Tonight I saw the Dallas Theater Center production of “The Sound of Music.” It was a glorious musical with an especially strong, operatic voice from the Reverend Mother who made the walls vibrate with her rendition of “Climb Every Mountain.” The rest of the cast was also stellar; it was quite an entertaining evening. I didn’t realize how much of an impression the 1965 film of “The Sound of Music” had on me. I knew — and often mouthed — the words to all the songs. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical score is a masterpiece that has charmed audiences for decades. The musical played on stages on Broadway and in London, Australia, Japan, Puerto Rico, Austria, etc. I would bet that every community theatre in the U.S. had produced this musical. Its popularity spread worldwide. Let’s learn more about “The Sound of Music.”
According to Wikipedia, “The Sound of Music” is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the 1949 memoir of Maria von Trapp, “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.” Set in Austria on the eve of the Anschluss — the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938 — the musical tells the story of Maria, who takes a job as governess to a large family while she decides whether to become a nun. She falls in love with the children, and eventually their widowed father, Captain von Trapp. He is ordered to accept a commission in the German navy, but he opposes the Nazis. He and Maria decide on a plan to flee Austria with the children. Many songs from the musical have become standards, including "Edelweiss," "My Favorite Things," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," "Do-Re-Mi" and the title song "The Sound of Music."
The original Broadway production, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel, opened in 1959 and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, out of nine nominations. The first London production opened at the Palace Theatre in 1961. The show has enjoyed numerous productions and revivals since then. It was adapted as a 1965 film musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. “The Sound of Music” was the last musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein; Oscar Hammerstein died of stomach cancer nine months after the Broadway premiere.
History
After viewing “The Trapp Family,” a 1956 West German film about the von Trapp family, and its 1958 sequel “Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika,” stage director Vincent J. Donehue thought that the project would be perfect for his friend Mary Martin; Broadway producers Leland Hayward and Richard Halliday (Martin's husband) agreed. The producers originally envisioned a non-musical play that would be written by Lindsay and Crouse that would feature songs from the repertoire of the Trapp Family Singers. Then they decided to add an original song or two, perhaps by Rodgers and Hammerstein. But it was soon agreed that the project should feature all new songs and be a musical rather than a play.
Details of the history of the von Trapp family were altered for the musical. The real Georg von Trapp did live with his family in a villa in Aigen, a suburb of Salzburg. He wrote to the Nonnberg Abbey in 1926 asking for a nun to help tutor his sick daughter, and the Mother Abbess sent Maria. His wife, Agathe Whitehead, had died in 1922. The real Maria and Georg married at the Nonnberg Abbey in 1927. Lindsay and Crouse altered the story so that Maria was governess to all of the children, whose names and ages were changed, as was Maria's original surname; the show used "Rainer" instead of "Kutschera." The von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married and he was offered a commission in Germany's navy. Since von Trapp opposed the Nazis by that time, the family left Austria after the Anschluss, going by train to Italy and then traveling on to London and the United States. To make the story more dramatic, Lindsay and Crouse had the family, soon after Maria's and the Captain's wedding, escape over the mountains to Switzerland on foot.
Stage play reception
Most reviews of the original Broadway production were favorable. Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post stated that the show had "strangely gentle charm that is wonderfully endearing. ‘The Sound of Music’ strives for nothing in the way of smash effects, substituting instead a kind of gracious and unpretentious simplicity." The New York World-Telegram and Sun pronounced The Sound of Music "the loveliest musical imaginable. It places Rodgers and Hammerstein back in top form as melodist and lyricist. The Lindsay-Crouse dialogue is vibrant and amusing in a plot that rises to genuine excitement." The New York Journal American's review opined that The Sound of Music is "the most mature product of the team ... it seemed to me to be the full ripening of these two extraordinary talents".
Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times gave a mixed assessment. He praised Mary Martin's performance, saying "she still has the same common touch ... same sharp features, goodwill and glowing personality that makes music sound intimate and familiar" and stated that "the best of ‘The Sound of Music’ is Rodgers and Hammerstein in good form." However, he said, the libretto "has the hackneyed look of the musical theatre replaced with Oklahoma! in 1943. It is disappointing to see the American musical stage succumbing to the clichés of operetta." Walter Kerr's review in the New York Herald Tribune was unfavorable: "Before ‘The Sound of Music’ is halfway through its promising choruses it becomes not only too sweet for words but almost too sweet for music," stating that the "evening suffer(s) from little children."
Film
“The Sound of Music” is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr and Eleanor Parker. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical of the same name, composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The film's screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, adapted from the stage musical's book by Lindsay and Crouse. Based on the 1949 memoir “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian postulant in Salzburg, Austria, in 1938 who is sent to the villa of a retired naval officer and widower to be governess to his seven children. After bringing love and music into the lives of the family, she marries the officer and, together with the children, finds a way to survive the loss of their homeland to the Nazis.
Filming took place from March to September 1964 in Los Angeles and Salzburg. “The Sound of Music” was released on March 2, 1965, in the United States, initially as a limited roadshow theatrical release. Although initial critical response to the film was mixed, it was a major commercial success, becoming the No. 1 box office film after four weeks and the highest-grossing film of 1965. By November 1966, “The Sound of Music” had become the highest-grossing film of all-time —surpassing “Gone with the Wind” — and held that distinction for five years. The film was just as popular throughout the world, breaking previous box-office records in 29 countries. Following an initial theatrical release that lasted four and a half years, and two successful re-releases, the film sold 283 million admissions worldwide and earned a total worldwide gross of $286 million.
“The Sound of Music” received five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, Wise's second pair of both awards, the first being from the 1961 film “West Side Story.” The film also received two Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture and Best Actress, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. In 1998, the American Film Institute listed “The Sound of Music” as the 55th greatest American film of all time and the fourth greatest film musical. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
Background
In 1956, German producer Wolfgang Liebeneiner purchased the film rights for $9,000 — equivalent to $86,000 in 2020, hired George Hurdalek and Herbert Reinecker to write the screenplay and Franz Grothe to supervise the soundtrack, which consisted of traditional Austrian folk songs. “The Trapp Family” was released in West Germany on October 9, 1956, and became a major success. Two years later, Liebeneiner directed a sequel, “The Trapp Family in America,” and the two pictures became the most successful films in West Germany during the post-war years. Their popularity extended throughout Europe and South America.
In 1956, Paramount Pictures purchased the United States film rights, intending to produce an English-language version with Audrey Hepburn as Maria. The studio eventually dropped its option, but one of its directors, Vincent J. Donehue, proposed the story as a stage musical for Mary Martin. Producers Richard Halliday and Leland Heyward secured the rights and hired playwrights Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for “State of the Union.” They approached Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to compose one song for the musical, but the composers felt the two styles — traditional Austrian folk songs and their composition — would not work together. They offered to write a complete new score for the entire production if the producers were willing to wait while they completed work on “Flower Drum Song.” The producers quickly responded that they would wait as long as necessary. “The Sound of Music” stage musical opened on November 16, 1959, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City and ran on Broadway for 1,443 performances, winning six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In June 1960, Twentieth Century Fox purchased the film adaptation rights to the stage musical for $1.25 million — equivalent to $10,900,000 in 2020 — against 10% of the gross.
Casting and rehearsals
Screenplay writer Ernest Lehman's first and only choice for Maria was Julie Andrews. When Robert Wise joined the project as director, he made a list of his choices for the role, which included Andrews as his first choice, Grace Kelly and Shirley Jones. Wise and Lehman went to Disney Studios to view footage from “Mary Poppins,” which was not yet released. A few minutes into the film, Wise told Lehman, "Let's go sign this girl before somebody else sees this film and grabs her!" Andrews had some reservations — mainly about the amount of sweetness in the theatrical version — but when she learned that her concerns were shared by Wise and Lehman and what their vision was, she signed a contract with Fox to star in “The Sound of Music” and one other film for $225,000 — equivalent to $1,880,000 in 2020. Wise had a more difficult time casting the role of the Captain. A number of actors were considered for the part, including Bing Crosby, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery and Richard Burton. Wise had seen Christopher Plummer on Broadway and wanted him for the role, but the stage actor turned down the offer several times. Wise flew to London to meet with Plummer and explained his concept of the film; the actor accepted after being assured that he could work with Lehman to improve the character.
Wise also spent considerable time and effort on casting the secondary characters. For the role of Max Detweiler, Wise initially considered Victor Borge, Noël Coward and Hal Holbrook among others before deciding on Richard Haydn. For the character of Baroness Elsa Schraeder, Wise looked for a "name" actress — Andrews and Plummer were not yet widely known to film audiences — and decided on Eleanor Parker. The casting of the children characters began in November 1963 and involved over two hundred interviews and auditions throughout the United States and England. Some of the child-actors interviewed or tested, who were not selected, included Mia Farrow, Patty Duke, Lesley Ann Warren, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Fabares, Teri Garr, Kurt Russell and The Osmonds. Most of the actors selected had some acting, singing or dancing experience. Charmian Carr, however, was a model who worked part-time in a doctor's office and had no ambition to pursue a career as an actress. After a friend sent her photo to Wise's office, she was asked to interview. Wise later recalled, "She was so pretty and had such poise and charm that we liked her immediately." The last person to be cast was Daniel Truhitte in the role of Rolfe.
Rehearsals for the singing and dance sequences began on February 10, 1964. The husband-and-wife team of Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, who had worked with Andrews on “Mary Poppins” worked out the choreography with Saul Chaplin on piano — the arrangements could not be altered under Rodgers and Hammerstein's contract. The stage choreography was not used because it was too restrictive. Breaux and Wood worked out all new choreography better suited for film that incorporated many of the Salzburg locations and settings. They even choreographed the newly added puppet dance sequence for "The Lonely Goatherd." The choreography for the Ländler strictly followed the traditional Austrian folk dance. The musical arranger Irwin Kostal prerecorded the songs with a large orchestra and singers on a stage prior to the start of filming. In her book, “The Sound of Music: The Making of America's Favorite Movie,” Julia Antopol Hirsch says that Kostal used seven children and five adults to record the children's voices; the only scene where the child-actors actually sing is when they sing "The Sound of Music" on their own after Maria leaves. Charmian Carr refuted the claim that the voices of the child actors were dubbed in the film and on the soundtrack. Carr contended that all of the children who are in the film sing on the track, but four other children were added to most of the songs to give them a fuller sound; they did not replace them as singers. The voices of some of the adult actors had voice doubles, including Peggy Wood and Christopher Plummer.
Historical accuracy
“The Sound of Music” film adaptation, like the stage musical, presents a history of the von Trapp family that is not completely accurate. The musical was based on the West German film “The Trapp Family” in 1956 rather than Maria von Trapp's 1949 memoirs, as director Vincent J. Donehue had seen the film and decided that it would make a good vehicle for Mary Martin. The musical followed the film's plot so closely that the New York Times review of the West German film noticed that it "strongly suggests 'The Sound of Music,' often scene by scene." The West German screenwriters made several significant changes to the family's story that were kept in the musical. Maria had been hired to teach just one child, but the 1956 film made her governess to all seven children. The Trapp children actually consisted of four girls and three boys, but the 1956 film replaced one of the boys with a girl.
The 1965 film adaptation was influenced by other musicals of its era, such as “Mary Poppins,” the Rodgers and Hammerstein television production of “Cinderella” and the stage production of Lerner and Loewe's “Camelot” — coincidentally all starring Julie Andrews. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman was inspired by the opening of “West Side Story” and saw the musical as "a fairy tale that's almost real." The film incorporated many "fairy tale" tropes which included the idyllic imagery — placed in the hills of Salzburg, the European villas and the cross-class Cinderella-like romance between Maria and Captain Von Trapp. As Maria walks down the aisle to be married, the pageantry is explicitly both Guinevere and Cinderella.
In keeping with this tone, the filmmakers used artistic license to convey the essence and meaning of their story. Georg Ludwig von Trapp was indeed an anti-Nazi opposed to the Anschluss, and lived with his family in a villa in a district of Salzburg called Aigen. Their lifestyle depicted in the film, however, greatly exaggerated their standard of living. The actual family villa, located at Traunstraße 34, Aigen 5026, was large and comfortable but not nearly as grand as the mansion depicted in the film. The house was also not their ancestral home as depicted in the film. The family had previously lived in homes in Zell Am See and Klosterneuburg after being forced to abandon their actual ancestral home in Pola following World War I. Georg moved the family to the Salzburg villa shortly after the death of his first wife, Agathe Whitehead, in 1922.
Georg is referred to as "Captain" in the film, but he held a noble title of "Ritter" or hereditary knight, which had higher social status than a naval officer. Although Austrian nobility was legally abolished in 1919 and the nobiliary particle von was proscribed, both continued to be widely used unofficially as a matter of social courtesy. Georg was offered a position in the German Kriegsmarine, but this occurred before the Anschluss. Nazi Germany was looking to expand its fleet of U-boats, and Corvette Captain von Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of World War I, having sunk 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 gross register tonnage or GRT and two Allied warships displacing a total of 12,641 tons. With his family in desperate financial straits, he seriously considered the offer before deciding he could not serve a Nazi regime.
In the film, Georg is depicted initially as a humorless, emotionally distant father. In reality, third child Maria Franziska von Trapp — called "Louisa" in the film — described her father as a doting parent who made handmade gifts for the children in his woodshop and who would often lead family musicales on his violin. She has a different recollection of her stepmother, Maria Augusta Kutschera, whom she described as moody and prone to outbursts of rage. In a 2003 interview, Maria remembered, "[She] had a terrible temper ... and from one moment to the next, you didn't know what hit her. We were not used to this. But we took it like a thunderstorm that would pass, because the next minute she could be very nice."
Maria Kutschera had indeed been a novice at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg and had been hired by the von Trapp family. However, she was hired only to be a tutor to young Maria Franziska, who had come down with scarlet fever and needed her lessons at home, not to be a governess for all of the children. Maria and Georg married for practical reasons, rather than love and affection for each other. Georg needed a mother for his children, and Maria needed the security of a husband and family once she decided to leave the abbey. "I really and truly was not in love," Maria wrote in her memoir, "I liked him but didn't love him. However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children. I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after." They were married in 1927, not in 1938 as depicted in the film, and the couple had been married for over a decade by the time of the Anschluss and had two of their three children together by that time. Maria later acknowledged that she grew to love Georg over time and enjoyed a happy marriage.
The von Trapp family lost most of its wealth during the worldwide depression of the early 1930s, when the Austrian national bank folded. In order to survive, the family dismissed the servants and began taking in boarders. They also started singing onstage to earn money, a fact that caused the proud Georg much embarrassment. In the film, the von Trapp family hike over the Alps from Austria to Switzerland to escape the Nazis, which would not have been possible; Salzburg is over two hundred miles from Switzerland. The von Trapp villa, however, was only a few kilometers from the Austria–Germany border, and the final scene shows the family hiking on the Obersalzberg near the German town of Berchtesgaden, within sight of Adolf Hitler's Kehlsteinhaus Eagle's Nest retreat. In reality, the family simply walked to the local train station and boarded a train to Italy. The Trapps were entitled to Italian citizenship since Georg had been born in Zadar, Dalmatia, Austria-Hungary, which had been annexed by Italy after World War I. They were able to emigrate to the United States on their Italian passports.
The character Max Detweiler, the scheming family music director, is fictional. The von Trapps' family priest, the Reverend Franz Wasner, was their musical director for over 20 years and accompanied them when they left Austria. The character of Friedrich, the second oldest child in the film version, was based on Rupert, the oldest of the real von Trapp children. Liesl, the oldest child in the film, was based on Agathe von Trapp, the second oldest in the real family. The names and ages of the children were changed, in part because the third child, who would be portrayed as "Louisa," was also named Maria, and producers thought that it would be confusing to have two characters called Maria in the film. The von Trapp family had no control over how they were depicted in the film and stage musical, having given up the rights to their story to a German producer in the 1950s who then sold the rights to American producers. Robert Wise met with Maria von Trapp and made it clear, according to a memo to Richard Zanuck, that he was not making a "documentary or realistic movie" about her family, and that he would make the film with "complete dramatic freedom" in order to produce a "fine and moving film," one they could all be proud of.
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