Blogs Feb 22, 2014 at 6:44 pm

Comments

1
Ahh… Maria was the name of the nun who ran off with the captain and his kids. Maria was played by Mary Martin (Larry Hagman's mother) in the original Broadway cast, and Julie Andrews a few years later in the more cheery Film version. The original Broadway production was about standing-up to facism and the Nazis and included songs that were considered too dark for the breezy film version.
2
RIP.

Actually, according to the story, how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-Maria Maria was indeed based on Baron von Trapp's second wife Maria, and so daughter Maria, whom this story is about, was renamed as Louisa for the film. So Marta was probably Marta, but Maria was Louisa.

And I wish I knew there were some von Trapps running a resort in Vermont when I was there a decade and a half ago.
3
The original Rodgers and Hammerstein score - the Broadway version - has always been a favorite. The movie cheapened it's majesty by making it sound like Mary Poppins, Andrews last film before the Sound of Music. Here's the opening title song in the Broadway version, quiet and gentle, a far cry from the film's loud and dramatic opening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkIBerEFJ…
4
@3
I enjoyed that.
5
@3: In your opinion. Mary Martin's singing can be an endurance test at times.
6
@4 I never cared for her earlier pop recordings and she clearly misses pitch at times in this. She wasn't considered a great technician But there's something about her delivery in the Sound of Music recordings that just enchant me - a slow and maternal dignity, scored to match her chest voice (unlike South Pacific). I hear the missed notes and all the rest… but I'll still take it over Andrew's perky, cheerful romp through these brilliant songs any day. Just my tastes I guess.
7
Phoebe dear, I wouldn't talk about anyone being an endurance test if I were you.

Years ago, in the late 70's, I was in the large wooded park near our house, when all of the sudden an old-timey nun in full nun drag came walking by on her way to the lookout point. I was nonplussed, as nuns didn't dress like that anymore, and it was something like 95 degrees out. She was just like one of those nuns in the movie - all cheerful and full of "my childs". It turned out that she travelled with the Von Trapp singers as sort of a spiritual guru or something. They were in town for a fundraiser for the Catholic school. I took her back to our house where Mother Vel-DuRay was royally vexed that I had bought a nun home.
8
It's before midnight here on the east coast, and that story is dated the 23rd. What gives, ABC?

Anyway, RIP. And while I like Mary Martin and admire her "Lonely Goatherd" as a technical feat, it's not something I'd listen to twice in a row.
9
Okay. Here's a song from the original Broadway score that was considered too satirically sophisticated for the film. Max and Elsa try to convince Georg to go along with the Nazis by analogizing our inability to control orbiting planets to cooperating with the Third Reich. "There's no way to stop it!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThJIvijGH…

The Sound of Music was about moral dilemmas; should Maria divorce Jesus for marriage, should Georg cooperate with the Nazis, should Liesl lose her virginity at 16yo to Ralf (Maria advised "wait another year or two") The movie toned most of that down.
10
@7: Is Mother Vel-DuRay your mother, or your mother-in-law? If you don't mind me asking.
11
should Liesl lose her virginity at 16yo to Ralf (Maria advised "wait another year or two") The movie toned most of that down.

Hmm. Wonder what Dan Savage would have advised.
12
@11 "He's a fuckin' Nazi, are you insane?"


13
No no no. "Fuck first."
14
Phoebe dear, I was a mere child at the time, but not a Child Bride. The Vel-DuRays are a matriarchy. Mother Vel-DuRay is my mother.
15
@11 Chef would have advised, "wait one year".:

Chef: "The right time to start having sex is 17."
Sheila: "So you mean 17 as long as you're in love?"
Chef: "Nope, just 17."
Gerald: "But what if you're not ready at 17?"
Chef: "17, you're ready."
16
@11
Is Dan an adviser? I thought he was an entrepreneur.
17
@12

That would have come in the form of DTMFA, but I think @13's instinct would have been more likely.
18
All very possible. I think the closest comparison would be the woman who felt guilty about her romp with the younger and hotter man who made it openly clear that he didn't reciprocate. "This is where I'm *supposed* to say No-No-No, but, if he's *that* hot..."
19
'Sound of Music' is the only movie where you are allowed to root for the nazis.
20
@19: You just made me spit coffee at my screen.
21
@19: Except for 'The Producers'.
22
I had the Broadway soundtrack on an LP as a kid... actually, I probably still have it around here.
23
@7.. i will amuse myself for hours imagining what mother rollins would have done had i brought a nun home...instead of a husband...
24
More SOM trivia: back when he was a pretty boy, Jon Voight debuted on Broadway in 1961 as Rolf Gruber - the Austrian teen who sings "I Am 16" with Liesl.
25
@24 And Liesl married him in real life. Seriously.
Lauri Peters the original Liesl, married Jon Voight the new Rolf, after he joined the cast. So I guess she waited a couple of years like Maria said, but still married a Nazi.
26
The real family were supposedly racist, homophobic fuckwits.

An ex worked for them in Vermont. He said that the family was loathed by most of their employees....and their was constant low level scandal because of the behavior of some of the men in the family towards local women....

They aren't the family portrays in the Disneyfied version.

Mourn your childhood, not the real VTs.
27
In real life, Maria was brought to the captain's rather modest home to tutor a sick child, not to become everyone's nanny. Marie had fits of extreme outrage and cruelty. Georg was actually a gentle and doting parent and was never at risk of having to work for the Third Reich. They married and had there more children before before simply boarding a train to leave Austria. The "family" never liked the false depiction of their life - and said so publicly - but made best they could with the fame it brought them.
28
There is also the infamous missing song sung by the Nazi SS officers "How do You Gas A Family Like The Von Trapps."

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