I’ve had the soundtrack to this in my car for a couple of weeks, and as I listen to it, I realize quite a few of the values I still hold dear were reinforced by this movie and its music.
It’s the first movie I remember going to–a matinee. It may not have been my first movie (and I certainly saw other movies on TV, too), but this is the one that is fixed in my mind as the first. Just a few notes of any music from it, and I’m transported back to that theater, sitting next to my mother, enthralled by every minute.
To this day, this song still makes my eyes well with tears and the lyrics have bonded with my DNA.
Julie Andrews: perfection.
Though other people gave me my first Barbies and her friends, I think this may be the first non-baby doll my mother bought me. I still have Mary Poppins’s other dresses and her carpetbag, though her umbrella may be gone.
Tupence a bag
Tupence the dog
I happened upon the studio-ish soundtrack record for the original 19xx’s movie (not the remake of the 20xx’s). It’s still one of a very select few records I have that I can tell they botched together, in haste, various studio clippings at unusual tempos using a mix of microphones as well as clippings from the actual movie played over them instead of mixed in as an audio source which is awful! Fortunately, you don’t hear the noise of the projector! It’s as if they used a movie viewing room to do the whole recording instead of a proper audio studio. I like to think they did it to make the whole thing fit on a single 12″ record. The “Feed the Birds” song is well done though, and on vinyl, both stand against the test of time.