The original Mary Poppins story was written by P.L. Traves, and she refused to give the rights to Disney for 20 years. She finally relented in 1961 for financial reasons, but she certainly was not happy with the results. Things that she was said to have hated about the movie included: the animated sequence, the house, the change of time period from the book, the fact Mary Poppins was pretty, the songs and especially Dick Van Dyke. From the horses mouth? “Oh God, what have they done” she said.