The Sound of Music

The American Film Institute rates The Sound of Music, the 1966 Oscar winner for Best Picture, as one of the greatest American films of all time, and as of 2014, it was the fifth highest-grossing film in history. This year, the much-loved movie—which charmingly manages to celebrate music and family while also deftly illustrating refusal to comply with tyranny—turns 60.

The American film made its way to the screen in 1965 via Maria von Trapp’s 1949 autobiography (The Story of the Trapp Family Singers), two 1950s West German film versions, and the wildly successful 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical. Maria von Trapp, by then widowed and a missionary in Papua New Guinea, agreed to the movie deal after being told that the money she would make could help the New Guinea missions. Twentieth Century Fox purchased the screen rights for $1.25 million—at the time the largest amount of money any studio had yet paid for a literary property.

The Sound of Music website describes some of the challenges encountered during filming, including the famous “The Hills Are Alive” opening scene with Julie Andrews, which was captured from a helicopter:

“The Sound of Music owes this sweeping opening shot to the cameraman Paul Beeson. He felt that the only way the shot could be made without casting shadows was to have the camera operator hanging on the outside of the helicopter, secured only by straps. [The] camera operator refused on safety grounds…. No one else stepped up to fill the cameraman’s position, so Paul did it himself—entirely unprepared, dressed in a jacket and tie and with a fear of heights!”

The real von Trapp family—which eventually numbered 10 children due to the three born to Maria and Georg—fled Austria for Italy in 1938 before making their way to England and then the U.S. Concerts by the 12 members of the Trapp Family Choir (renamed the Trapp Family Singers) became crowd-pleasers in America as well as internationally. Georg died in 1947 and the remaining Trapp Family Singers disbanded 10 years later.

Curiously, as Solari’s Austrian team members report, few in Austria know The Sound of Music movie even today, though busloads of American and other tourists regularly arrive to visit the locations where it was filmed.