" as the British say with a condescending attitude, the tendency to drop names, vain (look how many times Mary Poppins checks out her own reflection) and very little tolerance for people who didn't see things her way. In fact, very much like the character of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory. However, she could also be playful and very flirtatious especially when younger men were around.
Travers always stated that Disney took advantage of her lack of knowledge of how films are made. It was her understanding that in the "Jolly Holiday" number that the backgrounds would be chalk drawings with live people performing in front of them as if they were on a stage. She didn't bring up animated penguins. In fact, when Walt brought up the idea of the penguins being waiters long after Travers signed the contract, his animation staff immediately thought he was going to train live penguins like in the True Life Adventure films.
Travers signed because she needed the money badly (her only consistent source of income was from a boarder) and felt that since the contract stated she would be a consultant, she felt that Walt would immediately defer to her on all matters once the contract was signed. Walt didn't.
As you might suspect, I have been interviewed a lot lately about Saving Mr. Banks. There will be a long interview in the Thursday edition of The Orlando Weekly by Seth Kubersky. Basically, I feel it is a sweet little film and not a documentary. It is also a film about Travers with Walt as a supporting character. Travers herself was quite a character and since the 1940s there have been films about the grumpy, opinionated older women or men who suddenly have a change of heart by the end of the film. In fact, I just saw The Bishop's Wife with Cary Grant this past holiday season and David Niven doing battle with an unyielding Gladys Cooper.
Okay, so they weren't green apples. They were pears. I don't think that changes anything.
I'm beginning to lose interest in the debate over how much the P.L. Travers of the movie reflects the P.L. Travers of the real world. There are many points of view out there, ranging from articles by published biographers of the lady to people who met her on the Disney lot. For what it's worth, I've talked to three of the latter group about her — Floyd Norman, Richard Sherman and Dick Van Dyke. Since I don't know who to believe, and since all of them might be accurate in a sense, I was just reviewing the film based on my interest in the character in it named P.L. Travers. I still don't like her, didn't like watching her for two hours, and don't buy the transformation she makes in those two hours.
I never thought it was a documentary but I also don't think it's a sweet little film.
I'm still a little fuzzy on a couple of points. In the beginning, her solicitor (I guess that's what he is) tells her that if she signs the deal with Disney, she'll have script approval. Later, she signs the deal with Disney and doesn't have script approval. Wha' happened? Was the lawyer wrong about what was in the contract? Was there another contract?
It is certainly not unprecedented in show business — or for that matter, other industries — for one thing to be verbally promised and another thing committed to paper. But it seems to me that if Travers was promised "script approval," or believed she'd been promised "script approval," she would have made a huge issue of the switch to "consultation" before she signed a contract that only gave her the latter.
I don't remember now and my DVD of the film is not handy but is the copy of the contract she signs at the end the same one she was carrying around during her weeks at the studio? Because if so, she sure wasn't acting like a person who had a deal that only guaranteed her consultation rights, nor was she demanding something stronger. Or did she sign a new draft that Walt brought with him to London? Because if so, it was foolish (and waaaay outta-character) to sign it without reading it and having her lawyer read it. She'd be justifiably furious if Walt had quietly changed a clause and taken away her only weapon in her mission to protect Mary Poppins.
Also: Did I miss something? She makes a huge deal of insisting that everyone call her "Mrs. Travers" but I don't think anywhere in the film, anyone says, "Hey, what's with the 'Mrs.' thing? She was never married!" Walt comes to all sorts of deductions about her motives and demons when he notes that her name isn't really Travers but it's not that bizarre for an author to change his or her name for publication — especially women authors back then concealing their gender — and to then live under the pseudonym. Actors do that all the time. Isn't the more unusual thing that a single woman is so determined to be addressed like a married one?
And hold on! People on Disney's animation staff thought Walt was going to have real penguins trained to act as waiters? Saving Mr. Banks pretty much makes P.L. Travers look like a fool for thinking that could be done. You certainly couldn't train them to do the kind of things the script called for. They used live birds for portions of that Jim Carrey film, Mr. Popper's Penguins, and all they could train them to do was walk from here to there and stand in place. Every other action had to be achieved via CGI — an option not available to Disney at the time.
For those of you who aren't losing interest in the question of the film's verisimilitude, here's a link to the article Jim mentions above which fact-checks the film. Jim is a very smart writer and a superb researcher so I'm sure interested in what he has to say. While we're at, here's a link to purchase the book he mentioned, The Vault of Walt: Volume Two. Any Korkis book on Disney is worth your time and E-tickets.
Oh — and I have one question, based on something Stu Shostak pointed out to me. Mrs./Ms. Travers/Goff/Whoever-She-Was paid her infamous visit to the Disney studio in 1962. When she gets to her hotel room, it's well-populated by Disney toys including a couple of Winnie the Pooh dolls. Now, Disney licensed the rights to Pooh in 1961 but didn't release his first animation of the character until 1966. Would there have been Pooh dolls with the Disney design in '62? And would Travers have made her little remark about what Walt had done to the work of A.A. Milne then? I'm just asking. And I guess it doesn't sound much like I'm losing interest in this topic, does it?