Over the holiday I saw Mary Poppins Returns and loved it! The callbacks! The charm! Lin-Manuel Miranda rapping! Dick Van Dyke dancing on a desk! AN ANGELA LANSBURY CAMEO! I mean, come on!
Career edit Darwell as Ma Joad in
Darwell studied voice culture and the piano, followed by dramatics. She had considered entering a convent at one point, but she later changed her mind and became an actress. She started performing in Chicago theater plays, and in 1913, she starred in her first motion picture. Over the following two years, she made appearances in nearly 20 movies before going back to the stage. Her career as a Hollywood character actress started when she made her film debut in Tom Sawyer (1930), following a fifteen-year break. She was quickly cast in a series of films, typically as the mother of one of the main characters, despite being short, stout, and plain. She also starred as the housekeeper or grandmother in five Shirley Temple movies. [2].
Darwell was well-known for her theatrical roles as well. In 1944, she played an Irishwoman who inherited a junkyard in the popular stage comedy Suds in Your Eye. [2].
Darwell made an appearance as Grandmother McCoy in a July 27, 1961, episode of the sitcom The Real McCoys. In the narrative, Walter Brennan, Richard Crenna, and Kathleen Nolan’s series characters visit a made-up Smokey Corners, West Virginia for Grandma McCoy’s 100th birthday celebration. Darwell was 15 years older than “son” Walter Brennan. In this episode, Henry Jones played Jed McCoy and Pat Buttram played Cousin Carl, respectively.
For her services to the motion picture industry, Darwell was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960. The star is situated at 6735 Hollywood Boulevard. [11][12].
Save for an occasional guest spot on television, Darwell was largely retired from acting by the time she was in her mid-eighties. Her advanced age and weakness had forced her to move into the Motion Picture Country Home recently. Darwell turned down Disney’s offer to play the Bird Woman in Mary Poppins (1964). Walt Disney persisted and drove to the retirement home to personally beg her to accept the role. But it was her last acting role. In this crucial sequence of the film, the Bird Woman is seen selling bags of bread crumbs to people walking around St. Paul’s Cathedral Square so they can feed the pigeons. Julie Andrews sang the song “Feed the Birds,” which is described as “poignant”[13], like a hymn. [14].
Dawes explains, “There was a little boy named Michael who wanted to give his tuppence to a bird lady– but in the end, and after a little persuasion, he decided to give it to his father instead [who then] gave that tuppence to the bank and asked us to guard it well. We did just that, and thanks to several quite clever investments…that tuppence has grown into quite a sum!”
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