The Sound of Music

Robert Wise’s film took ten Academy Award nominations and won five: best picture, directing, film editing, sound, and scoring of music, adaptation or treatment. Julie Andrews lost actress to Julie Christie. William Wyler had the project first, said he hated the stage musical, left to make The Collector, and was nominated against Wise. The real family was different. By the National Archives account Georg von Trapp was no cold, music averse patriarch but a warm father who made music with his children, and he married Maria in 1927, eleven years before the family left. Nor did they climb the mountains: they took a train to Italy, where Georg held citizenship because his birthplace had passed to it. The film shot that walk on the Obersalzberg in Bavaria. Christopher Plummer’s singing was dubbed by Bill Lee. Hammerstein died in 1960, so Richard Rodgers wrote both words and music for the two new songs. In Germany the Munich branch of 20th Century-Fox cut the whole last section after the wedding; Wise and the studio restored it and the manager was fired. A good fit if you accept a first half run as household comedy, with politics arriving only after the wedding. Not for viewers after the real von Trapp story; the father, the mountain walk and the wedding’s timing were all written.