I heard that The Sound of ...
Question: I heard that The Sound of Music was not the first movie made about the von Trapp family. Is this true? If so, what is the other movie called, and is it available on DVD?
Answer: Before the Broadway musical and beloved movie The Sound of Music (1965), the story of the von Trapp family was explored in two nonmusical German films in the 1950s, Die Trapp-Familie (The Trapp Family 1956) and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (The Trapp Family in America, 1958). Both were based on Maria Agathe Kutschera von Trapp’s 1947 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, which was also the basis for The Sound of Music. By all reports she was treated very badly by her German publisher and never made anywhere near the money she should have, given the book’s popularity. Ruth Leuwerik, a hugely popular German actress of the 1950s, starred as Maria, and Die Trapp-Familie was apparently an enormous hit in Germany. Both films are available on video in the PAL format, so unless you have a multistandard VCR, seeing them will be difficult — as far as I can tell, neither has ever been released in the U.S. A 40th-anniversary edition of The Sound of Music has just been released on DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
