Our friend Jim Korkis wrote with more facts about the intersection of Walt Disney and the now-more-famous-than-she's-ever-been P.L. Travers. I'll meet you on the other side to discuss them…
Travers' contract included three stipulations: She would receive a $100,000 down payment (comparable to over a million dollars today) toward five percent of the producer's gross for life. She would be a consultant on artistic matters like casting, the script, etc. and she could supply a story outline (which she did and it was rejected) but that would not prevent Disney from coming up with a treatment. However, Travers had to give her final blessing on whatever treatment was selected before she received a dime. That approval literally gave Walt Disney Productions (as it was known at the time) permission to make the film.
Travers firmly believed that things had been settled during the story meeting and as a consultant everything she suggested would be used. Just a few weeks after the end of the story meetings or approximately early May 1961, she signed off on the treatment which gave Disney permission to develop a script from the treatment. Walt sent her the final shooting script in Spring 1963 and she sent over fourteen pages of "corrections," most of which were incorporated into the film.
Yes, Travers may have been given oral assurances. Some claim that the reason Walt left during the story meetings is that he could claim that he wasn't "aware" of certain concerns Travers communicated.
Walt said, "You know what? Formal waiters have always reminded me of penguins." Then Walt had his son-in-law Ron Miller pull the movie Song of the South out of the vault to watch to see how well animation could be combined with live action. Yes, his staff originally thought he meant real live penguins knowing Travers' dislike of animation.
Let's just say that the situation with Walt and Travers was "complicated." Walt felt that Travers would be so fascinated by having her work done as a Disney film that she would be dazzled and defer to Walt. The contract was unlike any Disney contract before or since. Travers died a very, very rich woman. When Mary Poppins appeared in an arena ice show, money was paid to Travers, for instance. Despite her concerns about how her character was handled, she still kept cashing those checks.
Well, I don't blame her for that. I mean, if she did hate the movie — and obviously, she said different things to different people on that point — not cashing the checks wouldn't have made it any better. It would just have meant more profit for those who'd despoiled her creation.
In any case, it's apparently fiction that, as depicted in the new film, she at some point had script approval. She had treatment approval, which is a pretty far cry from script approval. It's interesting that she made "corrections" to the script and most were used as Saving Mr. Banks sure seems to suggest that they made the film wholly without her.
Jim followed up that message to me with this one about the article I linked to in which he did some fact-checking on the film…
Disney Archives contacted me this morning and loved the article but found one mistake. Yes, Walt planned to take Travers to Disneyland (it was in his schedule book) and everyone assumed he had. Official documentation shows that the day he was scheduled to do so (Easter Sunday 1961) Walt called with his regrets that he had a cold and so Bill Dover took Travers to Disneyland for her only visit. No documentation on what rides she went on but Walt gave her access to his apartment above the firehouse and to his little electric car. For decades, people (including those I interviewed who were there) "remembered" that Walt took her to Disneyland because that was the plan. So the entire section of Walt and Travers at the park is completely untrue. Completely. Another Disney urban legend.
Disney records also show that Dover picked up Travers at the airport when she arrived and took her to the airport when she left. He sent Travers Xeroxed clippings of articles about the film for a while and then continued a correspondence. When his wife passed away, Travers sent a nice letter about how it impacts you to lose someone you love. Travers was also assigned a chauffeur to take her anywhere she wanted to go when in Los Angeles but used him infrequently.
You know, Walt not actually taking her to Disneyland is a fiction I could live with. The thought of him walking around that place is such a fabulous image that I can't fault the filmmakers for not being able to resist it. I know folks who went to Disneyland, saw Walt in person there and it's one of the most treasured memories of their childhoods.
So now my question would be: If Walt didn't take her, did she go — as the film makes out — largely under duress?
I wasn't going to watch Saving Mr. Banks again but I've spent so much time reading messages and articles about it that I think I need to…but not for a while. One of these days, I'll give it a look in light of all I've learned and see if my opinion goes up or down. I'm expecting down but you never know. It might be easier to accept the leaps of logic and characterization when you're more aware of how much non-truth it was all playing against.
And now, let me introduce you better to my long-time buddy, Jim Korkis. (Devout Groo fans have already noted that I once named a ravaged village after Jim.) Here's a little film he wrote and appears in discussing Walt Disney's passion for Steam Trains. The estate Jim mentions where Walt built his own railroad was recently for sale and I think I read somewhere else that it now has a buyer. The trains are gone but some artifacts remain there…