Mary Poppins (film) in the context of "Walt Disney Studios (Burbank)"

Walter Elias Disney (/ˈdɪzni/ DIZ-nee; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards won (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.

Born in Chicago in 1901 and raised largely in Missouri, Disney developed an early interest in drawing. He took art classes as a boy and took a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio (now the Walt Disney Company) with his brother Roy. With Ub Iwerks, he developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly popular success; he also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio grew, he became more adventurous, introducing synchronized sound, full-color three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons and technical developments in cameras. The results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942), furthered the development of animated film. New animated and live-action films followed after World War II, including Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Mary Poppins (1964), the last of which received five Academy Awards.

Dame Julie Andrews (born Julia Elizabeth Wells; 1 October 1935) is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, three Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and seven Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for three Tony Awards. One of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s, Andrews has been honoured with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022. She was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 New Year Honours.

A child actress and singer, Andrews appeared in the West End in 1948 and from 1950 to 1952 on the radio programme "Educating Archie" in which she played Archie's girlfriend [1]. She made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend (1954). Billed as "Britain's youngest prima donna", she rose to prominence in Broadway musicals starring as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1956) and Queen Guinevere in Camelot (1960). She also starred in the Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical Cinderella (1957). She made her film debut playing the title role in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins (1964) and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. The following year, she starred in the musical film The Sound of Music (1965), playing Maria von Trapp and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.

The Sherman Brothers were an American songwriting duo that specialized in musical films, made up of brothers Robert Sherman (December 19, 1925 – March 6, 2012) and Richard Sherman (June 12, 1928 – May 25, 2024). Together they received various accolades including two Academy Awards and three Grammy Awards. They received nominations for a Laurence Olivier Award, a BAFTA Award, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 1976, they received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the National Medal of the Arts in 2008.

The Sherman Brothers wrote more motion-picture musical song scores than any other songwriting team in film history. Their work includes the live-action films The Parent Trap (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and the animated films The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967, except "The Bare Necessities", which Terry Gilkyson wrote), Charlotte's Web (1973), The Aristocats (1970), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). Among their most famous works are the theme park songs There's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow and It's a Small World (After All). According to Time magazine, the latter song is the most performed song of all time.

William Crozier Walsh (September 30, 1913 – January 27, 1975) was a film producer, screenwriter and comics writer who primarily worked on live-action films for Walt Disney Productions. He was born in New York City. For his work on Mary Poppins, he shared Academy Award nominations for Best Picture with Walt Disney, and for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium with Don DaGradi. He also wrote the Mickey Mouse comic strip for more than two decades.

In 1970 an article in Variety listed him as the second most successful film producer of all time in terms of money-earning movies even though he was "a guy no one's ever heard of".

Don DaGradi (March 1, 1911 – August 4, 1991) was an American writer for Disney who started out as a layout artist on 1940s cartoons including "Der Fuehrer's Face" in 1943. He eventually moved into animated features with the film Lady and the Tramp in 1955. He also worked as a color and styling or sequence consultant on many other motion pictures for Disney. His greatest achievement was for his visual screenplay for Mary Poppins in 1964 for which he shared an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay with Bill Walsh. Don DaGradi died August 4, 1991, in Friday Harbor, Washington. He was named a Disney Legend posthumously, only months after his death. DaGradi lived in Friday Harbor, WA with his wife Betty and two children.

In the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks, DaGradi is portrayed by actor Bradley Whitford.

Mary Poppins is a fictional character and the eponymous protagonist of P. L. Travers' books of the same name along with all of their adaptations. A magical English nanny, she blows in on the east wind and arrives at the Banks home at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London, where she is given charge of the Banks children and teaches them valuable lessons with a magical touch. Travers gives Poppins the accent and vocabulary of a real London nanny: "cockney base notes overlaid with a strangled gentility".

Julie Andrews, who played the character in the 1964 film adaptation, received an Academy Award for Best Actress. British film magazine Empire included Poppins (as played by Andrews) in their 2011 list of 100 greatest movie characters. Acclaimed for her performance as Poppins in the 2018 sequel, Emily Blunt received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. In the 2004 musical adaptation in the West End, Laura Michelle Kelly received the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Poppins.

David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson (7 May 1917 – 24 June 2000) was an English stage, film and television actor, singer and comedian. Having been described as both a leading man and a character actor, he is primarily remembered for his roles with The Walt Disney Company as authoritarian father figure George Banks in Mary Poppins, hapless antagonist Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug and the friendly con man Professor Emelius Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Tomlinson was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend in 2002.

The year 1964 in film involved some significant events, including three highly successful musical films, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

"Chim Chim Cher-ee" is a song from Mary Poppins, the 1964 musical film, and is also featured in the 2004 Mary Poppins musical.

It won Best Original Song at the 37th Academy Awards. In 2005, Julie Andrews included this song as part of Julie Andrews Selects Her Favorite Disney Songs.