• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

We talked in his office, and I learned that he had pursued the rights to making this book into a film for nearly twenty-five years. He took me down the hall and into room after room, where he showed me storyboards for the movie. Gorgeous renderings, they hung on the walls like paintings in a museum. He went over each one, pointing out details, talking about the sets that were being built, mentioning that work on the songs and script had been going on for two years, and savoring the picture he already saw in his head.

“What do you think?” he asked at one point.

“I’m speechless,” I said.

“I have more to show you,” he said, smiling.

He introduced me to several of the animators, all of whom were of varying ages but with one thing in common: No matter their age, they were all kids. None had ever lost the child inside him. I related easily to them. And admired their talent. Next, Walt took me to meet a wonderful guy who managed all of the sound effects for the studio. He had a huge room with a number of different machines, many, if not all of them, he had invented. Finally, Walt took me to meet the Sherman brothers. That was the icing on an already delicious cake.

In their mid-thirties, Richard and Robert Sherman were staff writers at Disney who had been hired personally by Walt. They shook my hand warmly and chatted with Walt about work, before Walt asked them to play me some songs. Richard, the more outgoing of the two, sat at the piano while Robert took a seat across the room, after which he shot a quick glance at his brother.

“Walt, should I play your favorite?” Richard asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “Save it for last.”

“All right,” said Richard, who, with a puckish smile, dove into the instantly fun and contagious “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and then followed that with “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” and several songs intended for Julie, including “A Spoonful of Sugar.” He might have been finished at that point, except that Walt gave him a nod, which Richard knew meant that the boss wanted to hear his favorite, “Feed the Birds.”

When he finally looked up, finished with his bravura performance for this privileged audience of two, Walt and myself, I clapped. I wanted to say something along the lines of “That was spectacular,” but the music had left me speechless. Imagine hearing those songs, now such an established part of the movie musical lexicon, for the first time. It was a stunning experience.

With some, I tried to sing along. Others put a smile on my face, as they did on Walt’s, and also filled me with excitement and anticipation of performing them. Those songs didn’t just get under my skin, they became a part of me then and there, and thinking about it now, they’ve never left.

Later at home, Margie asked how it had gone at the studio.

“It was pretty special,” I said. “I think we’ve got a real movie here.”

Dance rehearsals were the hardest part of Poppins. We practiced on Disney’s back lot for six weeks if not longer during a heat wave that would have made the Mojave feel cool. Before we started, Walt asked if I knew any good choreographers. I was surprised he did not know any himself. I recommended Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, a young couple with whom I had worked on an Andy Williams special. As I told Walt, they had impressed me as very inventive—and he hired them.

They did a heck of a job on the picture. And for me, they were perfect. That may have been Walt’s genius in asking me. Who knows. But Marc and Dee Dee made me stretch and do things I hadn’t done before. Nearly forty, I worked with dancers at least ten years younger than I was, but I stayed with them and they were all fun and supportive. One of the most challenging yet purely fun numbers for me was the dance with the penguins. It was all mime and dance, which I loved to do, but it was done against a green screen on an empty set, and we did take after take because every move I made had to be perfect since the penguins and backdrop were painted in later.

I had the perfect partner in Julie Andrews. She had her baby daughter,