“The Sound of Music” Celebrates Its 60th Anniversary

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the beloved musical classic, “The Sound of Music.” To mark the anniversary, the Dietrich Theater will be showing the film on Sept. 14 (1 pm and 7 pm) and Sept. 17 (7 pm). So, since the theater will be showing this classic (and since it’s one of my mother’s all time favorites), I decided to add this to my review line up for this edition!

A tuneful, heartwarming story, it’s based on the real life story of the Van Trapp Family singers, one of the world’s best known concert groups in the era immediately preceding World War II. Julie Andrews plays the role of Maria, the tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey who becomes a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children, and brings a new love of life and music into the home.

After six decades, “The Sound of Music” is just as loved as it was when it was initially in theaters. And, believe it or not, the musical actually was given a mixed reaction from critics during its initial run.

Over the years, audiences everywhere have enjoyed the iconic Rodgers and Hammerstein’s songs like “Do-Re-Mi,” “My Favorite Things” and so much more. All of these unforgettable songs, along with the musical numbers that accompany the songs, still have the ability to make audiences sing along.

There are so many scenes in this film that are truly memorable and iconic. The film’s iconic opening where Maria (Julie Andrews) sings “The Sound of Music” immediately captivated audiences with not only the song but also features the breathtaking Austrian Alps.

While this film has so many other iconic musical numbers, the dramatic escape at the climax of the film is probably one of the most memorable sequences in film history. This dramatic climax, where the entire family flees the Nazis and escapes over the Alps, is a truly exciting sequence and it created a sense of earned triumph and relief for the audience.

The 1965 film also explores themes of love, family and the triumph of the human spirit against oppression. “The Sound of Music” also highlights the power of love to transform and the strengthening of family bonds. Music is also a central theme, acting as a catalyst for connection and a means of finding solace and beauty in a changing world.

“The Sound of Music” received a largely positive audience response, becoming a commercial success that has endured as a generational classic, celebrated for its music, performances and visuals. The film was the highest-grossing film of 1965 and held the record for the highest-grossing film of all time for five years, selling millions of tickets worldwide.

Also make sure to check my Wyoming County Press Examiner reviews page on Facebook for some fun and interesting tidbits about the film!

“The Sound of Music” is also available to stream on Disney Plus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9WXyZfAiK0

• Christopher Plummer intensely disliked working on this movie. He was known to refer to it as "The Sound of Mucus" or "S&M" and likened working with Dame Julie Andrews to "being hit over the head with a big Valentine's Day card, every day." Nonetheless, he and Andrews remained close friends until his death. Andrews claimed that Plummer's cynicism probably helped his performance and this movie, keeping it from being too sentimental.

• Julie Andrews sang "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to the children in the cast to entertain them between shooting. Since Mary Poppins (1964) hadn't yet been released, they just thought she'd made up the song for them.

• When Maria is running through the courtyard to the Von Trapp house in "I Have Confidence", she trips. This was an accident. However, producer and director Robert Wise liked this so much that he kept it in the movie. He felt it added to the nervousness of the song and of the character.

• As part of his research for this movie, William Wyler met with the real Maria von Trapp and the Mayor of Salzburg. Wyler was concerned that the local residents would be alarmed at seeing their buildings draped with Nazi flags and seeing stormtroopers in the streets only twenty-five years after the real thing had taken place. The Mayor assured him that the residents had managed to live through the Anschluss the first time and would survive it again. Other city officials were much more resistant to the idea of decorating Salzburg with Nazi colors. They soon changed their minds when the filmmakers said they would use newsreel footage instead. This footage was actually highly incriminating as it showed the Salzburgers openly welcoming the Nazis, something that the proposed scenes for this movie would not do.

• Very little background information on the real Captain Von Trapp was known or available to Christopher Plummer, so he took to the Salzburg mountains with an interpreter. There, they met with Georg's nephew and asked him what the real man was like. The nephew told them that he was the most boring man he'd ever met.

• The day after the Von Trapp family left Austria (by train to Italy, not trekking over the mountains to Switzerland as this movie depicts), Adolf Hitler ordered the borders of Austria to be shut.

• While the Von Trapp family hiked over the Alps to Switzerland in this movie, in reality, they walked to the local train station and boarded the next train to Italy. From Italy, they fled to London and ultimately the U.S. Salzburg is in fact only a few miles away from the Austrian-German border, and is much too far from either the Swiss or the Italian border for a family to escape by walking. Had the Von Trapps hiked over the mountains, they would have ended up in Germany, near Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat.

• Peggy Wood (Mother Abbess) not only had a hard time vocally with her "Climb Every Mountain" vocal (which had to be dubbed), but she had an even harder time being able to lip-sync to the pre-recorded track. The introduction is lengthy and when the vocal comes in, Peggy couldn't master the lip synchronization perfectly. Once into the song she did fine, but perfectly catching that first word was difficult and it kept getting flubbed. After several takes and seeing how it was distressing her with every try, producer and director Robert Wise had her face away from the camera so her face and mouth couldn't be seen. Her vocal started while she was turned away so she could synchronize her lip movement out of camera sight. Then when she turned towards the camera, she was in perfect sync. In fact, the overall effect of her looking through the window as if communing with a higher spirit worked even better than the original blocking, and it added to the mystical emotion of the song and scene.

• This is credited as the movie that saved Twentieth Century Fox after the debacle of Cleopatra (1963).

• When this movie was first released on home video, it stayed on the charts for over 250 weeks, almost five years.

• The United States Library of Congress selected this movie for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2001.

• This movie's success encouraged Twentieth Century Fox to invest in a string of costly musicals: Doctor Dolittle (1967), Star! (1968), and Hello, Dolly! (1969). None of them turned out to be hits.