Vault Disney Presents Bedknobs, Broomsticks & Beyond (1998)

Bedknobs & Broomsticks was the backup project Walt Disney secured if Mary Poppins fell through. P.L. Travers was a crisp woman to work with and her selling Walt the rights to the Mary Poppins books wasn't a sure thing. When Mary Poppins happened, Bedknobs & Broomsticks was put on the shelf and Walt passed away before it could be revisited.

Bedknobs & Broomsticks is based on the books The Magic Bedknob and Bonfired & Broomsticks by Mary Norton, best known as the author of The Borrowers book series. The same team who developed Mary Poppins developed this film and it was they, under Walt's supervision, who changed the setting to World War II among other things. After Walt died, the studio wanted to develop another project in the vein of Mary Poppins and development on Bedknobs & Broomsticks resumed.

Originally the film was to cast Julie Andrews and Ron Moody in the leads but Andrews took too long to decide if she wanted to accept this role and Moody signed to make the film version of Oliver! (which was originally set to film at the same time) to portray Fagin, the part he originated on Broadway. The parts went to Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson instead. Many story points that had been developed by the Sherman Bros were overridden by the committee that took over the studio after Walt's passing and the film has been unfairly pegged as a Mary Poppins imitator.

When the film was shot, it was intended to be a companion piece to Mary Poppins but to premiere at Radio City Music Hall nearly a half hour of footage was cut to get the film under two hours. In the early 1990's an attempt was made to reinstate the missing footage and that version of the film was screened September 27, 1996, at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California. That version was released to laserdisc in 1997 and debuted on the Disney Channel in 1998. These are all of the segments that aired alongside that Vault Disney airing in one video.

The restored version of Bedknobs & Broomsticks was released to DVD in 2001 along with some of this footage combined with a Sherman Bros Vault Disney event combined into a new documentary. This is the version of the film to own as when the film was released to bluray the documentary was edited down and the restored film was back to the cut version. The missing scenes could only be viewed on their own and not cut back into the film.

This was the sort of care for Walt Disney history the Walt Disney Company used to have just a few decades ago. Now they could care less. When the 50th anniversary of Bedknobs & Broomsticks rolled around there was little fanfare. Woke Disney considers the film "problematic" because the villains are the Nazis. A stage adaptation of the film spearheaded by Richard M Sherman debuted in 2021.

Original airdate August 9, 1998

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.