The Sound of Music

Vanity | 1965 | Rogers & Hammerstein

[Zuriel]

**I haven’t been since 1993, and was because it was some church group outing. Before that it was Chariots of Fire in 1981.**

CoF may have been the last for my wife and I, because it was 81 or 82, until this last summer to see the Sound of Freedom (which our elderly neighbors paid for our tickets in advance without telling us, until we were on the road to it.)

The entertainment industry in general has a hard times getting money out of us. We like to entertain ourselves: campfires, sightseeing, family gatherings. My wife likes treasure hunting in second hand stores. I like tinkering in the garage.

[Fiji Hill]

The 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz is a great movie, but the ending is a copout (the whole thing was just a dream—how lame!). The 1925 version starring Oliver Hardy (before he teamed up with Stan Laurel) is much better.

[UnwashedPeasant]

If you like classic movies on the big screen, Fathom Events this year is playing Wizard of Oz, My Fair Lady, Gone with the Wind, Rear Window, Blazing Saddles, and White Christmas.

[dfwgator]

IIRC Hitler didn’t particularly care for it.

[af_vet_1981]

Very romantic, needs not to be completely true, I love the movie.

Close enough though; hard to make a movie for so many years of a famliy; look how hard it is to make Biblically accurate movies.

History of the group

Maria and Georg Ludwig von Trapp Georg von Trapp had seven children at the time of the death of his first wife, Agathe Whitehead, and in 1927 he married Maria Kutschera, who was twenty-five years his junior, and had three more children with her. Both parts of the family were musical, and by 1935 the family was singing at the local church in Aigen, where they made the acquaintance of a young priest, Dr Franz Wasner, who encouraged their musical progress and taught them sacred music to add to the folk songs, madrigals and ballads they were already singing.[1] Whilst singing at their Salzburg home they were also heard by the German concert singer Lotte Lehmann, who persuaded them to take part in the song competition in Salzburg in 1936, for which they won a prize; after this, accompanied by Dr Wasner, the family toured and performed in Vienna and Salzburg, and undertook a European tour that encompassed France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and England.[1]

When Adolf Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, the family decided to leave, first for Italy (of which the Zadar-born Georg and thus the family were legally citizens). For some months in 1938, just after their flight, they lived in Warmond, near The Hague, Netherlands, as the guests of a Dutch banker, Ernest Menten. This episode is described by local historian Miep Smitsloo in her 2007 Dutch book 'Tussen Tol en Trekvaart' ('Between Toll and Canal').[2] In her account of the flight, Maria von Trapp does not mention this stay. From there they went to London and then to the United States, where they stayed until the expiration of their visas. After touring in Scandinavia, they returned to the United States on September 7, 1939, and applied for immigrant status. They arrived with very little money, having lost most of the family fortune earlier during a 1935 banking collapse in Austria. Once in the United States they earned money by performing and touring nationally and internationally, first as the "Trapp Family Choir" and then, the "Trapp Family Singers", a change suggested by their booking agent Frederick Christian Schang. After living for a short time in Philadelphia[3] and then Merion, Pennsylvania, where their youngest child Johannes was born, the family settled in Stowe, Vermont, in 1941. They purchased a 660-acre (270 ha) farm in 1942 and converted it into the Trapp Family Lodge, initially called "Cor Unum" (Latin for One Heart).[4] After World War II, they founded the Trapp Family Austrian Relief fund, which sent food and clothing to people impoverished in Austria. By now based permanently in the United States, the family performed their unique mixture of liturgical music, madrigals, folk music and instrumentals to audiences in over 30 countries for the next 20 years.[5] They made a series of 78-rpm records for RCA Victor in the 1950s, some of which were later issued on RCA Camden LPs. There were also a few later recordings released on LPs, including some stereo sessions. The family singing group disbanded in 1957.[citation needed]

The Trapp Family rehearsing before a concert, near Boston, 27 September 1941.

Cor Unum (later the "Trapp Family Lodge"), home of the Trapp Family Singers in the U.S., in 1954 Maria wrote an account of the singing family The Story of the Trapp Family Singers which was published in 1949 and was the inspiration for the 1956 West German film The Trapp Family, which in turn inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1959 Broadway musical The Sound of Music and then its 1965 film adaptation starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, which held the title of highest-grossing film of all-time for five years.[6][7] The original seven Trapp children were: Rupert (1911–1992); Agathe (1913–2010); Maria Franziska (1914–2014); Werner (1915–2007); Hedwig (1917–1972); Johanna (1919–1994); and Martina (1921–1952). The later children were Rosmarie (1929–2022), Eleonore (1931–2021), and Johannes (b. 1939).[8] The eldest daughter, Agathe (called "Liesl" in the film), published her own account of life in the Trapp family in 2003, Memories Before and After The Sound of Music,[9] which was later itself turned into the film The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music in 2015.[10]

[Hieronymus]

It fed into the cultural war on dads.

[Fiji Hill]

IIRC Hitler didn’t particularly care for it.

You're probably right. However, Joe Goebbels probably thought that portraying Hitler as a lover of pretty flowers would be good publicity.

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

No, they did not walk out. And if you believe they did, I would appreciate a citation to the source.

[Reverend Wright]

It has been my privilege to starve Hollywood for 30 years.

(although I have to confess I didn’t get rid of my TV until the early 2000’s).

[x]

The eldest daughter, Agathe (called "Liesl" in the film), published her own account of life in the Trapp family in 2003, Memories Before and After The Sound of Music, which was later itself turned into the film The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music in 2015.

The actress who played Liesl in the film also wrote a book. It was a sad surprise to learn that she has already passed away -- dementia.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Youngest Son is our creative one. And he does much better with Japanese styles of art because there are strict rules. But inside those rules, total freedom.

[Ezekiel]

I will have earworms singing the songs in my head for weeks.

Maria was a sly one all right. Movie-goers did nazi this coming:

"Do-re-mi-fa-so and so on are only the tools we use to build a song. Once you have these notes in your heads you can sing a million different tunes, by mixing them up. Like this:"

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

At my theater it was reserved seat seating for a year straight of performances. That’s how big the movie was. The Broadway show was a smashing success with the great Mary Martin as Maria. The Broadway cast album is wonderful and I think I like it more than the movie. Several songs were dropped from the Broadway show because they involved too much stage business. And the producers wanted new songs for the movie. Hammerstein had died. Richard Rogers wrote the new songs and wrote the lyrics for those new songs which replaced the old songs from Broadway. I can’t remember all of the names but “there’s no way to stop it” was dropped from Broadway. And I really like that song because it’s so zany. And the duet in the gazebo between Maria and the captain was added for the movie. But there was an additional song dropped in an additional song added. the best stage production these days are done with all of the songs in the show. I have seen that and I think it is the best. It is an American classic, like Showboat, and like Oklahoma.

[Zuriel]

**Wizard of Oz**

I’m rather convinced that Wizard of Oz author Baum got his idea from John Bunyan’s Christian allegory, “Pilgrim’s Progress”, which was first published a couple of centuries before Oz. The parallels are numerous.

[montag813]

It fed into the cultural war on dads.

But the Captain really WAS a softie. Any idea he was a jerk ended when he sung 'Edelweiss.' His wife's death caused his harshness, but a honorable woman who loved him brought his sweet side back again.

[4Runner]

Johnny Mandel was a genius arranger on the instrumental accompaniments for most of Sinatra’s greatest songs. They really really rock.

[Hieronymus]

Headed your way via freepmail momentarily.

[NorthMountain]

Whatever other merits or demerits the musical/movie may have, unquestionably it is very vague as to WHY the Kriegsmarine was so hot to get Georg Ritter von Trapp back in uniform.

This book: To the Last Salute: Memories of an Austrian U-Boat Commander clears it all up. The man was a bona-fide hero of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in The Great War. Getting him would have given the Third Reich cultural credibility which, very much to his credit, he refused.

[SaveFerris]

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you

This thread could not possibly be
complete without that being posted