It’s not surprising that “The Sound of Music” is No. 3 on the all-time box office earnings list. After all, the musical combines two of Hollywood’s favorite story elements: nuns and Nazis.
This week marked the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release. It premiered on March 2, 1965, in New York.
“The Sound of Music” tells the story of Maria, a novice at an abbey in Salzburg, Austria, who is hired in the late 1930s as a governess for the seven children of a widowed Austrian naval captain.
Maria learns that Captain Georg von Trapp runs his estate like a ship and treats his children like its crew, right down to dressing the kids in sailor uniforms.
In no time, Maria has the kids singing and wearing civilian clothes, much to the displeasure of their father. But eventually Maria and the captain fall in love.
When the newlyweds return from their honeymoon, Germany has annexed Austria in 1938. The Nazis order von Trapp to join the German navy. The captain says no and decides to flee the country with his family. The von Trapps elude the Nazis, but only after giving a prize-winning performance at a music festival. Then they climb a mountain and follow their dream into freedom in neighboring Switzerland.
“The Sound of Music” has much more than singing nuns and Nazis going for it. There are catchy songs by Broadway hit-makers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, a stellar cast led by Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer and a great script by Ernest Lehman, whose other screenwriting credits include “West Side Story,” “North by Northwest” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
“The Sound of Music” strays considerably from the historical facts of the von Trapp family story.
• Maria and von Trapp were married in 1927 and had two of their three children together by 1938.
• The von Trapp home was not the palace it is in the movie. The von Trapps lost most of their fortune during the worldwide depression of the 1930s.
• The Germans asked Captain von Trapp to join the German navy before the Third Reich annexed Austria. He briefly considered accepting the post because he needed the money. But after the captain said no, the Nazis didn’t try to arrest him.
• The journey the movie von Trapps make through the Alps to reach Switzerland is impossible. Salzburg is more than 200 miles from Switzerland. The real von Trapps “escaped” in 1938 by boarding a train to Italy. Later, they moved to the United States.
The von Trapp story was the subject of two popular West German movies during the 1950s. An early attempt to make an U.S. von Trapp film fizzled, so the story was turned into the 1959 Broadway musical “The Sound of Music.” That led to the 1965 film.
I first saw “The Sound of Music” more than a year after it was released. One Friday before school in the fall of 1966, my parents told my sister and me that we were going to the movies that night to see “The Sound of Music.”
I had never heard of the movie, but just the thought of seeing a movie was thrilling. I spent much of that day in my second-grade class wondering what the movie was about.
We saw it at the Capri Theater in Jackson. The Capri was where I saw the first movie I remember, “The Longest Day,” in 1963 or 1964. The theater, which still stands, appears in “The Help” under its original name, The Pix.
I’m not sure when “The Sound of Music” arrived in Jackson, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was more than a year after its premiere. Today, movies are released simultaneously on thousands of screens across the United States and, in some cases, the world. Back then, movies were rolled out more slowly. The original release of “The Sound of Music” lasted 4½ years. These days, only a few movies play in theaters as long as three months.
My 7-year-old self wasn’t terribly surprised when “The Sound of Music” turned out to be a musical. But I didn’t really get interested until the Nazis showed up.
“The Sound of Music” didn’t end there for the Corders.
In 1968, my baby sister was born. Her crib was in my parents’ room, across the hall from my bedroom. And she didn’t go to sleep easily.
My parents found out that listening to music helped to soothe the whiny baby. So every night they would play “The Sound of Music” sound track until she fell asleep.
The songs are all good ones, and I still enjoy hearing them. But I heard about the problem with Maria and her favorite things every night for at least three years. Three long years.
I just remembered why I started sleeping with my bedroom door closed.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
