The Sound of Music received five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, Robert Wise’s second pair of both awards, the first being from the 1961 film West Side Story.
Wikipedia.org
Ahhh, the “Sound of Music.” What does this familiar title conjure up in your mind, in your memory?
War? Naziism? Many forget that the Academy Award Winning film was based on the famous von Trapp Family Singers’ escape from the encroaching Adolf Hitler in Austria in 1938.
If you were born in the 1950s or 60s, likely it’s the youthful exuberance of an adorable young actress by the name of Julie Andrews that springs to mind. You may not recall the war theme at all.
In either case, no doubt it’s the music in the Sound of Music that you remember most…and sing to yourself to this day.
What kid born after 1960 didn’t partly learn the diatonic scale (a staple of Western Civilization for Pete’s sake!) from the infectious “Do-Re-Mi”?
Doe, a deer, a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun
Me, a name I call myself, Far, a long, long way to run
Sew, a needle pulling thread, La, a note to follow So
Tea, a drink with jam and bread, that will bring us back to Do….
Admit it, you remember every word!
Did you know that the Broadway stage version of the musical (which was adapted for the screen) was the last collaboration between show-tune legends, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein?
Did you know that another enormously popular song from the same movie, “My Favorite Things,” has been recorded hundreds of times by such diverse performers as jazz great John Coltrane (who made it a jazz standard), 70s vanilla pop stars The Carpenters, and alternative rock diva, Tori Amos?
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things.
Every facet of our culture is linked, in some way or other, by Events in Music.
Remember the 80s cult smash “rock-theatrical” The Rocky Horror Picture Show? You may recall that it led, among other things, to the launching into stardom of pop-rock enigma and mega-selling singer Meat Loaf. But do you know that The Sound of Music, like Rocky Horror, featured a full-on interactive, audience-participation (complete with costumes and props!) cinema version?
Really? Rocky Horror and the Sound of Music? Amazing.
And how many stupendous feats and miraculous recoveries have been accompanied by the glorious and uplifting, “Climb Every Mountain”? Thousands and thousands, the world over. It’s a universal theme.
Climb Every Mountain
(Words and Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
Climb every mountain, search high and low
Follow every byway, every path you know
Climb every mountain, ford every stream
Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream
A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live
Climb every mountain, ford every stream
Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream…
SIDEBAR: What searcher doesn’t connect with those words? Yes, we are all connected through music events. And that’s what this website is all about…connecting those dots…in hopes of helping us all better understand who we are, where we come from, where we’re going, and celebrating the fact that, after all, we still have a lot to sing about!
Based on the 1949 memoir, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Von Trapp, The Sound of Music was a massive hit in 1965 (Released on March 2).
…becoming the number one box office film after four weeks, and the highest-grossing film of 1965. By November 1966, The Sound of Music had become the highest-grossing film of all-time—surpassing Gone with the Wind—and held that distinction for five years.
Wikipedia.org
Sadly, although The Sound of Music has grossed millions and millions of dollars over the last fifty-plus years, the author of the memoir from which the musical and film were derived did not make a fortune. In fact, the Von Trapp family hardly benefited directly from the film and stage adaptations.
The von Trapps have never directly profited from the film or Broadway musical: Maria, whose husband died in 1947, sold the rights to the family story to a German film company in the mid-1950s for just $9,000. Johannes and now his son run the [Vermont] cross-country skiing lodge that trades on the family’s fame with Austrian food, waitresses wearing dirndls and pictures of the family, but not a single poster from the movie.
NYTimes.com