AUDIO: Rare Recordings of P.L. Travers' Meetings with Disney Execs Released

The Los Angeles Times has obtained rare audio excerpts of MARY POPPINS' author P.L. Travers' meetings with Disney's Don DaGradi, Richard and Robert Sherman from the early 1960s. Check it out bleow!

In SAVING MR. BANKS, the film based upon taking MARY POPPINS from the page to the big screen, two-time Academy Award®-winner Emma Thompson and fellow double Oscar®-winner Tom Hanks star.

When Walt Disney's daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers' "Mary Poppins," he made them a promise-one that he didn't realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney's plans for the adaptation.

For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn't budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp.

It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

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