I'm sure many have seen the 2013 movie Saving Mr. Banks about the author of Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, and how Disney made the movie from her novel. This is primarily about the musicians who were entrusted with shaping the movie to showcase their songs. It's the story of the Sherman brothers, Robert the lyricist, and his brother Richard who composed the music, and their struggles to find their places in show business.
The book begins when the young brothers are born and raised in New York, influenced by their tunesmith father. Introspective Robert is a writer whose dream is writing a fantastic novel, and outgoing younger brother Richard's hope to compose a symphony. Neither dreams work out and on their father's advice they start writing popular tunes and move to California. They started selling some of their music, but their breakthrough arrived while writing music for Annette Funicello, which brought them to Walt Disney's attention. Disney had a long running project of making a movie based on the Mary Poppins series. He had been trying to persuade the author to sell him the rights, but she had no intention of making her books "disneyfied." After hearing the Sherman Brothers music and meeting them at Disney studios, he realized that he had the perfect team to create a movie from Travers' story collections. He needed imagination and flexibility as there was really only a series of anecdotes in her novels and the Sherman Brothers had both. From the texts, they set the time period, appropriate music, character suggestions and story arc and basically wrote the outline for the movie. But Disney still hadn't gotten permission to make the movie from Travers and hoped that by bringing her to meet his crew, he would charm her into giving him film rights-and by now she really needed his money.
Whereas the movie gave insight into the characters of Travers' books, especially Mr. Banks and Mary Poppins, the perspective of this biography was on the process of movie-making and how difficult it is to agree on anything. I must admit that when I saw the movie when it first hit the theaters in the 60's, I agreed with Travers-this didn't present the books that I adored. But after reading Pierce's book, I understood that the movie is a completely different animal, based loosely on the Mary Poppins series, but not a depiction of the novel. I would like to see it again now to appreciate the work that the Sherman brothers accomplished to create a new interpretation of this beloved book.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
November 11, 2025
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