Robert Sherman Quotes in Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

P.L. Travers: [reading the script] 'Scene one, exterior, Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, Day.' Yes, that's good. That can stay.

Richard Sherman: That's just a scene heading.

P.L. Travers: Though I do think we should say 'Number Seventeen,' instead of just 'Seventeen.'

Don DaGradi, Robert Sherman: No one's going to see it!

P.L. Travers: *I* will see it.

Don DaGradi: [to Travers] so this is the rest of your team, Dick and Bob Sherman! Music and lyrics.

[to the Shermans]

Don DaGradi: Boys, this is the one and only Mrs. P.L. Travers, the creator of our beloved Mary!

P.L. Travers: Poppins.

Don DaGradi: Who else?

P.L. Travers: Mary Poppins. Never, ever just Mary.

[to the Shermans]

P.L. Travers: It's a pleasure to meet you. I fear we shan't be acquainted for too long.

Robert Sherman: Why is that?

P.L. Travers: Because these books simply do not lend themselves to chirping and prancing. No, it's certainly not a musical. Now, where is Mr. Disney? I should so much like to get this started and finished as briskly as is humanly possible.

P.L. Travers: The rumor is that this is to be your Mr. Van Dyke, is it?

Richard Sherman: We hope so.

P.L. Travers: Hmm. We'll see about that, he's totally wrong. Totally and utterly.

Robert Sherman: Dick is one of the greats!

P.L. Travers: Dick Van Dyke? Robert, my dear, Olivier is one of the greats. Burton, Guinness, greats without question. I can assure you...

P.L. Travers: [speaking into the tape recorder] ... Dick Van Dyke is *NOT!*

[last lines]

[the authentic recordings of the rehearsals are being played on tape]

P.L. Travers: Now, who's reading? And go slowly.

Don DaGradi: You start and I'll take over.

Robert Sherman: "Autumn. In the early part of the 20th century, 1910. London. At Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the Banks household is in an uproar."

P.L. Travers: Hold it. Now, I see that Cherry Tree Lane as not too townified on one side of the park. And we'll get you a photograph of 50 Smith Street, in order to see that the house is really quite like that. But it has more of a garden than my house had. But it might be useful and amusing to put it in as my house. You see?

Don DaGradi: "Upstairs in the nursery, where Mary is measuring up the children with a long row of tape measure, Mary reads off the tape that Jane is..." Well, first she says, "What kind of material have we got to work with?"

P.L. Travers: No, no. That, we cannot have. That would be quite un-English.

Richard Sherman: Mrs. Travers, basically what we want to do here is use pretty much what you have in the book.

P.L. Travers: Yes, yes. Now, I want this tape measure to be used, because it was a tape measure that my mother had when she was a little girl.

Richard Sherman: Mmm-hmm.

P.L. Travers: And I think it would be very nice.

Don DaGradi: "At the end of the chorus..."

P.L. Travers: Read me all that, now.

Don DaGradi: We were going to.

P.L. Travers: Read it. No, no. You read it.

Don DaGradi: Do you want to bear us?

[Chuckles]

P.L. Travers: No. Go on.

Don DaGradi: This is torture!

[Chuckles]

P.L. Travers: Now, go on. "At the end of the chorus..." There ought perhaps to have been people in this countryside, you see? Are you making note of it? And they would be the Pearly people. They'd be arriving and they'd come nearer and they'd see, "Ah. Hmm." They know they are not grand enough to eat at this table. Have you got this on tape? Because I think it's important. I'm not going to do this film unless I'm available for it.

Robert Sherman: Well, there are these tapes also, you know.

P.L. Travers: No, it's not enough.

Robert Sherman: We, uh... We have to feel the impact of it.

P.L. Travers: Yes, yes. Well, anyway, it brings about whatever it is. Mr. Banks, um, is able. He has a tender, good heart, not a change of heart, because he's always been sweet, but worried with the cares of life.

[the tape ends]