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The Sound Of Music At 50: What Happened To The Real-Life Von Trapps?

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Classic musical ‘The Sound of Music’ has turned 50 years old this week, released on March 2, 1965. It cemented the stardom of Julie Andrews, who’d won an Oscar for her performance in ‘Mary Poppins’ the previous year, playing Maria, governess to the Von Trapp children, ruled over with military discipline by their father Georg, played by Christopher Plummer.

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Stuffed full of catchy musical numbers and stunning scenery, it’s retained its status despite rather than because of its relationship to the real events – and the real people – it’s based on. Let’s just say the story of the real Von Trapps isn’t quite whiskers on kittens…

The Real Maria…

Depicted as a free-spirited, flibbertigibbet type by Andrews, she stands in stark dramatic contrast to Plummer’s stuffy disciplinarian Georg. The real-life situation was almost the reverse. Georg was said to be warm and gentle, while Maria von Trapp has been described as having ‘the charm and will of a medieval matriarch’. Meanwhile, the younger daughter Maria said that her stepmother ‘had a terrible temper… and from one moment to the next, you didn’t know what hit her. We were not used to this. But we took it like a thunderstorm that would pass, because the next minute she could be very nice’.  She was also employed as a tutor to the children, not a governess.

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Maria and Georg…

The relationship with Georg wasn’t quite the whirlwind romance of the movie either, at least not at first. In her autobiography, she says she was blazingly angry on her wedding day, because all she wanted was to be a nun. “I really and truly was not in love,” she wrote. “I liked him but didn’t love him. However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children. I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after.” Maria and Georg actually married in 1927, a solid 11 years before the family decided to leave Austria.

So Long, Farewell…

One of the key sequences of the movie is the family’s dramatic mountain escape into Switzerland carrying suitcases and musical instruments during the Anchluss – when the Nazis annexed Austria. But that didn’t happen. Instead, they took a less exciting train ride to Italy, the plan being to end up in the US. Said the younger Maria: “We did tell people that we were going to America to sing. And we did not climb over mountains with all our heavy suitcases and instruments. We left by train, pretending nothing.” Captain Von Trapp was born in Zadar (now Croatia) and could claim Italian citizenship there, which is what he did. From there it was a steamship to England, then another to the US.

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The Von Trapps the US…

After arriving in the US, they toured as a singing group before the outbreak of World War II, and also toured back in Europe too. Then in 1942, Georg and Maria moved to Vermont, where the family opened a ski lodge in the city of Stowe in 1950, following the death of Georg from cancer in 1947. It’s still open today, run by Sam Von Trapp and his father Johannes, the tenth and youngest of the von Trapps, born in 1939 while the family were on a concert tour.

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The child stars…

The cast were all reunited in 2010 to mark the 45th anniversary of the movie on The Oprah Winfrey Show, including Andrews and Plummer – though Plummer has long spoken of his disdain for the movie, calling it ‘The Sound of Mucus’. Duane Chase (Kurt) is now a software engineer, Heather Menzies-Ulrich (Louisa) is cancer fundraiser in Michigan, Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) is the artistic director for the Sydney Theatre Company, Charmain Carr (Liesl) runs an interior design company, Angela Cartwright (Brigitta) is a photographer, Kim Karath (Gretl) modelled, studied art and married French actor Philippe L’Equibec, and Debbie Turner (Marta) had a florist business in Beverly Hills, before moving to Minnesota with her aircraft engineer husband.

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The Von Trapps today…

While Maria died in 1987 (her daughter Maria, the last surviving member of the original singers died in last year), they left a legacy of performing behind them. A new generation of Von Trapps are still singing today. The Von Trapp Children comprising Justin, Amanda, Melanie and Sofia perform as a group out of Portland, Oregon, with an EP out last year. Their great grandfather is Georg, and they originally started singing as a treat for their grandfather Werner Von Trapp, who died in 2007, but continued to sing together and tour after his death. They sing indie-pop and folk songs, citing influences like Beach House, Fleet Foxes and Francois Hardy.

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Image credits: Rex Features/Facebook