Doll-A-Day 2019 #17: Mary Poppins Week: Jolly Holiday Edition Mary Poppins

  We conclude Mary Poppins Week today with is doll.

It's Mary herself.

There have been a lot of Mary Poppins dolls,including several Barbie sized dolls. This isn't the Mary Poppins from the same 2007 series as the Banks kids and Bert you saw earlier this week. This Mary,called the Jolly Holiday Edition, was made by Mattel in 1999.

She belongs to Emma. Emma loves Julie Andrews,so it was a natural for her to buy this doll. 

This doll has a special face sculpt made to look like Julie Andrews. The 2007 Mary had the same sculpt,but a somewhat harsher paint job.

This is the Jolly Holiday outfit,from the part of the movie where Mary,Bert, and the Banks children jump into one of Bert's chalk drawings and end up in an animated world.

You can see my post on the children HERE,and the one on Bert HERE.

During their frloic in the land of chalk drawings Mary,Bert,and the animated cast sing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". Ken has gone his whole life singing it as,"Super-cali-fragi-list Begets Be-alidocious".  You're killing me, Ken!

The 2007 Mattel Mary Poppins doll also came in the Jolly Holiday outfit,but it was slightly different.

 

I think today's doll actually captured the look of the dress from the film better than the 2007 version.

Her brown hair is done up in a bun.

She has the articulation of standard Barbie dolls of the time, which was only neck,shoulders, and hips,and click bend legs with minimal bending.

Her arms can lift up and down and out to the sides.

 

Her head does tilt though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is wearing a peach coloured half slip and underwear under it.

She has peachy coloured high heels and cloth spats.

She's been laying in Emma's room since before she moved out years ago,and she appears to have lost a shoe and collected some crud on her shoe. 

 Her hat is clear plastic with a gauzy bow on the back,and gauzy fabric that ties under her chin.

There are satiny roses glued on the brim,but the real one didn't have any roses.

Her tiny fingerless gloves are sheer too.

Of course she has Mary Poppins' parrot headed umbrella.

More of what you'd call a parasol in this case I guess.

 

The umbrella doesn't actually open.

  As good as this outfit is,this outfit is probably the least accurate to the movie costume than any of the dolls in the 2007 series,other than Mary.

 

It's not bad, but the others were so well done and close to their movie counterparts, that this one pales by comparison.(Mind you,suits would be easier to copy,especially in a small scale.) But they didn't even try with the shoes.

They could have done molded side button shoes,and not tried to get by with faking it with spats. (The 2007 Mary only had white boots.)
   By the way, for you younguns out there,these are spats:

Spats,short for spatterdashes or spatterguards,were worn over shoes to protect them from mud and dirt.

Julie Andrews was born Julia Elizabeth Wells,in Walton-on Thames,in Surrey,England in 1935. At age five Julie moved to London to live with her mother and stepfather,whose last name, Andrews,she took. Her stepparents entertained troops for the Entertainments National Service Association,or ENSA. As a child Julie took voice lessons. From the age of 10 to 12 Julie appeared on stage with her parents,singing solo and in  duets with her stepfather. In 1947,at the age of 12, she made her solo debut. The following year she became the youngest performer ever to perform in a Royal Variety Show,appearing before King George the VI and Queen Elizabeth.
  Julie appeared in musicals in London's West End,the British equivalent of Broadway. In 1954,at age 19 she made her Broadway debut in "The Boyfriend". The following year she was given the starring role of Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady".
  In 1957 Julie released her first solo album, and played 'Cinderella' in the first TV adaptation of Rogers and Hammerstein's musical. Julie was cast as Guinevere in the original Broadway production of "Camelot" in 1960,but lost the role of Eliza Doolittle in the film version of "My Fair Lady" the same year. Producer jack Warner believed Julie wasn't a big enough name to star in a major film. Instead she was cast as Mary Poppins that year. At the Academy Awards the following year, "My Fair Lady" swept the awards,winning Best Director, Best Actor,and Best Supporting Actor and Actress . For all the awards "My Fair Lady" won, they lost two of the biggest awards, Best Picture and Best Actress to "Mary Poppins" and Julie Andrews. In her acceptance speech Andrews thanked,"a man who made a wonderful movie and who made all this possible in the first place, Mr. Jack Warner." Ouch!

In 1964 Julie also appeared in a movie she describes as her favourite film,"The Americanization of Emily",for which she was nominated for a BAFTA,the British equivalent of an Academy Award.

Along with Mary Poppins, Julie's other best known role is as Maria Von Trapp in 1965's "The Sound of Music",still the third highest grossing film ever in America,(adjusted for inflation). "The Sound of Music" is still one of Emma's all time favourite movies. She has the Maria Von Trapp Barbie doll too,but it was made with the standard Barbie face.

Julie has appeared in many movies and TV shows over the years, including several well received TV specials with Carol Burnett. In 1997,during a Broadway run of "Victor/Victoria" Julie developed problems with her voice. She was operated on for removal of nodules on her vocal chords. Following the operation she was unable to sing. She later said that she never had nodules,only 'a muscular striation on the vocal chords'. She sued her doctors in 1999. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2000.  Since then Julie has had four operations to restore her voice. While the raspiness was removed from her speaking voice, her singing ability has never been totally restored.
  In 2000 was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the performing arts by Queen Elizabeth II.
  Julie may be best known to young audiences as Queen Clarisse Marie Renaldi in "The Princess Diaries",from 2001,(and her first Disney movie since "Mary Poppins"). In 2004 she also appeared in the sequel.

    See you tomorrow for a doll I got for Christmas recently.