Part I:
In Salzburg, Austria, Maria, a woman studying to become a nun, is sent from her convent to be the governess to seven children of a widower naval commander, Captain Georg Ritter von Trapp. The children, initially hostile and mischievous, eventually come to love her when she introduces them to the joys of singing. Maria finds herself falling in love with the captain, who is engaged to a wealthy baroness. The Baroness however, recognizes his growing feelings for Maria, and lets him go so they can be together.
Part II:
The Nazis take power in Austria as part of the Anschluss, and attempt to force Captain von Trapp back in service. The captain, unwilling to serve the Reich, delays Zeller - the gauleiter (party leader for the district) - by insisting he's part of the Von Trapp Family Singers and must remain with them during a performance at the Salzburg music festival, in a guarded theater. After a curtain call, the whole family flees and hikes over the mountains to Switzerland.
Julie Andrews as Maria, seeks guidance from the Mother Abbess, played by Peggy Wood, in this scene from the 1965 film version.
The film, which was released in 1965, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Robert Wise won an Academy Award for Directing for the film, which stars Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp. Hammerstein, who wrote the lyrics, died in 1960, several years before the film adaptation went into production, so Rodgers had to write the lyrics for two songs that were added to the score: "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good". "Something Good" replaced the show's original love song, "An Ordinary Couple". Two other songs from the Broadway production were cut from the score as well: "How Can Love Survive" and "No Way to Stop It", though they can be heard briefly as background music. Other songs were shifted to different scenes.
The film grossed over $158 million at the North American box office. Adjusted for ticket price inflation this is the equivalent of $911 million at 2006 prices, putting it third on the list of all time inflation adjusted box office hits according to boxofficemojo.com. [1] It is important to note that The Sound of Music is the only movie in the top four grossing films to never be reissued. The soundtrack album on the RCA Victor label has sold over 11 million copies worldwide.
The film has since been seen on television and re-released on VHS and DVD for its 40th anniversary. When Plummer did not join the rest of the cast for a 40th anniversary reunion in New York, reports said Plummer was distancing himself from the movie. The reports were fuelled by a comment from the President of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Society who said "[Plummer] used to refer to it as the 'Sound of Mucus'". As Plummer took part in interviews and commentaries for the DVD version of the 40th anniversary, and is overwhelmingly positive about the experience in those recordings, it is difficult to know where his feelings truly lie.
The Sound of Music is also credited as the film that saved 20th Century Fox, after high production costs and low revenue for Cleopatra nearly bankrupted the studio.
Several key members of the cast had their singing voices dubbed by others. Peggy Wood, who played Mother Abbess and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for this movie, was dubbed by Margery McKay after she struggled to sing Climb Ev'ry Mountain.Anna Lee, who played Sister Margaretta, was dubbed by Marie Greene. Christopher Plummer was dubbed by Bill Lee, who also did the singing voice for Yogi Bear. Plummer, who has performed in stage musicals, did have his singing recorded but decided it was not good enough.
There were once rumors that some or all of the children's voices were dubbed.[citation needed] Director Robert Wise insists that none of their voices were dubbed, though at times other children's voices were added to theirs for a stronger effect; the extra singers included Randy Perkins, Diane Burt, Darlene Farnon (a.k.a. Darlene Carr) and Sue McBain. Additionally, Farnon, sister of Charmian Carr, who played Liesl, sang the high note for Duane Chase, who played Kurt, in the song, So Long, Farewell, because it was well beyond his vocal range.
Awards
The movie garnered 10 Academy Award nominations and won five:
It was also nominated for Best Actress (Julie Andrews), Best Supporting Actress (Peggy Wood), Best Cinematography (color), Best Art Direction - Set Decoration (color) and Best Costume Design (color).
The cast album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It spent 161 weeks in the Billboard Magazine Top 40.
Starting in 1995, this movie actually aired on NBC, most of the time on the same weekend as It's a Wonderful Life. Sometimes the full movie would air (With commercials it would extend to 4 hours) or a shorter version would air (3 hours, commercials included) until 2001 when it had a one time airing on FOX. Now, it airs on ABC.
Many people believe "Edelweiss" to be a traditional Austrian song, or even the national anthem.[2]. In fact the song was written for the musical and is little known in Austria. The song was the last that Oscar Hammerstein II wrote.
The Ländler dance that Maria and the Captain shared was not performed the traditional way it is done in Austria.
"I Have Confidence" is a song that Rodgers wrote as a musical bridge, needed in the movie to get Maria from the convent to the von Trapp manor (as he explained). During that segment, at one point Julie Andrews passes under an archway. As pointed out in one of the DVD's extras, the real Maria von Trapp, one of her daughters, and one of her daughters (Maria's granddaughter) can be seen starting to cross the road at that point. The von Trapps arrived on set that day and director Wise offered them this walk-on role. It has also been reported that Andrews tripped at one point during the filming, a moment the editors left in because it seemed to fit the character.
The order of several of the songs is markedly different between the stage play and the film, thanks to the screenwriting of Ernest Lehman. One example is that in the play, "My Favorite Things" is sung at the convent, whereas in the movie it is sung to the children. A couple of the songs were altered. "How Can Love Survive?" (which did not fit the flow of the movie very well) was reduced to an instrumental, one of several waltz numbers played at the party occurring just before intermission. The title song's four-line prelude ("My day in the hills has come to an end, I know..."), sung by Mary Martin in the stage play, is reduced to an instrumental hint during the overture and dramatic zoom-in shot to Julie Andrews on the mountaintop at the start of the movie.
Ironically, the movie featured a rare onscreen performance by Marni Nixon, who plays Sister Sophia and is well known to have dubbed the singing voices for many famous movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. In fact, the producers weren't sure how Julie Andrews would react to her after Marni dubbed Hepburn in a role made famous by Andrews; however, when Andrews first met Nixon, she exclaimed, "Marni, I'm a fan of you!" and the producers were relieved.
Despite the enormous popularity of the movie, which at the time became the largest grossing picture of all time, noted film critic Pauline Kael blasted the film in a review in which she called the movie "The Sound Of Money." This review allegedly led to Kael's dismissal from McCall's magazine.
The Sound of Music became the highest grossing film of all time in December 1965, when it beat Gone With the Wind by slightly less than one million dollars. The Sound of Music remained the highest grossing film of all time, until 1970 when Gone With the Wind was re-released and it became #1 again. After that, several films (The Godfather, Jaws, etc) have pushed The Sound of Music further down on the list.
According to boxofficemojo, the film ranks third in both all-time number of tickets sold (142,415,400) and in gross adjusted for inflation ($911,458,400) in North America (behind Gone with the Wind and Star Wars) Combine this with its success around the world in sales of tickets, videocassettes, laserdiscs, DVDs and its frequent airings on television, it is called "the most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio" by Amazon.uk
The film was released in several foreign countries. In Germany it was re-titled Meine Lieder, Meine Träume (My Songs, My Dreams); France -- La mélodie du bonheur (The Melody of Happiness); Portugal -- Música no Coração (Music in the Heart); Brazil -- A Noviça Rebelde (The Rebel Novice); Italy -- Tutti insieme Appassionatamente (All Together with Passion); Netherlands -- De mooiste muziek (The Most Beautiful Music); Spain -- Sonrisas y Lágrimas (Smiles and Tears); Greece -- E meloudia tees Efti-hias (The Melody of Happiness); Israel -- Tze-leh ha-musica (The Sound of Music); Saudi Arabia -- Sauth el musika (The Sound of Music); Mexico -- La Novicia Rebelde (The Rebel Novice); Iran -- Ashkha va labkhandha (Tears and Smiles); Yugoslavia -- Moje pesme, moji snovi (My Songs, My Dreams)
Controversy surrounded the film's release in Germany. According to a 2000 documentary: "...the film's Nazi overtones brought about the unauthorized cutting of the third act." The third act, with its initial images of post-Anschluss Austria, begins directly after Maria's wedding to the Baron. Eventually, the third act was restored to the German release, but audience attendance did not improve.
According to the British tabloid The Sun, the movie was selected by BBC executives as one to be broadcast after a nuclear strike, to improve the morale of survivors. The BBC did not confirm or deny the story, saying "This is a security issue so we cannot comment" [1]. However, this would not be broadcast on television, due to both the electromagnetic pulse and blast knocking down power lines, though radio broadcasts could be possible.
Legend has it that South Koreans were even more taken by the movie. A theatre owner in South Korea, wanting to show the movie more times per day to take the money of more customers, allegedly cut out the musical pieces [2].
While the von Trapp family hiked over the Alps to Switzerland in the 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. [3] Salzburg is in fact only a few miles away from the Austrian-German border, and is much too far from either the Swiss or Italian borders for a family to escape by walking. Had the von Trapps hiked over the mountains, they would have ended up in Germany, near Hitler's mountain retreat.
Ironically, the US-movie is virtually unknown in Germany and Austria. This can be mainly attributed to the former German-made movie "Die Trapp-Familie" (1956) and its sequel "Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika" (1958) but also to the dark period of Austrian history which is cursory displayed in the later US-movie as well as in the former Austro-German films, which starred popular German and Austrian actors. According to the German Wikipedia entry for the movie, the real baroness von Trapp says of the first film that 'not a word in it is true, but it is delightful'.
The soundtrack album was included in the stockpile of records held in 20 underground radio stations of Great Britain's Wartime Broadcasting Service, designed to provide public information and morale-boosting broadcasts for 100 days after a nuclear attack[4].
In her autobiography, Charmaine Carr mentions that during filming the gazebo scene, her shoes were too slippery to dance in. As a result, she crashed through the glass side of the gazebo during the dance. Luckily, the only injury was a twisted ankle. She still wanted to do the scene, though, and make-up was applied to the wrap on her ankle and a few camera angles changed so that the injury wouldn't show.
Christopher Plummer likened working with Julie Andrews to "being hit over the head with a Valentine's Day card every day!" and reportedly didn't like working on the movie. Still, he and Andrews are good friends to this day.
The Cult adult humour comic Viz had a pastiche of the film poster on the front cover of issue 163, with Millie Tant as Maria.
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