It Took Walt Disney More Than 20 Years to Make 'Mary Poppins'

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In the early 1940s, Walt Disney made his daughter Diane a promise: he would adapt her favorite 1934 children's book, British author P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins , into a big-screen masterpiece. What the famed animator didn't know at the time, however, is that it would take much longer to make the film than it took audiences to learn how to spell "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

Disney offered Travers a big payday for her book

By the time Julie Andrews' titular heaven-sent nanny quite literally descended from the clouds into the Banks family's Cherry Tree Lane home — and into theaters across America — in August 1964, about 20 years had passed since Disney made that promise to his young daughter. The holdup: notori