Method and Style in Mary Poppins Returns

The cherry trees in my neighborhood are bursting with blooms this week thanks to a 50 degree hike in temperature. In honor of February cherry blossoms, I’m writing this week about Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane– the iconic setting of the film Mary Poppins (1964) and the new film Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

First of all, HAVE YOU SEEN Mary Poppins Returns?? It really is splendid! I’m relieved that it’s good, because my family loves the original so much that a janky sequel would have been rather upsetting. We’re pretty big Mary Poppins fans…Two years ago, before we knew a Returns was in the works, my children were Mary and Bert for Halloween.

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From start to finish, Mary Poppins Returns is like an architectural treasure trove. Set in the 1930s, the new movie features city scenery, London landmarks, and carefully designed interiors that are period appropriate. Architectural Digest called Mary Poppins Returns “a visual love letter to London,” and I heartily agree. Besides making the movie feel more real, the carefully researched movie sets are a jolly good resource for this blog’s historic architecture research! I noticed several elements in the sequel that bring an old art or architecture style back to life (more on my interest in Revival here). And the remodeled Banks abode has Georgian features that remind me so much of our house. (Did you notice that 17 Cherry Tree Lane got a makeover for Mary Poppins Returns?) I’m really excited to explore this film through the lens of our Grand Simple Revival theme. If you haven’t seen Mary Poppins Returns yet, watch this trailer and then read on!

Reviving Memories and Techniques

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You get a sense of familiarity from the moment the opening credits begin to roll in Mary Poppins Returns. While the original movie’s beloved tunes play, viewers enjoy an unhurried visual tour of London via painted landscapes. Reminiscent of Bert’s chalk drawings, these paintings showcase the variety and elegance of London’s architecture. We see rows and rows of Georgian terrace home chimneys, Mansard rooflines and Regency balconies from a bird’s eye view. We glide over Tower Bridge (Victorian style), past Big Ben (Gothic Revival), and by Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral (Classicized English Baroque). The artwork in the opening credits serves a dual purpose—it connects us back to plot lines and locations of significance in the previous movie (a sequel’s connections to its predecessor are known in film lingo as “Easter eggs”), and it introduces the new story-line, as we discover that Michael Banks has grown up to be a painter, and these renderings are presumably his handiwork.

Sitting in the movie theater, I was immediately impressed with the quality of the paintings in the opening credits. “I wonder who painted these,” I said to my husband, delighted that a contemporary movie would feature such fine illustrations. I determined to find out about the artist when I got home. What I discovered is that the paintings in the opening scenes of Mary Poppins Returns are a mixture of old sketches by Peter Ellenshaw (artist for the original Mary Poppins) and new paintings done in the same manner (“Ellenshaw Revival style,” we could say).

Peter Ellenshaw, who died in 2007, actually won an Oscar for his visual effects in the original Mary Poppins. Using his old artwork and cuing off of his style was the admirable decision of the film’s director, Rob Marshall. Marshall reported: “I was excited to discover these concept paintings and concept art in the Disney Archives. They’re so beautiful. [So we] used about a third of them and then created [new] ones in his style…” (2). To me, the concept paintings by Ellenshaw in Mary Poppins Returns are even more charming than the ones we knew and loved in the original movie. They are looser and more impressionistic, probably because concept sketches would naturally be less “finished.”

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It took some major digging, but I finally found an artist named Barry Jackson, who created some of the new images in Ellenshaw Revival style. (I’m looking forward to hearing back from him about his medium and method).

Along with these opening images, the director of the film decided to go “retro” with the animation.  New York Post ran an article describing how “every frame featuring cartoons [was] hand-drawn in the traditional style Walt Disney pioneered.” As the proud daughter of artist Charlie Pate and sister to artist Charles Pate, Jr., I can’t tell you how much I admire Marshall’s decision to revive traditional art techniques rarely used in film these days. CGI would not have had the same painterly effect.

A New Take on an Old Home

In Mary Poppins Returns, the Banks children whom Mary Poppins nannies in the first film have supposedly grown up, and Michael is now living in his parents’ home with his own children. While the story-line hinges on this being the same house where Michael and Jane grew up, you may have realized that it looks different than #17 Cherry Tree Lane in the original film. I LOVE what the director and his set designers decided to do here… rather than creating an exact replica of the original home and street, they created something unique. “We want people to feel like they’re seeing something they’ve seen before, but they’re really seeing it for the first time,” says John Myhre, production designer for Mary Poppins Returns (ArchDigest). The changes Myhre made were subtle enough to make any viewer not looking at a side-by-side photo feel comfortable with the idea that this is the same house 20 to 30 years later. However, Myhre and his team made some intentional departures from the original in order to create an atmosphere that was less posh and more easy-going. Myhre explains his motives for reinterpreting the look of the home and street in the Architectural Digest interview:

“ ‘The story we’re telling is so completely different, and a way I could really express that was with the house,’ says Myhre, who noticed the first ultraformal home was so unfriendly it didn’t even have a living room sofa. Myhre scaled down some of the spaces, and added furniture from U.K. flea markets and swap meets, which he then reupholstered in a controlled color palette. He ensured the children’s fingerprints were all over every room, so to speak. His goal was for the slightly cluttered, deeply charming dwelling to feel personal, but for a purpose. In the film’s opening, for instance […] a repossession notice is being nailed to the front door. ‘Your heart is just broken when you come inside and see this lovely house,’ Myhre says.”

Architectural Digest

It’s easy to see how interior décor contributes to a warmer, family friendly feel in the Banks’ house, but how can the home’s architectural style make that kind of impact?

The original Banks’ home is an example of “Regency style” architecture. Sounds royal, right? That’s because it is. Right at the end of the Georgian period distinctively dapper styles developed in interior design, furnishings, fashion and architecture that were named “Regency” for the Prince Regent at the time, George IV. While early Georgian (and Georgian Revival a century later) is known for dignified but simple flat facades, the Regency period added a lot of grandeur with detailed railings, bay windows and balconies, arched and pediment-ed windows, and a characteristic layer of stucco that hid brick and was painted white to resemble marble or limestone. You can see how Disney’s first 17 Cherry Tree Lane looks like a miniature Clarence House, the Regency style home to British Royals.

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This week I watched Saving Mr. Banks, the story of Walt Disney’s interactions with Mary Poppins’ creator P.L. Travers, who was not a fan of Disney’s adaptations. In one scene of Saving Mr. Banks the Disney creative team shows Travers storyboards with concept drawings of Cherry Tree Lane. Travers is horrified. “The Banks’ house doesn’t look like that. No, no, no. It’s all wrong! They aren’t meant to be aristocrats… I live in a terrace home!”

Travers’ comment actually makes a lot of sense. “Terrace homes” refers to London townhouses that connect end-to-end. Only the very wealthy would live in stand alone houses in London, but if you look at the features of the original Mary Poppins house, you’ll see that it is detached and that the façade looks pretty formal as well. (I found a similar home for sale right now in London, for a mere £ 30 million).

While Regency architecture did eventually reach the masses, it did so in the form of terrace homes. Without looking, I could have sworn that Mary Poppins Returns had turned the Banks house into a terrace/town house. But when I checked I found that it is still detached. However, in the new movie, 17 Cherry Tree Lane almost touches its neighbors, giving a terrace-like appearance. I think the more compact layout and the exposed brick on the second story go a long way toward helping 17 Cherry Tree Lane resemble the neo-Georgian terrace homes that you see all over England—more like the home of an “average” family.

I found the new set endearing. I think the director and production designer realized that Regency style and economic depression don’t really go together. Since the new movie takes place during what the Brits called the Great Slump, a simpler aesthetic was more suitable. But despite the simplification and the grittier, shabbier atmosphere of the sets, the new film’s scenery is incredibly beautiful.

I have even more to say about this film and its Revivalist architecture, but will save the rest for another post in a few days. Stay tuned!

Does anyone reading have a favorite story or movie that features old architecture? Share in the comments if you do!

Above left: Cherry Tree Lane set for Mary Poppins Returns

Above right: Barry Jackson image for Mary Poppins Returns title sequence

Image sources:

• Barry Jackson images from @Barry.e.jackson on Instagram
• St. Paul’s, Ellenshaw
• Unfinished London scene, Ellenshaw
• Ellenshaw in Studio
• Street Scene, Ellenshaw
• Ellenshaw in Studio