![]() ![]() He had carefully engineered his entrance: when his car pulled up, the Disney characters mobbed it, and soon afterward clouds of balloons were released into the air. Disney was by then immensely famous, appearing on his own television show every Sunday night. Then Walt Disney himself arrived, stepping out of a stretch limousine and gallantly reaching a hand into the car to help his wife, Lillian, onto the pavement. The arrival of the movie’s principals aroused muted excitement: Julie Andrews, who played Mary Poppins, had never appeared in a movie before, and Dick Van Dyke-the chimney sweep Bert-became much better known after the film’s release. Hollywood luminaries arrived in chauffeured automobiles, the women in ball gowns and mink stoles (Angie Dickinson, Maureen O’Hara, Suzanne Pleshette), the men wearing dinner jackets (Edward G. Throngs of screaming fans were greeted by Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Snow White and the dwarfs, as well as by entertainers who gestured toward the movie’s Edwardian setting: a twelve-piece pearly band, chimney-sweep dancers, valets dressed as bobbies, and a bevy of pretty Disneyland hostesses, whose traditional uniforms (kilts and black velvet riding helmets) suggested a general Englishness. ![]() The 1964 world première of “Mary Poppins” was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and it was the kind of spectacle for which the Disney organization had become famous. ![]()
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