The Sound of Music

by Hirsch, Julia Antopol;

  —Bosley Crowther

  New York Times

  March 3, 1965

  That was the first review Robert Wise read of his film version of The Sound of Music. The movie had its first opening premiere in New York on March 2, 1965, at the Rivoli Theater. (The second premiere marked the opening of the movie in Los Angeles and was held on March 10, 1965.) During the New York screening, Wise and Jonas Rosenfeld, Fox’s vice president of publicity, sneaked out into the theater lobby. They had obtained an advance copy of the next morning’s New York Times, and they were eager to read the first major critique of their picture. As the crowd inside the theater cheered and applauded the film, Wise and Rosenfeld were left holding the copy of Crowther’s review and wondering where they had gone wrong …

  Everything is so icky sticky purely ever-lovin’ that even Constant Andrews Admirers will get a wittle woozy long before intermission time…. There is nothing like a super-sized screen to convert seven darling little kids in no time at all into all that W. C. Fields indicated that darling little kids are—which is pure loathsome…. The movie is for the five to seven set and their mommies who think their kids aren’t up to the stinging sophistication and biting wit of Mary Poppins.

  —Judith Crist

  New York Herald Tribune

  March 3, 1965

  That was the review that greeted Robert Wise the following morning. Ernest Lehman, who had read both Crowther’s and Crist’s reviews from his home in California, immediately dialed Wise’s New York hotel.

  Wise’s wife, Pat, answered the phone. “Let me speak to Bob,” Lehman said urgently.

  “He’s not here,” Pat Wise said. “He’s taking a walk in Central Park.”

  “I know he’s there,” Lehman insisted. “Put him on.”

  Wise finally took the phone from Pat. “How could they do this to us?” he cried.

  Judith Crist’s review was even more damaging than Crowther’s because she was also the movie critic on the Today show, which broadcast from coast to coast. Darryl Zanuck was so enraged by Judith Crist’s review that he wrote a confidential memo to Seymour Poe, Fox’s executive vice president of distribution.

  Crist “has built her reputation with a knife and the evil skill of an abortionist,” he railed. She “uses the tactics of a concentration camp butcher!”

  Poe answered Zanuck’s memo by stating that “an industry effort should be made to dislodge Crist from her spot on the ‘Today’ show.” But Zanuck was not in favor of taking any retaliatory action against the critic. Instead, he confided in another memo to Poe, “While I would thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of inserting the toe of my ski boot in Miss Crist’s derriere, I prefer to leave the job to movie goers who, in due time, will take good care of her.”

  The “movie-goers” did get their revenge, but not against Judith Crist. Pauline Kael, another prominent movie critic, wrote in a review for McCall’s magazine that Music was “the sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat … and this is the attitude that makes a critic feel that maybe it’s all hopeless. Why not just send the director, Robert Wise, a wire: ‘You win, I give up.’”

  Soon after the review was published, the publishing offices at McCall’s were flooded with mail from readers vehemently protesting Kael’s review of the film. So the magazine fired the movie critic! The editors felt that Kael was not in touch with their readership and that her review might eventually lose them subscribers. (Of course, Kael went on to great success as movie reviewer for the New Yorker.)

  “The East Coast, intellectual papers and magazines destroyed us,” remembered Robert Wise, “but the local papers and the trades gave us great reviews.”

  They have taken this sweet, sometimes saccharine and structurally slight story of the Von Trapp Family Singers and transformed it into close to three hours of visual and vocal brilliance, all in the universal terms of cinema. They have invested it with new delights and even a sense of depth in human relationships.

  —Philip K. Scheuer

  Los Angeles Times

  March 7, 1965

  Robert Wise, Julie Andrews, and Darryl Zanuck at the premiere.

  One of the top musicals to reach the screen … a warmly-pulsating, captivating drama set to the most imaginative use of the lilting R-H tunes, magnificently mounted and with a brilliant cast … bears the mark of assured lengthy runs, and should be one of the season’s most successful entries.

  Daily Variety

  March 1, 1965

  Music opened in 131 American theaters. It began as a “road show,” a “hard-ticket” concept that the studios phased out with 1970s inflation. A road show was a 70mm movie with six-track stereophonic sound, released in a limited number of selected theaters. Fashioned after Broadway musicals, road shows featured reserved seats, two showings a day, and an intermission, making the film seem more of an event than a general-release picture, which opens in more than one theater per city, shows several times a day, and is more moderately priced.

  Fox opened two other road shows around the same time that year: The Agony and the Ecstasy and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, both of which had been filmed in Europe at the same time as Music. No other studio had as many road shows playing in the same year, because these event movies were usually big pictures and were very expensive to produce. Fox gambled everything it had on these three pictures; its risk paid off handsomely.

  In only four weeks, playing in just twenty-five theaters, Music quickly jumped to number one at the box office—and that was with only ten performances per week. What put the film over the top were the average moviegoers, who thought the picture neither “sugar-coated” nor “a lie.” To the contrary, the movie touched a nerve, and the public began spreading the word.

  The original release, both as a road show and in general release, lasted an unprecedented four and a half years in the United States. By December 1965, just nine months after the movie opened, The Sound of Music had been number one for thirty out of forty-three weeks and had already amassed $50 million in worldwide box-office receipts—after taxes. Considering that the movie cost a total of $20 million to produce, promote, and market, it was already showing a substantial profit. Soon Music replaced Gone With the Wind as the number-one box-office champion of all time. The Sound of Music was quickly renamed “The Sound of Money.”

  One of the reasons for the film’s large grosses was the legion of loyal Music fans who went to see the film over and over again. In some cities around the United States, the box office exceeded the total population of the area! In forty weeks, Salt Lake City, with a population of 199,300, had a box-office attendance of 309,000. In Albany, New York, population 156,000, 176,536 people saw the film in twenty-seven weeks. In Orlando, Florida, with only an 88,135 total population, reports recorded 105,181 admissions in thirty-five weeks.

  The Sound of Music, which opened in 261 theaters overseas just a few months after the US openings, was the first American film ever to be totally dubbed in a foreign language. Before Music, only the dialogue of American musicals was dubbed in the language of the specific country showing the film; the music remained in English. Foreign exhibitors then placed subtitles on the screen when the songs were sung. But the producers wanted to change that pattern with Music and chose to dub both the dialogue and the music in the languages of its main foreign markets: French, Italian, Spanish, and German.

  Saul Chaplin, who was put in charge of handling the foreign dubbing, oversaw the translation of the lyrics. While dubbing in a foreign language is never easy, “Do-Re-Mi” gave the translators real trouble. For example, do, which is the first note of the scale in all languages, means a female deer (doe) in English, but does not have the same meaning in any of the other four tongues. The same held true for re, mi, fa, and on up the scale. Translators had to search for appropriate, rhyming words for each note, all the while keeping the words similar enough that the new words the foreign singers were singing would look in sync with the way the original actors were mov
ing their mouths.

  As listed in the New York Times Magazine in 1966: In Egypt, the movie is titled Love and Tenderness; in Portugal, it’s called Music in the Heart; in Thailand, Charms of the Heaven-Sound; in Spain, Smiles and Tears; in Argentina; The Rebellious Novice; in Germany, My Song, My Dream; in Hong Kong the movie is known as Fairy Music Blow Fragrant Place, Place Hear.

  Program handed out at a special press preview.

  Madame Alexander Dolls made replicas of the children. They sold for twelve dollars each.

  Ironically, the movie was a box-office smash everywhere it was released except the two countries where Maria’s story had originated—Germany and Austria. In Salzburg the movie ran exactly three days before the theater owners pulled the plug, and it has never been reissued. There are numerous theories as to why the film did so poorly in the one city that gained so much from its production. Wise’s film crew spent a total of $900,000 in Salzburg during the three months they shot in the city. The figure covers the accommodations for the cast and crew, payroll for local labor, and the cost of various services and equipment. After the movie became a hit, American Express began the “Sound of Music” tour, which bused tourists all over the city, showing them locations that were used in the film. There is a “Sound of Music” dinner theater and a “Sound of Music” record store.

  Yet Salzburg and many Austrian citizens actually harbored disdain for the film. A typical response from the Salzburg residents who dismissed the movie was that it wasn’t authentic. Austrians take great pride in their native dress, and they felt that the costumes in the movie did not reflect their style. They objected to the use of split locations—such as when the von Trapp house was shot at Frohnburg and its property was shot at Leopoldskron/Bertelsmann. The Salzburg residents resented this “Hollywoodization” of their city. They also wanted some authentic Austrian songs in the film and objected to the almost purely American score. But these reasons seem petty and subjective compared to the two underlying issues that seemed to truly influence their opinions of the film.

  The studio was enraged when Fox’s German theaters cut the last third of the movie.

  “The Austrians and the Germans just couldn’t get over the fact that you were doing a remake of two of their favorite movies,” said Pia Arnold.

  Die Trapp Familie and its sequel, Die Trapp Familie in Amerika, were as popular in Austria and Germany as The Sound of Music was in the United States. The two leading actors, Ruth Leuwerik and Hans Holt, were beloved stars in the region. In fact, even though Music was never reissued in Austria, Die Trapp Familie was reissued in 1985 and did quite well. (Despite the feeling many Austrians have for the movie, they do appreciate the publicity the city has received from the movie. Wise heard from consul generals and other officials over the years that Music has done more to bring attention to their country than any other form of publicity.)

  Another reason for the movie’s unpopularity, especially in Germany, was its Nazi theme. After the movie opened, a banner headline in a local German paper, National-und-Soldatenzeitung, declared, “Will Hollywood’s Hate of German[y] Never End?” Saul Chaplin was in Germany shortly after this story ran in the newspaper and met with the Munich branch manager of Twentieth Century Fox, Wolfgang Wolf. They were riding in a taxicab together when Wolf casually suggested to Chaplin that maybe the movie should be cut after the wedding scene. It seemed to be a logical place to end the picture, and the Nazi theme would then be less overt. Chaplin was shocked at such a suggestion and told him that he was definitely not allowed to edit the film in any way. But Wolf did not heed Chaplin’s advice. He cut the picture after the wedding scene, eliminating one-third of its running time.

  When Wise and the studio found out what had happened, they were aghast, not just because the picture had been cut but because of the political implications. The fact that any US company would bow to neo-Nazi demands (which is how they viewed the situation) was unconscionable. Wolf explained his actions by saying he was only “testing” the audience. If they didn’t come to see the picture, even after the cuts, he would restore the movie to its original length. The home office did not buy Wolf’s explanation, and he was immediately fired.

  Wise, who was incensed by Wolf’s escapade, was quoted in Daily Variety as saying, “Producers are having enough trouble now with cuts being made in old pictures when released to television without being faced with the threat of highhanded cuts being made in current product by those to whom the prospect of an extra bit of revenue outweighs any ethical or artistic considerations.” The film was eventually restored as originally intended—and it bombed in Germany.

  There were, however, some segments of the movie that Wise approved of cutting when they seemed out of sync with the sensibility of foreign audiences. “Climb Every Mountain,” for example, did not play well in some foreign markets. Foreign audiences seemed to get restless during the number, and Wise felt it slowed the pace of the show. So he cut it out. “Something Good” was also cut in some countries. Wise also kept on top of theater exhibitors in the United States. Fans from all over wrote letters to Wise when a theater’s print was damaged or the film was cut. Wise took care of all these complaints immediately.

  “I abhor any kind of cut made in my film by an exhibitor since he is, in fact, setting himself up as judge of my work,” Wise was quoted in Variety at the time.

  The Sound of Music won practically every major film award. Wise won the 1965 Outstanding Directing Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America. He won the first annual David O. Selznick Producers Guild Award. The picture won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, and Julie Andrews won as Best Actress. Music won the Federation of Motion Picture Councils’ Best Family Film Award. It won Best Foreign Film in Peru, Italy, and Japan. It won many other international awards, and numerous religious and women’s groups bestowed their own bestfilm awards on the movie.

  The soundtrack album on RCA records went gold and then platinum and sold more than ten million units worldwide. RCA has also released the soundtrack in Spanish (Sonrisas y Lagrimas), German (Meine Lieder, Meine Traume), French (Le Melodie du Bonheur), and Italian (Il Suono della Musica), using foreign artists.

  And then came the Oscars.

  The Sound of Music was nominated for ten Academy Awards: Robert Wise—Best Director and Best Film of the Year; Julie Andrews—Best Actress; Peggy Wood—Best Supporting Actress; Boris Leven—Best Art Direction (along with Walter Scott and Ruby Levitt for set decoration); Ted McCord—Best Cinematography; Dorothy Jeakins—Best Costume Design; Irwin Kostal—Best Music Adaptation; William Reynolds—Best Film Editing; and James Corcoran and Fred Hynes—Best Sound.

  After everything Ernest Lehman went through to get The Sound of Music on the screen, and after the tremendous job he did in adapting a somewhat static stage play into a vivacious and witty screen musical, Lehman did not get nominated for an Oscar.

  When Wise found out, he sent Lehman a letter. “All I can say is ‘you wuz robbed,’” he wrote.

  But Lehman was philosophical. He wrote back to Wise:

  The enormous success of the picture all over the world and my own realization that I had guessed right in believing that that play could become a very rewarding and very popular film, and that I did have an important role in getting it from stage to screen … all these things, as I say, make it very difficult for me to have any unhappy feelings about anything connected with the picture. When you stop to consider what we achieved—this miracle that comes only to a very few once in a lifetime, and to us it has come at least twice [Lehman also wrote the Oscar winner West Side Story]—well, out with the champagne!

  Wise was in Hong Kong shooting The Sand Pebbles when the Academy Awards ceremony was held, so he could not attend the awards show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. He asked Julie Andrews to accept the Oscar in his place should he win for Best Director, and he chose Saul Chaplin to represent him if they won Best Picture.

  Chaplin arrived at the awards show with Julie Andre
ws, and they were both nervous wrecks. Andrews wore a bright red gown designed by Dorothy Jeakins. It was a red wool Japanese-style dress that Andrews felt was unflattering and made her uncomfortable. But she and Chaplin put on their best smiles and waded through the crowd of fans that greeted them at the theater.

  “There was such an ear-shattering screech from the fans the moment they saw Julie,” remembered Chaplin, “that I was literally stunned motionless. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a more terrifying sound in my life!”

  The major Oscars were not awarded until the end of the program; the seven other awards for which Music had been nominated were spaced throughout the evening. Peggy Wood lost the Best Supporting Actress Award to Shelley Winters for her work in A Patch of Blue. But the next award was for Best Sound, which Music won. Then came Best Costumes; Doctor Zhivago took that prize. Zhivago also won for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, categories in which Music was a strong contender. But Irwin Kostal won his award for Best Music Adaptation, and then the Best Editing award came up. Music won again. When William Reynolds took the podium to accept his award, he explained his method of film editing.

  “When in doubt, cut to Julie Andrews,” he said.

  Among others, Julie Christie had been nominated for Best Actress along with Julie Andrews, and there was a lot of hype during the promotion of the awards show about the expected rivalry between the two Julies. It was just Andrews’s luck that the actor to hand out the Best Actress award was to be her old costar Rex Harrison, who had a perverse sense of humor. Harrison took advantage of the situation: after he opened the envelope that revealed the winner of 1965’s Best Actress award, Harrison read, “Julie …” and then he stopped for a dramatic pause. “… Christie, for Darling,” he announced.