My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [42]
She was a lady first and foremost, but she also had a great, whimsical sense of humor. I never once saw her get angry about anything or utter a single complaint. Before agreeing to do the film, she had balked at the romantic ballad, “The Eyes of Love,” asking Walt to replace it with something else, and the Sherman brothers came back with “A Spoonful of Sugar,” perhaps one of the all-time great fixes. Only one thing surpassed Julie’s spot-on instincts, and that was her voice.
We were still in the early stages of production when we recorded the score, and it scared me to death because Julie’s voice could have been used to tune a piano. She was pitch perfect—and I never was. I was enjoyably close. As such, recording with her was a challenge.
But even the hard stuff felt right. The Sherman brothers were in the studio with us, and always pleasant. Walt was a frequent visitor on the set, but he wasn’t one of those executives who was really a frustrated director and came around only to inject his whims and ideas, even with this project, which had been such a longtime passion of his. He seemed pleased with what he saw.
Director Robert Stevenson had, in many respects, the easiest job. He was fairly mechanical and didn’t do much directing other than to say, “Perfect. Let’s do another one just like that.” In my opinion, the movie’s unsung hero was the online producer and co-writer, Bill Walsh, a heavyset man with the most wonderful sense of humor.
As with any great film, there’s always someone responsible for the spirit the audience experiences, and as far as I’m concerned, Bill created the lighthearted atmosphere that let all of us forget that we were working and instead feel like we were floating a few feet off the ground through a Hollywood playground, as if we had embarked on a jolly holiday.
Speaking of such, the charming song “Jolly Holiday” was more demanding than Mary and Bert’s little stroll through the countryside appears. It was shot against a green screen (the lush background was painted in later), but every minute spent staring into that bright yellow sulfur light was worth it because I still smile when I think of Bert floating gently above the ground (as he sings, “I feel like I could fly”) and Mary, after gently pulling him back to Earth, scolding, “Now, Bert, none of your larking about.”
Such fun!
Ironically, the song “I Love to Laugh,” which I do, was even harder than any of us expected. It’s the scene where Bert summons Mary to help with her uncle Albert, played by the great Ed Wynn, who has a case of the laughs, which causes him to soar high above the ground. Mary arrives with the Banks children, Jane and Michael, and soon everyone catches not spots but the giggles and ends up having tea up by the ceiling.
Again, this was a gloriously fun number to perform, and built around a clever idea, but my diaphragm ached from laughing all day. I wondered if it was even possible to hurt your diaphragm from too much laughing. I guessed so. There was also a lot of hanging around in the air on high wires as lights were adjusted, cameras changed, and retakes done while we were supposed to be floating high above the floor.
A couple times we broke for lunch and the crew started to leave, forgetting Julie, the kids, Ed, and I were all strapped into wires and hanging thirty feet above the ground. I yelled, “Guys, don’t forget about us!”
Poor Ed, who was in the high eighties and not well, was absolutely wonderful and worth the price of admission just to see him going through various acrobatics while suffering belly laughs that all of us caught. There were no such dangers when we performed “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” Bert’s moody ode to the lucky life of a chimney sweep, a remarkable number on many levels for what it conveys.
Then it goes into that mesmerizing dance across