MARY POPPINS Cinema's Legacy

On August 27, 1964, MARY POPPINS debuted at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and exploded into the national consciousness. Though Walt Disney had been making live-action motion pictures for over a decade, director Robert Stevenson’s sumptuous musical became one of Disney’s major contributions to American cinema. Initial attempts to adapt the book were met with resistance from its author, P. L. Travers, but the story dramatized in AFI FEST’s Opening Night Gala, SAVING MR. BANKS (which complements this Special Presentation), shows that the resulting film spawned some of the most memorable songs in movie history and was nominated for 13 Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, winning five – most notably a Best Actress Oscar® for breakout star Julie Andrews. Now, nearly 50 years later, this triumph of imagination and ingenuity is still, as Miss Poppins would have it, “practically perfect in every way.”