The introduction scene with the Von Trapp children and Maria is like the March of the Siamese children scene. There were many musical numbers and scenes that "The Sound of Music" seemed to copy from"The King and I" as well. The subplot with Leisl and Rolfe's star-crossed romance was also borrowed from "The King and I", and Tuptim's forbidden romance, (as well as being influenced by Romeo and Juliet). Also borrowed from "The King and I" was the subplot about Maria going up against the Baroness, that never happened in real life, and was probably borrowed from "The King and I"'s depiction of Anna sparring with the King's other wives and court members for dramatic purpose.
This was a plot point probably borrowed from "The King and I", where we have the tough, scary, and belligerent Yul Brynner going up against free spirit Gertrude Lawrence.
The real Von Trapps complained as the movie was being filmed that Georg was being portrayed as an unfeeling monster at the beginning of the story, and the real man was not like that. He watched the helicopter coming over the mountains and at the right moment, he had a bullhorn and yelled to Andrews, "OK, Julie! Turn!"Ĭritics complained that Rodgers and Hammerstein were ripping "The Sound of Music" off of "The King and I", in that they took the true story of the Von Trapps and were just adding, copying, and embellishing plot points from "The King and I", their last big musical about a nanny and a brood of children, to make "The Sound of Music" more dramatic and cinematic.
To get the timing right, Breaux was hidden in nearby bushes. The entire company raced to the hill top, with the helicopter loaded with camera and crew, setting up the opening sequence of aerial shots, finally coming upon Julie Andrews spinning around on a hill top before breaking into the title song. The last day, as Robert Wise tells it, the sky opened with a bright glorious sunny morning. Twentieth Century Fox management gave the company departure travel orders. The company remained in their hotels waiting for the final sequence filming. After principle photography in Salzburg had finished, the weather was overcast, the country side shrouded in fog and mist, and heavy daily rain, prevented the opening hill top shot-set-up. The congested city traffic didn't stop Marc from sailing out into the traffic patterns planning each dance routine. Marc and Dee Dee, busy with creating the motivation for the dance sequences were followed on the sidewalk by Wise, while Marc planned each choreographed sequence out in the city street traffic lanes. Robert Wise and Marc Breaux, on their initial Salzburg location survey of the city's streets and squares, walking, discussing, planning the cutting of shots for each tracking dance sequence involving Maria and the Von Trapp children. I think perhaps reality is at the same time less glamorous, but more interesting than the myth." We're about environmental sensitivity, artistic sensitivity. (We were) about good taste, culture, all of these wonderful upper-class standards that people make fun of in movies like 'Titanic'. As Johannes Von Trapp said in a 1998 New York Times interview, "it's not what my family was about.
The children's reactions were variations on a theme: irritation about being represented as people who only sang lightweight music, the simplification of the story, and the alterations to Georg Von Trapp's personality. How did the Von Trapps feel about "The Sound of Music"? While Maria was grateful that there wasn't any extreme revision of the story she wrote in "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, and that she was represented fairly accurately (although Mary Martin and Julie Andrews "were too gentle-like girls out of Bryn Mawr", she told the Washington Post in 1978), she wasn't pleased with the portrayal of her husband. As a courtesy, the producers of the play listened to some of Maria's suggestions, but no substantive contributions were accepted. The family had very little input in either the play or the movie.
The American rights were bought from the German producers. The resulting movies, The Trapp Family (1956), and a sequel, The Trapp Family in America (1958), were quite successful. Maria sold the movie rights to German producers and inadvertently signed away her rights in the process. The Von Trapps never saw much of the huge profits this movie made.