Feed The Birds

Like so many people, I love the Mary Poppins film.

Not so the original author of the Mary Poppins books, PL Travers.

I am looking forward to seeing the recently released film that is based upon the differences between Walt Disney and PL Travers, Saving Mr Banks.

Having viewed a recent short documentary from the BBC about this forthcoming film, it has reminded me how much I love the section in the film where the old woman feeds the birds outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

This is a haunting song, and perhaps few people will realize exactly who it is playing the role of the Old Woman.

At the time of filming, she had been retired for a couple of years, and was living in a retirement home for actresses.

It seems that this was one of the few scenes in the film that PL Travers approved of, and Jane Darwell, the daughter of a railway president, born in 1879, began making films only when she was in her 30s.

Her name was changed from Woodward, perhaps because her family so disapproved of her working as an actress.

Walt Disney so wanted to cast her in this role that he personally visited her in the nursing home where she was living, and she was ferried backwards and forwards to filming in a limousine, just to sweeten the deal.

It is of course her last film role, and although we might not remember many of her numerous other roles, she was the winner of an Oscar for an Actress in a Supporting Role in 1941, In The Grapes of Wrath.

She also had a part in Gone with the Wind, in 1939, and her full list of films is very lengthy.

She has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and though her part in the film is a small one, I cannot help feel that it is a pivotal one, providing a real sense of what Mr Banks, the father of the two children at the heart of Mary Poppins, fails to see right in front of his nose.

Although it is a lullaby, in the film, and perhaps could easily be simply passed over and forgotten, it is for me one of the most memorable tunes from this extraordinary film.

At the time of its release, in 1964, it became the most successful Disney film at the Oscar ceremony, scooping five Oscars.

It has been one of the most successful films financially for the Disney Corporation, so that they have named one of their technical companies after it, MAPO - in other words, Mary Poppins.

Strange how one small element in the story of a single film can link to serve many other films.

But then, I suppose that is the nature of Hollywood, that it is ultimately a small community in California, albeit with the capacity to encompass the world.