From THE SUNDAY TIMES...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly...1462479,00.html
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January 30, 2005
Lost song reveals a mean Mary Poppins
Ben Dowell
A SONG cut from the children?s film Mary Poppins by Walt Disney has been recovered from his company?s archives and will be released for the first time in March.
The song, Chimpanzoo, has been revived by the musical?s co-composer Richard Sherman and will be included in a new DVD release of the 1964 film about the nanny with magic powers.
Composed by Sherman and his brother Robert, the song portrays the darker side of the Mary Poppins character, played by Julie Andrews. It was to have been part of the scene of the floating tea party when the children rise by magic towards the ceiling.
The missing sequence sees Poppins threatening to put the children, Jane and Michael, into a human zoo when they ?laugh like hyenas? with Uncle Albert and the cockney chimney sweep Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke.
The song almost made it into the film but Disney, who monitored every stage of the three-year production process, decided it was too long and edited it out.
It is also thought that its cruel suggestiveness about putting ?boisterous, bumptious? human beings under lock and key did not sit well in a film packed with optimistic and upbeat songs, including Chim Chim Cher-ee, A Spoonful of Sugar and Let?s Go Fly a Kite.
The original book, written by P L (Pamela) Travers, an Australian, was much darker. Travers said Poppins ?never wasted time on being nice? and was sometimes threatening, scornful, prim and unnerving.
Travers described childhood as a ?sorrowful time? and was said to have been in tears when she saw the film, complaining it was too upbeat and ?saccharine?.
?They missed the point,? she said. ?It?s not about sugar and spice, but something from which we grown-ups can learn.?
Travers, who was born in 1899 and lived mainly in London from 1924 until her death in 1996, is thought to have created the story to comfort her younger siblings after their alcoholic father died and their mother announced that she was going to drown herself.
The character of Mary Poppins is believed to have been based on the author?s great aunt, Helen Morehead. She was a fearsome woman who gave Travers financial help that enabled her to become a writer. Morehead had an army of servants and eccentric neighbours, much as they are in the book.
Because of her disappointment with the film, Travers refused to grant permission for Andrew Lloyd Webber to revive the musical on stage in the early 1990s.
However her darker approach to the story was adopted by Cameron Mackintosh in his production now playing at the Prince Edward Theatre in London, which has been dubbed ?Scary Poppins?. Very young children are not allowed to watch it.
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A new DVD release of the film in March??
Randy, can you shed any light on this?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly...1462479,00.html
---
January 30, 2005
Lost song reveals a mean Mary Poppins
Ben Dowell
A SONG cut from the children?s film Mary Poppins by Walt Disney has been recovered from his company?s archives and will be released for the first time in March.
The song, Chimpanzoo, has been revived by the musical?s co-composer Richard Sherman and will be included in a new DVD release of the 1964 film about the nanny with magic powers.
Composed by Sherman and his brother Robert, the song portrays the darker side of the Mary Poppins character, played by Julie Andrews. It was to have been part of the scene of the floating tea party when the children rise by magic towards the ceiling.
The missing sequence sees Poppins threatening to put the children, Jane and Michael, into a human zoo when they ?laugh like hyenas? with Uncle Albert and the cockney chimney sweep Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke.
The song almost made it into the film but Disney, who monitored every stage of the three-year production process, decided it was too long and edited it out.
It is also thought that its cruel suggestiveness about putting ?boisterous, bumptious? human beings under lock and key did not sit well in a film packed with optimistic and upbeat songs, including Chim Chim Cher-ee, A Spoonful of Sugar and Let?s Go Fly a Kite.
The original book, written by P L (Pamela) Travers, an Australian, was much darker. Travers said Poppins ?never wasted time on being nice? and was sometimes threatening, scornful, prim and unnerving.
Travers described childhood as a ?sorrowful time? and was said to have been in tears when she saw the film, complaining it was too upbeat and ?saccharine?.
?They missed the point,? she said. ?It?s not about sugar and spice, but something from which we grown-ups can learn.?
Travers, who was born in 1899 and lived mainly in London from 1924 until her death in 1996, is thought to have created the story to comfort her younger siblings after their alcoholic father died and their mother announced that she was going to drown herself.
The character of Mary Poppins is believed to have been based on the author?s great aunt, Helen Morehead. She was a fearsome woman who gave Travers financial help that enabled her to become a writer. Morehead had an army of servants and eccentric neighbours, much as they are in the book.
Because of her disappointment with the film, Travers refused to grant permission for Andrew Lloyd Webber to revive the musical on stage in the early 1990s.
However her darker approach to the story was adopted by Cameron Mackintosh in his production now playing at the Prince Edward Theatre in London, which has been dubbed ?Scary Poppins?. Very young children are not allowed to watch it.
---
A new DVD release of the film in March??
Randy, can you shed any light on this?