[fishhound]

Great Film... Climb every mountain...follow your dreams...

[gov_bean_ counter]

The Sound of Liberal Music...
Doe, pay, me.

[freema]

Austrian ambivalence about the project is understandable.

Ah, yes. I think the time to protest is a tad overdue. 1939 would have been prime protest time.

[iowamark]

The Real Story of the von Trapp Family

Maria Augusta Kutschera was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1905. She was orphaned as a young child and was raised as an atheist and socialist by an abusive relative. While attending the State Teachers' College of Progressive Education in Vienna, she accidentally attended a Palm Sunday service, believing it to be a concert of Bach music, where a priest was speaking. Years later she recalled in her autobiography Maria, "Now I had heard from my uncle that all of these Bible stories were inventions and old legends, and that there wasn't a word of truth in them. But the way this man talked just swept me off my feet. I was completely overwhelmed." Soon after, Maria graduated from college, and as a result of her religious awakening, she entered the Benedictine Abbey of Nonnberg in Salzburg as a novice. While she struggled with the unaccustomed rules and discipline, she considered that "These . . . two years were really necessary to get my twisted character and my overgrown self-will cut down to size."

[BBell]

Lavender suits for all!

[Navy Patriot]

How about we agree not to send tourists if they agree to take Schwarzenegger back?

[silverleaf]

I wonder if the Austrian government ever compensated the Von Trapps for all that they lost when they fled to Italy? Maria Von Trapp has written abut the tribulations the family faced as penniless refugees who were forced to move from European country to country every 30 days because no one dared to give them sanctuary, and how the ten of them (she was pregnant when they walked over the mountains to escape) had to start over and make a living from singing.

[pissant]

They don’t want a tourist Trapp?

[Gamecock]

A while back we watched a black and white German (or was it Austrian?) made movie on the Van Trapps. Looks to have been made in the ‘60s.

It was very dark, what with the persecution and all.

We found it to be a fascinating contrast to the American made version.

[Deklane]

The article goes on to say the von Trapp house doesn’t actually appear in the movie, but a “lakeside castle” was used for the back garden scenes. But it runs in my mind that there’s an establishing shot of the front of the house that looks like the one in the picture.

I spent a college year in Salzburg 1971/1972, and American Express was running Sound of Music tours even then, bussing tourists to various locations where scenes had been shot. I remember a local joke to the effect that the von Trapps had the biggest house in Salzburg because the front door was several kilometers away from the back (because a different house had been used for the lakeside scene in what was supposedly its back yard). It played a little fast and loose with local geography in other ways, as I noticed when I finally saw the movie after my year in Salzburg though I no longer recall the details.

Lovely city, spent a great year there... need to go back sometime...