Actors - Matthew Garber

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	Actors - Matthew Garber

Matthew Garber (25 March 1956 – 13 June 1977) was an English actor best known for his role as Michael Banks in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins.

Born in London, England, to parents who had both performed on stage, Matthew Garber attended St Paul's Primary School (Winchmore Hill) and Highgate School.

Acting career

Garber made his screen debut at age seven in Disney's The Three Lives of Thomasina
(1964). That same year, he and Thomasina co-star Karen Dotrice were hired to play Michael and Jane, the children of George Banks (David Tomlinson), who gets more than he bargained for when he hires a nanny named Mary Poppins. Disney's live-action/animated film adaptation of the Mary Poppins book series by P. L. Travers won five Academy Awards and made its stars world-famous.

Garber and Dotrice would pair up again in The Gnome-Mobile
(1967) as the grandchildren of a rich lumber mogul (Walter Brennan) who stumble across a gnome forest and are asked to help keep the gnomes from dying off.

Garber would never make another acting appearance.

Death

For many years, virtually no one outside Garber's family knew about his death. By 1999, Disney archivists knew he had died 22 years earlier (at age 21), but had learned no details. An investigation by Reel Classics turned up his death certificate, showing Garber had died at Royal Free Hospital of "Haemorrhagic Narcotising Pancreatitis". Medical experts theorized that alcohol or drugs might have played a role.

On 24 October 2004, Mail on Sunday ran an interview with Fergus Garber, identified as Matthew's younger (by eight years) brother. He told reporters that Matthew contracted hepatitis—probably from eating "bad meat"—while traveling in India in 1976, and it had already spread to his pancreas when their father brought Matthew back to England the following year. Fergus denied any suggestion that his brother was using drugs. Matthew's body was later cremated.

Garber was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2004; Fergus Garber accepted on his behalf.

Filmography

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Matthew Garber ]

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