The Sound of Music

Laury gave me The Sound of Music Companion for Christmas. So far, it is a fascinating look at the story of the real von Trapp family (which Maria von Trapp described in her memoir, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers), the creation of the Broadway musical, and the making of the wonderful movie.

In the story of the von Trapp family, more interesting than the differences between the real family and the stage and movie ones (and there are many) are the facts that remained the same: a would-be nun goes to tutor the child of an Austrian naval officer, the children were excellent singers who performed at a Salzburg music festival, a family retainer was a Nazi, the father was offered a post in the Germany navy, and the family fled from Austria using a ruse.

The von Trapps were a popular singing group in America after World War II. After the family's music career ended in the mid-1950's, Maria and three of the children went to New Guinea to become Catholic missionaries. Others ran the family farm in Vermont.

The transformation of Maria's best-selling memoir into a successful Broadway musical and a major motion picture is the story of systems designed to produce successes. A German film version of the memoir came to the attention of a director who showed it to Mary Martin (who would play Maria on stage). She and her husband convinced a friend to be the producer, and he hired well-established writers to write the script and Rodgers and Hammerstein to do the music. Similarly, the movie had an experienced director, a successful screenwriter, and a talented leading lady (Julie Andrews, who had just finished Mary Poppins).