Dick Van Dyke’s Most Controversial Moments Over The Years

In 1964, Dick Van Dyke played the role of chimney sweep Bert in the popular film “Mary Poppins” alongside his good friend and legendary actress Julie Andrews. Based on the popular novel series by Australian writer Pamela Lyndon Travers, the film has entertained generations with its imaginative portrayal of the magical Mary, an English nanny who must help two children and their neglectful father.

However, the highly entertaining and entertaining film found itself in some controversy in 2019 when Daniel Pollack-Pelzner criticized the film for perpetuating racist stereotypes in a story for The New York Times. He particularly pointed to a scene in which Mary and Bert dance with chimney soot on their faces, which he said resembles “blackface” – a callback to 19th-century minstrel shows in which white performers imitated black people.

He wrote about the racist undertones in the film and drew a connection to Travers' novel series, which featured multiple uses of blackface and racial slurs. The author claimed that black children who read her book liked the fact that some of the characters spoke in a stereotypical Southern American dialect. However, when the San Francisco Public Library banned the book, citing its alleged racially offensive material, Travers rewrote the questionable passages in 1981 so that her books would not be hidden from potential readers.