Welcome back friends and loyal readers! When we last left your daring host, he was dangling by a very thin thread, hanging over the precipice of defeat at what turned out to be one of the harder Disney trivia questions that has ever been thrown at our hero!! GASP!! Will he survive this devilish plot? Did Carmen S. finally drive a nail into our hero’s reign at the top of the Disney trivia mountain? Well it’s time to find out true believers!
I did in fact know that Boo, the little girl that Sully and Mike fall head over heels for and have to save from the scary monsters in Pixar’s Monsters Inc. movie was indeed named Mary. How in the world did I know this? Well I’m going to be deathly honest with you, so here’s the story. In the Monsters Inc. movie, Boo hands Sully a crayon drawing that she has done while he is trying to get her to fall to sleep, and right in the corner of the drawing is her name in crayon – Mary. It is on screen no more than about 10 seconds total. And no I did not see it when I originally watched the film in theaters. But I did purchase a Disney trivia book that happened to have this question in it. So I did go back and verify this by pausing the movie and going frame by frame in HD until I saw her name. So unfortunately, I actually had already seen this question before, but great try Carmen S. from the Mexican Pavilion in Epcot.
Also, did you know that Pixar is about to release a brand new monsters film about Mike and Sullys first meeting in college titled Monsters University? It’s true Lafue! Watch for it to hit local theaters very soon!
And if you think you can stump me, please send me an email or leave your trivia question in the comments section and you too can see your name up in the big lights of a blog post! Whew! Reputations still intact!
Getting that trivia question right makes me feel Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!! And speaking of that massively fun-to-say word, I just love Mary Poppins don’t you?
Hard to believe but Mary Poppins (the movie, not the P.L. Travers book) was created by Walt Disney in 1964, which was four years before I was even born. But even though the movie is older, it sure does still hold up to this day.
Mary Poppins was quite a groundbreaking movie for its day for a few reasons. First it was one of the first movies to feature live action and animation at the same time in a higher, more believable quality. This is also one of the only Disney movies where the children actually have both parents around! Think on that one for a moment – Little Mermaid (just her Dad, no Mom) Belle (just her Dad, no Mom), Jasmin (just her Dad, no Mom) – see the pattern? Wonder why most fairy tales only give you one parent?
Anyway, of course one of the things you truly remember about Mary Poppins is the absolutely wonderful music within the film. Of course the Sherman Brothers created the score for the film, and they were the same guys who created so many great songs for Walt during their career. You even have them to thank for the “It’s A Small World Song” as well, but we won’t hold that against them will we?
Recognize this haggard old woman? Sure you do, she is the bird lady sitting on the steps feeding the birds. Do you remember how much the bird feed costs in her song? Good for you, it is tuppance a bag. Did you also know that “Feed The Birds” was Walt Disney’s most personal and favorite song? It sure was. The story has been told in many interviews and many books about Walt that whenever he had a very tough day at work and needed to uplift his spirits, he would call the Sherman Brothers to his office and ask them to play “Feed the Birds” for him. That story just makes me like that song all the more.
The story of Mary Poppins and the famous Jim Croce song “Cat’s In The Cradle” mirror each other very closely. They both revolve around a Father who is just a little too busy with work to realize he has a loving family who misses him and would rather him at home with them than have all of the money he makes at his job. He just can’t realize that on his own, so in swoops Mary Poppins to make him face the fact that kids should have fun and go outdoors and fly kites and not be so serious all the time. In the end, poor Mr. Banks finally gets the moral of the story, quits his job, and runs home to fly a kite with his kids, and Mary flies off to the next family.
Walt loved this book and story very much, but the author P. L. Travers was very hard to convince when it came to trying to get her to sell the movie rights to Walt. Once he finally won her over, she soon became a huge thorn in Walt’s side as he began making the movie. She would contact the newspapers and tell them that Walt was ruining her book with all the “garbage songs and rubbish about eating spoonfuls of sugar, which would obviously make you very ill!”
This fight between Walt and P.L. Travers was so well known that Disney is right now underway making a movie about it. It is called “Saving Mr. Banks” and it will star Tom Hanks as none other than Mr. Walt Disney himself.
As some final Disney factoids for you, you can see the actual merry-go-round horse that Julie Andrews rode in the movie over at The Great Movie Ride, just as you enter the ride building. It is 4 times the size of a normal merry-go-round horse and was made that way so that it would appear normal in the movie. Finally, did you know that Dick Van Dyke not only played Bert, but he was also Mr. Banks boss at the bank as well. Look close and you will recognize him.
Ok folks, thanks so much for cheering me on as I struggled to answer that trivia question. I also love Disney trivia questions and welcome any and all challengers. Thanks for spending your time with me! It is greatly appreciated and keeps me wanting to write about Disney every day. I’ll see ya back here real soon as I answer more of your Disney questions! Hope you have a very blessed day!
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