It’s Julie’s World at the Sag Harbor Cinema

Dame Julie Andrews returns to Sag Harbor Cinema with a screening of “Mary Poppins” as part of the yearlong retrospective in her honor and the Kids and Families Matinees series. The screening will take place on October 2, at 4 p.m., and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Andrews, moderated by Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.

The retrospective also includes “Julie and Tony,” an exhibit on the Cinema’s third floor, featuring personal correspondences, rare sketches, and objects related to the artistic collaboration between Andrews and her first husband, esteemed production designer, Tony Walton. Many of the items on display in the exhibit relate to their first collaboration, “Mary Poppins.”

“Mary Poppins is a work of genius in so many ways – Disney’s and his animators’, the Sherman Brothers’, Tony Walton’s and of course Julie Andrews’s. It is hard to believe that it was her first film. We timed the screening with the show upstairs – which was made possible by the generosity of Ms. Andrews and her family — so that our viewers can get a deeper insight of how effortlessly her brilliant creative process waves through her life. And they can read what Steve Sondheim thought of Disney’s film! This is the first of two exhibits planned during the retrospective,” said Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.

Walton and Andrews married in 1959, and in 1962 Julie gave birth to their daughter, Emma. During the run of “Camelot” on Broadway, Walt Disney attended a performance and visited Andrews backstage, where he offered her the opportunity to make her film debut as Mary Poppins in his upcoming film adaptation of P.L. Travers’s famous books. Walton was pursuing a career as a scenic and costume designer. Disney asked to see his portfolio and subsequently offered him the job of designing the costumes and interiors for the film. Mary Poppins was the couple’s first professional collaboration.

Although the couple divorced in 1968, and both remarried — Andrews to director Blake Edwards and Walton to author Gen LeRoy — they remained close friends. Because they lived on opposite coasts, Emma traveled back and forth between them. Determined to preserve their family connection, Andrews suggested that she and Emma write stories together that Walton could illustrate. The first of these was a story titled “Charlie the Englishman,” which Andrews had bound for Emma as a memento, and which many years later became the inspiration for their children’s book “Simeon’s Gift.”

Walton and Andrews remained close friends until his passing in March 2022. This exhibit features memorabilia from their personal collections as well as that of Emma Walton Hamilton.

Tickets for the screening are available at sagharborcinema.org.