Julie Andrews fled Nazis on screen and swept Oscars
Robert Wise's 1965 musical, scripted by Ernest Lehman from the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage hit, follows Maria and the von Trapp children in 1938 Salzburg. Shot in Los Angeles and Austria from March to September 1964, it opened to mixed reviews yet became 1965's top earner and won Best Picture and Best Director.
Robert Wise steered the 1965 musical from Ernest Lehman's script, itself built on the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein stage hit and Maria von Trapp's 1949 memoir. Julie Andrews is novice Maria, dispatched as governess to Captain Georg von Trapp's seven children; Christopher Plummer plays the widower. Cameras worked between early spring and early autumn of 1964, splitting time between California stages and Austrian locations around Salzburg. After Maria teaches the household to sing, she and the Captain wed, refuse a German navy posting once Austria is annexed, and slip away during a festival—nuns on screen disable the chase cars.
Twentieth Century-Fox began U.S. roadshow dates on 2 March 1965. Notices were lukewarm at first, yet within a month the film led the box office and finished as that year's top earner. Five Oscars included Picture and Director; Golden Globes recognized the film and Andrews, and guild prizes followed for direction and writing. The real Maria flashes past, uncredited, during I Have Confidence. A German producer had paid nine thousand dollars for rights in 1956 after she rejected Hollywood bids that wanted only the title.
Repeat ticket buyers slowly overrode critical coolness. Mountain vistas, family choruses, and a blunt refusal of Nazi service share one score, turning a singing troupe's memoir into one of cinema's sturdier musicals and a lesson in how sweetness and historical urgency can occupy the same frame.
Source: The Sound of Music (film)
