(Music)
As I live and breathe.
>> Mary Poppins is back, and he's cool.
>> I'm Mary Poppins, you all.
>> I mean, she's Emily Blunt.
Either way, it's time to crack into the Disney vault and
take a look at one of their most classicy classics.
>> P.L. Travers wrote a series of eight Mary Poppins books,
but only four that were published before the release of the 1964 film.
So them's the ones we looking at, governor.
>> Say it with me everybody, supercalifragilisticexpi,
What's the Difference?
(Music)
Walt Disney's kids loved Mary Poppins, so
he spent over 20 years trying to pry the movie rights away from PL Travers.
But an episode of What's the Difference about saving Mr.
Banks in PL Travers biography Mary Poppins she wrote is not what we're here for.
Although it's a charming film, so go check it out, too, just not right now.
>> Damn.
>> For starters, the Mary Poppins books are far less of a straightforward
narrative than the film adaptation.
It's more of a series of vignettes.
Lessons in the books are learned on a chapter-by-chapter basis,
instead of the film's single moral that plays out over one two-hour movie.
A lot of the scenes from the movie are pulled straight from the books, however.
>> So because there's very little narrative similarity between the book and
the movie, we'll take this character by character and
set piece by set piece starting with the Banks's.
In the movie, they live in a well appointed and
well staffed home at 17 Cherry Tree Lane.
In just a few quick musical numbers, we see that Mrs.
Banks is a committed, but sweet and ditzy suffragette.
Mr. Banks is an aloof financier, super orderly, and king of his domain.
And the children, Michael and Jane, are uncontrollable and
currently missing, leading to their nanny, Katie Nanna, taking a hike.
>> The book Banks's also live at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, but
it's the smallest house on the block.
As the Banks's have a young set of twins, John and Barbara,
in addition to the older two, they can't afford a nicer house.
Mr. Banks works at a bank, but he literally makes the money.
No, seriously, his job is described as cutting pennies,
shillings, and half-crowns all day.
It's Mrs. Banks that's the hard ass.
She's the one that demands a more strict nanny and
writes advertisements in the papers looking for a real Nanny Mc-Meany Face.
>> When we get to Mary Poppins' arrival in the movie, a line of nannies are waiting
outside to interview, until they're literally blown away by the wind,
something that frankly they should have been a little more freaked out by.
After Mary Poppins arrives gently on the wind,
the interview with the Banks family goes largely the same way.
The book's version just has Mrs. Banks interviewing the the nanny.
The key difference is the children's letter describing their ideal nanny
that Mr. Banks had thrown into the fireplace.
But Mary Poppins has it all taped together.
Mary has a cheery disposition and
is never cross in the film, just as the children requested.
>> Book Mary Poppins,
on the other hand, doesn't mind being kind of a jerk sometimes.
So much so that by the end of the first book, on the day the winds change and
Mary is leaving, the children are legit surprised that she's being nice to them.
They even beg her to be cross, so it'll feel normal.
But she refuses, which in a weird way is actually her being a jerk again.
>> But by and large, that's the only difference in her character.
Movie Mary speaks to the children quite plainly, but is undeniably sweeter and
more nurturing.
She's also just as magical as her book counterpart.
If its sliding up a banister, her bottomless carpet bag or a bottle of
medicine that doles out different delicious flavors with each pour.
>> Rum punch.
>> Her magic is legendary in the worlds of both the book and the movie.
The movie makes this evident through her relationship with Bert,
played by a rascally Dick Van Dyke.
>> Mary Poppins!
>> It's nice to see you again, Bert.
>> Bert tags along with Mary and
the children throughout the whole movie, working as a busker, a chalk artist,
a kite salesman, and of course, a chimney sweep.
>> In the book, though,
Bert is a match salesman and he's only in the chalk painting scene.
The book's version of this is fairly similar to the movie, but
it's just Mary visiting Bert on her day off.
And their adventure inside the chalk painting is more of a date for
the two of them than a carousel horse-racing adventure for the children.
>> And this actually gets at another key difference.
In the movie, Mary and her magic are there exclusively to help the Banks family.
But the book treats her character as more of a window into a broader magical world,
like she's connected to an unseen fairy tale reality lying just under the surface.
Not only does the book follow her on her day off.
Many other chapters are dedicated to interactions with other magical beings.
>> There's Mrs. Corry, a tiny and potentially hundreds of years
old woman and her two gigantic daughters that run a sweet shop, hm, delicious.
There's a young girl who actually is a star in the Taurus constellation,
it's a twinkle star.
There's a cow that Mary's mother knew who once caught a falling star on her horn and
could not stop dancing.
(Music)
Then there's the night that they visit the zoo and all the animals are out and
speak while the people are in cages.
It can talk.
There's also a whole chapter about a magical compass that takes them around
the world.
A little device that Michael tries to claim as his own, but Mary plays the legit
childish, no, I saw it first card, because seriously, guys, she's kind of a jerk.
>> The movie works some of these things in, but
it never quite veers away from Mary being the magical one.
It gets closest during a tea party on the ceiling with Uncle Albert,
a scene that's more or less the same as it is in the book.
The movie version, of course, features Bert,
while the book version features a Miss Persimmon, who works for Uncle Albert.
The movie only briefly introduces these characters in the very beginning.
While Bert is out on the streets busking for Mrs.
Corry, Miss Persimmon, and Miss Lark and her dog, Andrew.
>> Book and movie Mary can both speak to Andrew the dog,
but the book features an entire chapter where Mary has to interpret for him.
It seems the well-dressed and groomed Andrew wanted to be a common dog so
badly that he went out and found a mutt to be friends with.
Then demanded Mrs.
Lark let the friend come and live with them, a deal brokered through Mary.
There's another chapter of the book where the infant Banks twins speak
quite clearly to Mary.
They speak to a starling and
even the sunshine because they're too young to think that they can, stupid kids.
The chapter follows the twins and
their friendship with a starling through their first birthday when they suddenly
forget how to speak to the world to which Mary Poppins is in tune.
>> The movie, however, remains focused on the Banks children and
their relationship with their father.
While the book features an old bird lady on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral
selling bread crumbs for tuppence a bag, she's just the focus of another chapter
about the magic in the world around us we could see if we really wanted to.
The book does not use tuppence as the sole reason for Mr. Banks being fired and
subsequently learning to appreciate the small things in life.
By the time we get to the end of the movie and Mr.
Banks is all about flying kites, Mary's job is done.
She's reconnected the Banks family.
The winds have changed, and it's time for her to go.
>> The book's ending, though, is not so clean.
She leaves when the winds change just as she promised, but
the Banks haven't been fundamentally changed.
They're perhaps richer for the experience of knowing Mary Poppins, but
it's nowhere near the emotional resolution of the movie.
>> And this, again, is the key difference between the books and the movie.
P.L. Travers wrote children's books based around a character that
introduced the Banks to a fairy tale-like undercurrent in their world.
The movie, though, treats Mary Poppins like the source of the magic that
ultimately brings a family back together.
>> Tragically, the one thing that the book and
movie have in common is that we never find out the name of that other leg.
>> A wooden leg named Smith.
>> Ha!
>> And that was nothing like a good show.
>> That's all for this episode.
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