As they say, living well is the best revenge, and winning a few Oscars does not hurt either. The Sound of Music was nominated for ten Academy Awards and, on April 20, 1966, the movie took home five statuettes. Robert Wise was honored as Best Director, as was Irwin Kostal (Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment), William Reynolds (Best Film Editing), and James Corcoran and Fred Hynes (Best Sound). Finally, Jack Lemmon announced that The Sound of Music had won for Best Picture, making it—along with its rival My Fair Lady —the only musical to win both the Tony and the Oscar. Saul Chaplin accepted on Wise’s behalf—the director was stuck in Hong Kong, having finally got The Sand Pebbles rolling in front of cameras. Julie Andrews was nominated for Best Actress but lost to Julie Christie (for Darling). Andrews took her loss with equanimity; she had won the award a year earlier, for Mary Poppins. Far more disappointing to her and the rest of the crew was the fact that Ernest Lehman, whose initial faith and expert crafts-manship had been so essential to the movie’s existence, was not even nominated for an award.
When The Sound of Music was sold to the movies in 1960, there was a provision that the picture could not be released before December 1964 so that it would not intrude on potential theatrical box office. The Broadway version had closed a year before the movie opened, but the movie’s success not only did not dampen future revivals of the show, it encouraged them. According to R&H Theatricals, the organization that licenses the stage version, during the half-century since The Sound of Music opened on Broadway, there have been nearly 20,000 productions and there are still more than 500 productions staged every year in America, from major regional theater circuits to high-school auditoriums. In the 1960s and 1970s, The Sound of Music was particularly popular in the summer theater circuit, and the role of Maria was played by such varied and talented ladies as Florence Henderson (who took the role on several times in repertory), Shirley Jones (another Rodgers and Hammerstein leading lady turned television mom), Barbara Cook, Roberta Peters, Barbara Eden, and Constance Towers (who is also one of several actresses to play both Maria and Anna in The King and I—as were Marie Osmond and Maureen McGovern).
No matter what the language, the song is the same: The Sound of Music clockwise from top left; Croatian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Japanese.
One of the stranger recordings of all time: In 1959, members of the Trapp Family Singers reunited (supplemented by additional singers), under the guidance of Father Wasner to record the music to The Sound of Music. It lacks a certain, shall we say, showbiz finesse and is a bit like having Mozart come back from the beyond to play the soundtrack to Amadeus.
Still, for all its success around the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s, a major stage revival had eluded The Sound of Music. It was not until 1981 that such a production was attempted, and it occurred in London. The first British production had run two years past the opening of the movie, so West End audiences had been deprived of the show for only fourteen years. Ross Taylor, an ambitious producer who had scored a big success with The King and I the previous season, brought the musical back in style to the Apollo Victoria Theatre. He prevailed upon Petula Clark, one of the most successful female pop singers in British history, to play the role of Maria. Clark had initial reservations—she had never appeared in a stage musical and, frankly, she had just cleared the hurdle of fifty. Taylor convinced her to sign on and also hired June Bronhill, the Australian soprano with the glorious voice, to play the Mother Abbess (Bronhill would be the first actress to play both Maria and the Mother Abbess professionally).
Clark had the personal triumph of her career, winning over the difficult British critics who carped about the play’s sugary sentimentality, and earning glorious reviews. She extended her six-month contract to thirteen months, playing at one-hundred-and-one per cent capacity every week for more than a year. One week of her engagement set the West End record for highest weekly box office of all time.
One audience member who enjoyed Clark’s performance more than the rest was Maria von Trapp. She attended the opening night (yes, she stood at Clark’s curtain call) and proclaimed Taylor’s production to be the best she had ever seen. It was hard to begrudge Maria her moment in the sun; since the movie producers had turned their backs on her (she was not even invited to the movie’s premiere), her fame had been fleeting. Maria made some television appearances: her identity was guessed by Kitty Carlisle Hart on To Tell the Truth (it was not that difficult—Kitty had been at the Broadway opening-night party with Maria) and she appeared with Julie Andrews on her London-based variety program in 1973.
Throughout the 1970s, Maria had mostly devoted herself to the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont. She somewhat reluctantly turned over its day-to-day management to her son, Johannes, but she still continued as the hostess with the mostest, greeting visitors, signing autographs, and generally infusing the place with her good cheer and indomitability. Then, the week before Christmas in 1980, a bizarre and unpredictable fire broke out at the Lodge, just as the family was preparing for its seasonal arrivals. Within hours, the main complex had burned to the ground. One guest was killed (the freezing cold made rescue efforts nearly impossible) and most of Maria’s personal effects, papers, and memorabilia were lost. A bit of Maria’s personal spark was lost in the fire as well. Under Johannes’ astute management, the Lodge was not only rebuilt from the ashes, but was tripled in size and maximized in terms of comfort, amenities, and efficiency, including a hundred time-share units. When the phoenix-like Trapp Family Lodge re-emerged in January 1984, Maria was delighted to share the opening festivities with her old friend, Mary Martin. But even Maria von Trapp’s energy was waning, and on March 28, 1987, she passed away at Stowe; she lies buried next to the grave of her beloved captain, Georg von Trapp. Martin said, “Maria didn’t just climb over that mountain, she helped everybody over it!”
“Downtown Abbey”: Petula Clark had yet another career triumph, playing Maria on the West End in the show’s first major stage revival in 1981; this publicity photo of her was actually taken in front of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg.
Marie Osmond brought her ebullience to the character of Maria for several American tours; Liz Robertson’s heart is blessed with the sound of music in a successful 1992 British tour that appeared at Sadler’s Wells; the Japanese production in 1965, as Maria teaches the children “Do Re Mi.”
Rebecca Luker teaches the children the musical scales without ever once going on a picnic or riding a bicycle in the 1998 Broadway revival; for a 1977 tour, the Rodgers and Hammerstein movie star and television mom, Shirley Jones, brought along her valise and guitar. Eagle-eyed readers will notice the teenaged Sarah Jessica Parker, third from the right.
In 1990, The Sound of Music made a return to New York—to the New York City Opera—directed by the lyricist’s son, James Hammerstein. Laurence Guittard and Debby Boone, who recorded the pop hit You Light Up My Life, dance the Laendler.
Three years later, Martin left the scene as well, marking the end of the old guard. Rodgers passed away late in 1979, Russel Crouse in 1966. Howard Lindsay, who never thought The Sound of Music had a snowball’s chance of making more than $12 million (it did so within months of its opening), died in 1968, but not before letting off one last riposte to the press. Responding to a Times article about the money-making prowess of The Sound of Music, he wrote: “Much has been written about the success of The Sound of Music play and motion picture. Is it immodest of me to point out, because no one else ever does, that Russel Crouse and I had a hand in it?”
The original book by Lindsay and Crouse got its first major Broadway revival in 1998, ironically on March 12, sixty years to the day that Hitler marched into Austria. From the mid-1980s on, most of the major shows of Broadway’s golden age had been given first-class revivals. Three of Oscar Hammerstein’s shows—Carousel, Show Boat, and The King and I—were restaged in particularly persuasive new interpretations. The time was simply right for The Sound of Music. Rebecca Luker, a well-regarded Broadway pe
rformer, was given the starring role in this revival and, although the production was, by and large, a traditional presentation of the material, the design of the show displayed considerable respect for Austrian traditions. The production also confronted the Nazi menace head-on; the Nazi flag, with its black-spider swastika, was firmly in evidence during the show’s finale at the Festival. (To be fair, the swastika first appeared during the Festival sequence in a British revival at Sadler’s Wells in 1992, starring Liz Robertson and Christopher Cazenove.) The Sound of Music suffered the usual slings and arrows from the New York Times: “On one level, it will always nauseate,” wrote Ben Brantley. One can only be grateful that the Herald Tribune ceased publication decades ago. The revival ran for a year and a half.
Florence Henderson picks up her guitar two decades after heading the national tour; Jon Voight, of Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance fame, began his career as a delivery boy. He replaced Rolf in the original Broadway The Sound of Music. Here he sings with Marissa Mason.
The largest reunion of the von Trapp Family—real and fictional—ever assembled. Here, on the stage of the Martin Beck Theater at the 1998 revival of The Sound of Music, are: (Top row, left to right) Eleonore, Agathe, Werner, Maria, Rosmarie, and Johannes von Trapp. (Top of middle) Dennis Parlato (replacement for Michael Siberry) and Rebecca Luker. (Middle, left to right) The movie children, all grown up: Kym Karath, Debbie Turner, Angela Cartwright, Duane Chase, Heather Menzies, Nicholas Hammond, and Charmian Carr. (Bottom row) The children from the revival.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the Broadway revival was its opening night, when four of the surviving von Trapp children—Johannes, Maria, Agathe, and Rosmarie—attended the premiere. Later that year, they were joined by their brother Werner and sister Eleonore in New York City, when the governor of the Austrian State of Salzburg presented them with the Golden Decoration of Honor, the region’s highest civilian honor. At the ceremony, there was also an appearance from the entire group of seven actors who played the children in the movie—their first reunion in over a decade. If that was not enough, both camps trooped over to the Martin Beck Theater to see a performance of the revival, and all three families took an unprecedented curtain call. One can certainly bet that Maria von Trapp would have stood up for that one.
By the end of the twentieth century, the breadth and scope of The Sound of Music’s influence was enormous. After it opened in America, the movie was immediately dubbed in four languages, and has subsequently played all over the world. In literal-minded Argentina, it is known as The Rebellious Novice; in the more poetic Hong Kong, it is called Fairy Music Blow Fragrant Place, Place Hear. After the millennium, there was a surprising jump in the number of high-profile professional stage productions all over the world. Such countries as Italy, Holland, Mexico, Sweden, Norway, and Israel presented local-language translations (in Israel, both nuns and Nazis performed the material in Hebrew). And, of course, several generations have experienced The Sound of Music on video or DVD, where it still remains one of the all-time unit-selling champs, with several special editions in release. For the fortieth anniversary release of the DVD, Fox enlisted the services of Julie Andrews to host and narrate a number of features, including a reunion with Christopher Plummer. Although Plummer’s aversion to the movie is well known, he has nothing but affection and respect for Andrews, and The Sound of Music fans have enjoyed their joint appearances over the last few years in a television version of On Golden Pond and a special Christmas event that toured the US in 2002.
Admiration, respect, and a discreet attraction have made Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews friends and colleagues for over forty years. This 2005 picture was taken in conjunction with the 40th Anniversary release of the DVD of The Sound of Music.
The reach of The Sound of Music extends farther and farther every year. In May 2004, an American production was mounted for the most extensive tour ever of a Western musical in Asia. The movie has a particular appeal for Chinese audiences; it is easily the most wellknown Western musical in China. The tour began in Shanghai and Beijing, then extended to Taipei, Tokyo, and Osaka, then to South Korea and Singapore. Ted Chapin, president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization reported that “The Sound of Music has become a calling card for the American musical . . . and audiences continue to be grabbed by its story of triumph over adversity, of human connections made with prescribed regimens. Watching it in this place, thousands of miles from home, made me appreciate once again the power of the show and the story that it tells.”
It was inevitable that a story with that much power would inspire people to want to write themselves into it. There are certain phenomena in twentieth-century popular culture that invite fans to go beyond owning the DVD to becoming part of the mythology—Star Trek and The Rocky Horror Picture Show come readily to mind. The Sing-a-Long Sound of Music is a glorious mélange of all three. It began life as a one-night event at the London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. One festival organizer had been visiting his grandmother at her nursing home in Scotland and the residents were watching the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and singing along with songs, following lyric sheets spread on their laps. If that less-than-brilliant movie musical could inspire such participation, he thought, why not the greatest movie musical of all time?
The London Festival presentation was so popular that the whole concept moved into the Prince Charles Cinema, a budget-minded theater off Leicester Square, in August 1999. The Prince Charles showed the film—with karaoke-style song-lyric subtitles—twice a week, on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. Audiences soon packed the screenings and the showings started to tour England, then most of Europe and Australia to equally enthusiastic fans. In September 2000, the Sing-a-Long found a home at New York City’s Ziegfeld Theater, then traveled to Chicago and every major city in America—including, of course, San Francisco, where its camp appeal was warmly embraced. The hills of Los Angeles were particularly alive with the sounds of the Sing-a-Long: the cavernous Hollywood Bowl hosted four annual showings, but one particular sultry evening in July 2005 was a very special event.
An audience of 18,000 packed the Bowl for a completely sold-out screening of the Sing-a-Long Sound of Music. Before the screening of the movie, there were the obligatory events that have accompanied the Sing-a-Long sensation since its London debut. A host whipped up enthusiasm from the audience (not difficult to do); there was a talent show in which the youthful descendants of the Trapp Family sang “Edelweiss,” and some surprises, including an appearance of the entire cast of children from the 1965 movie.
And then there are the costumes. Audience members for the Sing-a-Long are the farthest thing imaginable from couch potatoes—they come ready to sing (the movie is subtitled with all the lyrics to the songs), to hiss (poor Elsa Schraeder), to boo (the Nazis, of course), and to yell inappropriate comments (not surprisingly, the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” number takes the brunt of those). And they come ready dressed as characters, lyrics, concepts—anything at all—mentioned in the movie.
The costumes worn by audience members get more baroque with every new city the Sing-a-Long conquers. In addition to the obvious girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes or the fellow who dressed all in bright yellow, as Ray, a drop of golden sun, there have been costumes that have strained credulity and taste—the gentlemen wearing overalls and brandishing a plunger as “Chris the Plumber” or the young lady festooned with a bevy of brown balloons who came as “The Lonely Goat Turd.” At the Hollywood Bowl showing in 2005, the winner of the best costume competition was given quite a run for his money: a pair of drapes (later to be playclothes, of course), a quartet of very buxom ladies whose “hills” were quite lively, a little girl with a pale pink coat, and the inevitable bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens. But the gentleman who received first prize (from Charmian Carr, no less—the fellow must have been delirious) was dressed as an eight-foot carburetor—as in the one that the nuns remove from the Nazis’ car at the end of
the movie.
When dusk fell, the main event of the evening began and the movie spooled along, just as it had for forty years—except now Julie Andrews’ solo on the hilltop near Werfern was accompanied by the world’s largest amateur choir. Perhaps the reverberating echoes could be heard at the Fox studios in Culver City where, five decades earlier, executives had once mocked the Broadway show’s potential to emerge as a hit movie.
The loyal audiences who flock to the Sing-a-Longs and purchase their kits of fake edelweiss, cough drops, and foam-rubber nun puppets come not to bury The Sound of Music but to praise it. The crowds have a healthy reverence for the movie as well as a healthy lack of either cynicism or pomposity. The sheer earnestness of the enterprise can melt the heart of the sternest critic. As Anthony Lane noted in his 1999 New Yorker piece: “The atmosphere . . . was strangely unmocking, even its coarsest moments. . . . [The Sound of Music] offered one of the last breaths of innocence in American cinema. . . . That is why we go back to Wise’s film; we all know better now, but most of us secretly wish that we didn’t.”
The breadth of the movie’s message reached every corner of the globe and audiences opened up their hearts to its craftsmanship and good cheer. The only real holdout was the very country that gave birth to the whole shebang: Austria.
The appeal of The Sound of Music was broadened further with the release of the movie on every home media format – where it quickly became a huge best seller no matter what the technology; video, laser disc, DVD. This gorgeous watercolor was prepared for the 1990 VHS release.
The Sound of Music Companion: The official companion to the world's most beloved musical Page 11