According to the film, Travers despised the junk food she was provided and the trinkets Disney was fond of displaying. To her they were merely capitalist fare, signs of overindulgence –– of an unreal worldview. For her, America –– in particular Disney, the company –– was fake.

Walt Disney faced the considerable challenge of persuading Travers that he would do justice to her precious “Mary Poppins.” In the end, Disney appealed to the storyteller in her. Storytellers, he noted, help soothe society’s ills by offering brief periods of psychic escape from hardship. Yes, they may provide nothing more than fantasy, but what was wrong with that? he wondered.

Disney, according to the movie, at least, sympathized with the tragedies that Travers had suffered growing up with an alcoholic father in Australia. Disney, too, had faced hardship as a child, delivering newspapers in the bitter cold and deep snow of Kansas City in the early 20th century.

With a cavalcade of cartoon characters, Disney created imaginary worlds in which Americans could find solace and hope. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” released in 1937, amid the Great Depression, grossed more than $3.5 million in the U.S. and $10 million worldwide in its debut year, while costing $1.5 million to $2 million to produce.

Yes, people need fantasy, particularly during periods of economic turmoil, social upheaval and war, and the 20th century — when Disney, the company, was born –– was full of all three.

Disneyland in California, built in 1955, had already become a national icon when its Florida counterpart, Walt Disney World, was completed on 25,000 acres in 1971. Ten million people flooded Disney World within its first two years, paying $3.50 each for a day’s admission. I made my first pilgrimage to Disney World in 1974, at age 7. A number of trips followed in subsequent years. It was, for middle-class Americans, what you did –– and still is. Yes, my kids have made the trip.