Posted on 01/20/2014 4:31:38 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The year is 1961.
A wonderful and kind and nice and glorious man named Walt Disney must convince a mean and nasty and crazy woman named P.L. Travers to allow him and his movie studio to do something really nice for his children and your children and everyone’s children. Our hero—call him Walt, everybody does, except P.L. Travers, because she’s mean and nasty and insists on “Mr. Disney”—wants to make a movie out of Travers’s book Mary Poppins, because he promised his kids he would, and a man never backs out on his promise to his kids. P.L. Travers is crazy because she doesn’t want him to do it and tries to sabotage the project by insisting he shouldn’t do it the way he knows it should be done. Unfortunately for all that is wonderful and nice and good, the crazy mean woman owns the rights because she happens to be the creator of Mary Poppins.
This is the plot of Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers. It is a strange plot, because we know that Disney will prevail and the classic movie we’re seeing in chrysalis will, in three years’ time, become a beautiful butterfly starring Julie Andrews—the 25th-most-successful movie ever made. The sketches we see on the wall in the Disney studio office of the songwriting Sherman brothers look exactly like the Edwardian London that would soon appear in Mary Poppins (1964). We watch the Sherman brothers conceive “A Spoonful of Sugar.” We hear one of them play the melody to “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” We are meant to swoon when they and the screenwriter dance with Travers to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” Mary Poppins the movie is all there, including the notion of casting Dick Van Dyke as...
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Gay, anti-parent, anti-American, perverts today have ruined not only the "entertainment" geared to children but even the name! IMHO
Loved Disney (spent much of his youth in Kansas City, including going to the same school my mother attended), loved and looked forward to Sunday nights and the Wonderful World of Disney.
Am I correct in thinking Johnny Tremaine was a Disney TV project?
My favorite? Twenty thousand leagues under the Sea, then the Story of Davy Crockett.
Disney made some good ones! Then he died and the studio never, in my mind, ever made a good one since. Too many duds line Super Dad.
As for Tom Hanks being left-wing and whatnot, I check my politics at the door when entering a movie-house. If I had to apply a litmus test to every film I saw, I'd be limited to a few documentaries, horrid adaptations of "Atlas Shrugged", and Hobbit type fare.
So the movie did not portray P L Travers accurately...so what? If you are going to have a successful movie based on a true story, artistic license must be taken. The movie would not be the same if it ended with Disney telling Travers "that ship has sailed" at the premiere and having her storm away - never speaking to Disney again.
So ironically, the character P L Travers had to be sugarcoated just like her Mary Poppins had to be sugarcoated - in order to appeal to a wide movie audience.
I have often wondered why it is that people are lionized for pretending to be something else (acting).
They are elevated as heroes, far above those who die in combat for the sake of this country.
I remember when Tom Hanks made "Philadelphia". I suppose he acted well; but it was one of the first movies to normalize homosexuality. So which is to be weighted more heavily...praise for the acting or criticism for the message?
Weighted most heavily...Criticism for participating in the film...(Philadelphia).... no matter how good the acting was.
Agree.
***Loved Disney (spent much of his youth in Kansas City, including going to the same school my mother attended), loved and looked forward to Sunday nights and the Wonderful World of Disney.***
You never hear about Disney’s work on the old OSWALD THE RABBIT cartoons.
In the days of Black and White, didn’t Disney’s show come on Wednesday night on ABC, then he moved to NBC so he could broadcast it in color.
Didn’t some TV show called THE YELLOW RED ROAD try to compete with Disney in the 1960s?
Old memories that linger in my heart....
The Scarecrow starring Patrick McGoohan!
I wonder about his childhood, I'm not that much older but my parents introduced me to all sorts of fare, including the great comedians(when there actually quite a few vs,. the multitude of foul mouthed morons we have now)and not just popular entertainment. I have worked with many people not that much younger than me that have no appreciation for anything but the current THING.
Acting is a job — not a character reference. Tom Hanks is an extremely skilled actor who is able to play widely varying characters and make them believable. There is nothing heroic about that.
There are other actors (John Hurt, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis come to mind) who play the same character over and over again, barely changing the expression on their faces. They are not heros either — just less competent.
The actor does not choose the message in his vehicle — movie or play. The message is chosen by the writers and the director.
And yet millions go gaga over these people and treat them as heroes just because they know how to act like someone they're not.
The actor does not choose the message in his vehicle
He chooses to participate in the message. And if he chooses immoral messages he contributes to the degradation of society. Hanks did it in a big way with "Philadelphia".
The actor can choose to take work that is offered, or go on unemployment. I judge them politically ONLY when they have made pronouncements and comments unrelated to their current projects.
Do you blame the counter girl for the politics of McDonald’s?
Really?
There are lots of conservative actors/scriptwriters/directors in Hollywood who are not famous because they refuse disgusting projects. Sure, they make less money. But they refuse to prostitute themselves for cash. That used to be a good thing.
Returning Pamela’s books?
Heh——how’bout that?
Well, now they don’t even sell them, lol.
Streep must be looking to earn brownie points---to get acting parts as she ages. The anti-Semites in Hollywood---"if there were any"---had little or no effect on the building of mega-studios---which were headed and populated w/ talented Jews.....and earned millions of dollars. There is even a book written about talented men of Jewish faith who dominated Hollywood. As follows.
WIKI-- An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
Published 1988-- Pages 502 pp---ISBN 0-385-26557-3
An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood is a non-fiction book whose topic is the careers of several prominent Jewish movie producers in the early years of Hollywood.
Author Neal Gabler (PBS narrator) focuses on the psychological motivations of these film moguls, arguing that their background as Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe shaped their careers and influenced the movies they made.
Gabler's main thesis is that these producers (whom Gabler terms 'Hollywood Jews') generally came from poor, fatherless backgrounds, and felt like outsiders in America because of their Jewishness. In Hollywood, these producers were able to run their own industry, assimilate into the American mainstream, and produce movies that fulfilled their vision of the American dream. Gabler asserts that the nature of their business and their movies can often be traced back to their feelings of alienation as immigrants.
The book also explains that the business background of the 'Hollywood Jews' in theatre-ownership, retail distribution, and the garment industry shaped the approach these studio owners took to crafting movies for a popular audience, one similar to the marketing of films as commodities as well as works of art.
The book won the 1989 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history[1] and the 1989 Theatre Library Association Award.[2]
The book was adapted into a documentary movie in 1998, a decade after the book was published. The movie has two titles: "Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream" (original title for A&E) and "Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own" (title for video/DVD). The documentary won an award for Best Jewish Experience Documentary at the 1998 Jerusalem Film Festival.[3]
The title of the book is taken from a line in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Last Tycoon.
I have that book. It’s a good history of the great Jews who built Hollywoodland.
Meryl Streep is just one lucky broad. 18 Oscar nominations? That’s ridiculous.
“Am I correct in thinking Johnny Tremaine was a Disney TV project?”
I do not know, but it sounds right.
“Frankly I think Marry Poppins the movie is a vast improvement over the dark and dreary books.”
I never read any of them. I think my friend did, because I remember her saying how different they were. I’ll have to ask her what she thinks.
I love the movie. I revere Julie Andrews and I’m a really big Dick Van Dyke fan. I just am, I know some people can’t stand him, but that’s not how I feel. My same friend thinks he’s pretty bad in Mary Poppins (bad accent, all that) and she’s probably right, they might have been able to find someone better. But, I like them both and I think they had good chemistry in the flick.
It sounds like the original Mary Poppins wouldn’t have made too great a movie.
Without belaboring the obvious, this is the reason for this hit piece. Can’t blame him. But it is not an honest review, it is colored with Mr Podhoretz hatred for things antisemitic.
Usually, it's the Left that dismisses a man and his work because of alleged "bigotry" towards some select group. Apparently, so-called conservatives like Podhoretz aren't immune from the disease of political correctness either.
If praising Disney as a cartoonist is wrong because he was allegedly anti-Semitic, I suppose we should ban Ford motor vehicles while we're at it. Come to think of it, if we are to damn the life and work of everyone who was racist, anti-Semitic, etc. by today's standards, we'd pretty much have to dismiss the entire canon of pre-1960's culture, science, and technology.
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