Tom's Blog on Life

In 1962, Julie Andrews stood backstage at the Majestic Theatre in New York, still wearing her Guinevere costume from Camelot, when a short man with a warm smile approached her. “I’m Walt Disney,” he said. “I’d like you to play Mary Poppins.” Andrews was 27 years old. She’d just been told she wasn’t “cinematic enough” to play Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady—the role she’d created on Broadway, the role that made her a star, the role that defined her career. Warner Bros. gave it to Audrey Hepburn instead. Julie Andrews had never made a movie. Hollywood thought her face wouldn’t sell tickets. Walt Disney thought she was perfect.

Mary Poppins wasn’t just another film project for Disney. He’d been trying to get the rights from author P.L. Travers for 20 years. She hated him, hated Hollywood, hated the idea of Americans turning her proper English nanny into a cartoon. She finally relented in 1959, but only with brutal restrictions: no animation mixing with live-action (Disney ignored this), no romance between Mary and Bert (Disney ignored this too), and absolutely no red in Mary’s costume (Disney dressed her in red anyway).

For the role of Bert—the charming chimney sweep who befriends Mary and the Banks children—Disney wanted someone who could sing, dance, do physical comedy, and radiate infectious joy.
He cast Dick Van Dyke.

Van Dyke was 38, riding high from The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of television’s biggest hits. But he’d never carried a major musical film. And there was one significant problem: Bert was supposed to be a working-class Cockney Londoner.

Dick Van Dyke was from Missouri.

Van Dyke hired a dialect coach—veteran British actor J. Pat O’Malley. Except O’Malley wasn’t British. He was Irish. And as Van Dyke later admitted with a laugh: “He didn’t do a Cockney accent any better than I did.”

Nobody corrected them. Nobody stopped production to say, “This sounds completely wrong.”

The result? In 2003, Empire magazine ranked Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney accent as the second-worst in film history.

Van Dyke has spent 60 years apologizing for it and joking about it. In 2017, he told The Guardian: “I was working with an Irish coach who didn’t do it any better than I did. If there are any Cockneys who feel like I insulted them, I apologize.”

But here’s the thing: nobody cared. Not really.

Because when Dick Van Dyke tap-danced across animated rooftops with penguins, when he laughed his way through “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” when he performed acrobatic physical comedy that made Bert feel like a living cartoon—the accent didn’t matter.

The magic worked anyway.

Filming Mary Poppins took months of grueling choreography. Andrews and Van Dyke rehearsed “Step in Time”—the chimney sweep dance number—until they could perform the intricate tap routine in perfect sync with dozens of dancers across London rooftops.

They learned to interact with animated characters that didn’t exist yet—penguins, a carousel horse, singing farm animals. They had to make audiences believe that Mary Poppins could pull a full-sized coat rack from an empty carpetbag, that she could fly with an umbrella, that Bert could walk on walls and dance on ceilings.

And they had to make a 139-minute children’s musical feel like it flew by in minutes.

Van Dyke threw himself into every pratfall, every silly expression, every moment of physical comedy. He also played a second role in the film that almost nobody recognized: Mr. Dawes Senior, the ancient, decrepit chairman of the bank. Buried under heavy prosthetic makeup, he was credited as “Navckid Keyd”—an anagram of Dick Van Dyke. It was decades before most audiences realized both characters were the same actor.

Julie Andrews brought something else entirely: authority that never felt cold, strictness that never felt mean, magic that felt completely matter-of-fact.

When Mary Poppins slides up a banister, snaps her fingers to make toys put themselves away, or produces an entire floor lamp from her carpetbag, Andrews plays it with such perfect poise that you believe this is simply how proper English nannies behave.

And her voice—a crystalline four-octave range that could shift from stern lecture to soaring melody—made every song feel effortless.

The chemistry between Andrews and Van Dyke was immediate and genuine. Watch “Jolly Holiday,” where they stroll through a chalk-drawing countryside filled with animated animals. Their playfulness isn’t acting—it’s real joy.

Watch “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” where they’re surrounded by Pearly Kings and Queens in a carnival of absurdity. Their energy is contagious.

And watch the quiet moments—when Bert gently tells Mr. Banks to appreciate his children while he can, when Mary silently acknowledges her work is done—and you see two performers elevating a children’s movie into something profound.

Mary Poppins premiered on August 27, 1964.

It became the highest-grossing film of the year, earning $44 million—an astronomical sum in 1964. It received 13 Academy Award nominations and won five, including Best Actress for Julie Andrews.

When Andrews accepted her Oscar for her very first film role, she thanked “a man who made a wonderful movie and who made all this possible in the first place, Mr. Jack Warner.”

Jack Warner was the studio head who’d rejected her for My Fair Lady.

It was the most elegant revenge in Oscar history. Delivered with perfect, Mary Poppins poise.

The film became more than a hit. It became a cultural landmark. The songs became standards. The imagery—Mary’s silhouette against the London sky, chimney sweeps dancing on rooftops, the tea party on the ceiling—became iconic.

For Van Dyke, Mary Poppins cemented his status as one of Hollywood’s most versatile performers. He went on to star in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and continued working steadily for six decades.

For Andrews, it should have been the beginning of an extraordinary film career. And it was—until 1997, when a botched vocal surgery left her unable to sing publicly. The loss of her legendary voice was devastating. But she continued acting in The Princess Diaries films, voiced characters in Shrek and Despicable Me, and currently voices Lady Whistledown in Netflix’s Bridgerton—a role that won her an Emmy in 2025.

In 2000, Queen Elizabeth II made Andrews a Dame Commander of the British Empire.

And here’s the most remarkable part of this story:

They’re both still here.

Dick Van Dyke turned 100 years old on December 13, 2024. He is now the oldest living Disney Legend.

At age 97, he appeared on The Masked Singer, becoming the oldest contestant in the show’s history. At age 98, he won a Daytime Emmy for Days of Our Lives, making him the oldest Emmy winner ever. At age 93, he reprised his role in Mary Poppins Returns (2018), performing a song-and-dance number that proved he still had the energy that made him a star 54 years earlier.

Van Dyke credits his wife Arlene Silver—46 years younger than him—with keeping him young. He exercises daily, maintains an optimistic outlook, and recently published a book titled Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging.

“A hundred years is not enough,” he said. “You want to live more, which I plan to.”

Julie Andrews is now 89 years old. Though she can no longer sing, she remains one of the most beloved figures in entertainment. She’s received virtually every honor available: Kennedy Center Honors, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, AFI Life Achievement Award, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2013, Andrews and Van Dyke reunited at the premiere of Saving Mr. Banks—the film about Walt Disney’s battle to make Mary Poppins. Watching them together, still radiating warmth and mutual affection, reminded everyone why their chemistry had been so magical.

Mary Poppins endures not because of special effects or catchy songs.

It endures because two performers—one rejected by Hollywood, one faking the worst accent in film history—created something that transcended every imperfection.

Sixty years later, that magic hasn’t faded.

And incredibly, neither have they.

Dick Van Dyke at 100 and Julie Andrews at 89 are living proof that sometimes the real magic isn’t what happens on screen.

It’s knowing that the people who brought joy to millions are still here, still working, still inspiring new generations.

They made us believe in magic. And they’re still practicing it.