I was a Shakespearean actress in Australia and came to England to act and during one cold winter in Sussex, i began writing a short story about a nanny and a street artist named Bert which was loosely based on the Peter Pan stories and they were well received so i wrote some more but unknown to me, somewhere in America the children of a very famous man was reading them and said they would make a great film and that set in motion the next 20 years of Walt Disney trying to purchase the film rights to Mary Poppins from me, he even turned up at my home but i kept telling him no as i really didn't want him and his cheap, low quality commercial nonsense anywhere near my brilliant stories.
Finally, after my finances took a turn for the worst and he paid for my first class flight to Los Angeles, i finally agreed to sell the rights for $100,000 and five percent of the movie’s gross earnings and then spent the rest of my life hating the result and fighting tooth and nail against the changes he was making to my stories.
I objected to everything from the animated penguin sequences, the silly made-up words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and even the movie stars hired to star in the film.
Julie Andrews as the sweet, smiling, lover dovey Mary Poppins was wrong in every way as my Mary Poppins was a cross, short tempered, unloving, and grumpy cow and anyone with ears couldn't help but be offended by Dick Van Dyke's hideous British accent.
Despite my protests, Disney refused to rewrite the movie and put out the finished version complete with the bloody dancing penguins so i agreed to a stage version of Mary Poppins and made it a condition that only if no one who worked on the Disney film could be involved and in my will i made a stipulation that will hurt him when he eventually thaws himself out and reads it, Disney can never make a sequel and no Americans shall ever be granted permission to work on a Poppins project ever again and no amount of sugar would make that medicine go down.
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