Posted on 07/25/2008 11:55:12 AM PDT by 300magnum
SALZBURG, Austria (Reuters) - Maria von Trapp has taken a trip down memory lane to see her old family home just before it opens as a new hotel.
Staying in the house for the first time since the von Trapps fled the Nazi regime in the late 1930s has been a deeply moving experience for the second-eldest daughter of Baron von Trapp, whose story was made famous by the "Sound of Music" film.
"Our whole life is in here, in this house," the 94-year-old told Reuters in an interview. "Especially here in the stairwell, where we always used to slide down the railings."
Von Trapp smiles as she recalls the memory of her and her six siblings clambering and playing in the villa in the leafy suburbs of Salzburg in Austria and spending nights in hammocks in the park surrounding the family home.
"My youngest sister built herself a tree house. Of course, then we all had to have one as well, we loved to climb the trees," she said.
Following the death of Baron von Trapp's first wife, aspiring nun Maria Kutschera joined the family to teach the children, fell in love with the baron and married him in 1927.
The family always sang and played instruments together, and having lost all their fortune in 1935 in the throes of the world economic crisis, their musical talent proved a saviour.
An opera singer heard the children sing in the park and entered them for a competition. Soon the von Trapps started to tour Europe and the United States as a family choir.
"We sang a lot and we sang all the time. We didn't even want to go for a walk alone, because we wanted to sing all the time together," recalls von Trapp.
"My father played the
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This is one of the daughters, not THE Maria. :)
I think this was the girl she was actually hired to tutor, as the little girl was frail.
Of course, she was disappointed to find that you can never really go home again. Things had changed.
Our Australian visitors always got a hoot out of getting to hold her Oscar, which sat openly on a sideboard.
Lady Gamecock drug me on the The Original Sound of Music Tour back in '93.
I have a sneaking suspicion we will be reliving all the magic in the next month or two....
Which no doubt will include a night at the hotel?
Pack lightly. You can always wear the curtains if you need to.
Was this when they filmed “S.O.B.”? That was a very odd film.
ROTFLOL!
After ‘Star!’ virtually all her work on film has been for Blake Edwards. She’s supposedly quite bawdy in real life.
Yes, though not as bawdy as her granddaughter, who appeared in Hustler years ago.
I can remember visiting their lovely home near Stowe Vermont in th early 1950’s.They had their own beautiful chapel.A visitor was the wife of Bob Hope.
LOL! My wife was in a boarding school run by nuns in Ireland and for years she thought the movie ended when Julie Andrews went back to the convent!
In the movie the second eldest daughter was Luisa Von Trapp played by Heather Menzies.
Maria Von Trapp, played by Julie Andrews, married the barron to become his wife.
This article doesn't add up.
see....I am just not meant to multi-task. Holding a baby and trying to read, just doesn’t work.
I knew I remembered her dying.
Her name was changed in the movie.
The movie changed many of the true facts, including many of the children’s names, as well as the timeline.
Bookmarking, for my #1 movie of all time!
If Agathe is still alive since the last time I read about her, she is 95. She became a naturalized American citizen in 1948. She settled in Maryland where she helped operate a private kindergarten until she retired.
I think it would be so cool (and perhaps poignant) to say as an adult that your kindergarten teacher was one of the famous and lovely von Trapp children.
Leni
HaHa! I just looked sure enough the older women sitting behind Maria on the buss does look exactly like her.
Leni
I see.....fake but accurate.
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