Mary Poppins

P. L. Travers’s immensely popular Mary Poppins, the star of novels about a no-nonsense but magical nanny, was modeled on her own great-aunt Sass, aka christina saraset. “Imagine a bulldog whose ferocious exterior covers a heart tender to the point of sentimentality and you have Christina Saraset,” Travers once wrote. The first Mary Poppins book was published in 1934, and among its legion of devoted fans were Walt Disney’s daughters, who persuaded their father to buy the rights. It took him 14 years, but he finally convinced Travers that he would do justice to her work. The movie, of course, was beloved by most, with one notable exception—travers herself. She hated the film’s sugarcoated sentimentality and animated scenes so much that she refused to grant Disney permission to make a sequel.