Saving Mr. Banks

Related to the last post, I saw Saving Mr. Banks yesterday. It was far better than I expected. Disney had to win over PL Travers, the author Mary Poppins, to get the rights to make her famous book into a movie. What was enticing and quite endearing about the movie was showing Travers' backstory growing up, the relationship with her father. And how it was used in her book. Disney and his associates just couldn't understand why Travers was so bitchy, which was a direct result of her childhood. It wasn't until Disney did the research into her personal history that he finally connected to her with how his own childhood and father affected his life in significant ways.


One point is that no one 'liked' Travers personally, given her history and subsequent behavior. And yet that history, along with her talent and training, produced one of the most literary and beloved novels and movies of all time. If it was left up to just liking her the book or the movie might never have been published or produced. That required the 'business' world to promote, and left on her own in that regard her work would have never reached us.