The Sound of Music & Maria von Trapp story

The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise from a screenplay written by Ernest Lehman. It is based on the 1959 stage musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Lindsay and Crouse, itself based on the 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp. It stars Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, and Eleanor Parker. Set in Salzburg, Austria, it is a fictional retelling of her experiences as governess to seven children, her eventual marriage with their father Captain Georg von Trapp, and their escape during the Anschluss in 1938.

Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp (4 April 1880 – 30 May 1947) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy who became the patriarch of the Trapp Family Singers. After their naturalization as US citizens, the family name was changed to ‘Trapp’ without the ‘von’.

Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander of World War I, sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 GRT and two Allied warships displacing 12,641 tons. Trapp’s accomplishments during World War I earned him numerous decorations, including the Military Order of Maria Theresa.

His first wife Agathe Whitehead died of scarlet fever in 1922, leaving behind seven children. Trapp hired Maria Augusta Kutschera to tutor one of his daughters and married her in 1927. He lost most of his wealth in the Great Depression, so the family turned to singing as a way of earning a livelihood. Trapp declined a commission in the German Navy after the Anschluss and emigrated with his family to the United States.

Maria Augusta von Trapp DHS (née Kutschera; 26 January 1905 – 28 March 1987), often styled as “Baroness“, was the stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp Family. She wrote The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, which was published in 1949 and was the inspiration for the 1956 West German film The Trapp Family, which in turn inspired the 1959 Broadway musical The Sound of Music and its 1965 film version.

Agathe Gobertina von Trapp (née Whitehead; 14 June 1891 – 3 September 1922) was a British-Austrian heiress and aristocrat. She was the first wife of Georg Ritter von Trapp and the mother of seven children of the Trapp Family singers.

The Sound of Music received five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film also received Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture and Best Actress, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. Since its original release, the film is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) listed The Sound of Music as the 55th greatest American film of all time, and the fourth-greatest film musical. In 2001, United States Library of Congress.

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