Julie Andrews arrived on the cinema screen fully formed in Mary Poppins, and the film has never really left the public imagination since.
Mary Poppins was released in 1964 and was Julie Andrews’s film debut. It was produced by Walt Disney and based on the books by P. L. Travers. Andrews played the magical nanny who arrives at the Banks household in Edwardian London to look after Jane and Michael Banks, played by Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber. Dick Van Dyke played Bert, the chimney sweep who becomes her friend and guide to the children’s adventures.
The film mixed live action with animation, notably in the sequence in which Mary, Bert and the children step into a chalk drawing and visit a fairground. Its songs were written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. Among them were songs that became standards in their own right, and the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Andrews and Best Original Song for Chim Chim Cher-ee.
What makes the performance endure is its balance. Andrews played Mary Poppins as practical and firm, never sentimental, and that restraint made the fantasy believable. She was warm without being soft, and the children in the story respond to her because she treats them seriously. The role also showed, at once, the stage training that had made her famous in My Fair Lady and Camelot: clear diction, precise comic timing and singing that sounded effortless.
Mary Poppins remains the natural starting point for any account of Andrews on film. It introduced her to a worldwide audience, it won her the Academy Award, and it set a standard for the musical performances that followed. More than sixty years later, the image of the nanny with her carpet bag and umbrella is still the first image many people associate with her name.