The Sound of Music

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by fireftr18

My family and I are watching the movie and a question came up. We know that VonTrapp was a real person and sure the whole family was real. How much of the movie is true?

A lot was changed for the movie version. You can find a fairly decent bio of Maria here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_von_Trapp

One notable difference is that the marriage (at least initially) was not the romantic love match portrayed in the movie. Maria wanted to be a nun more than anything but married the Captain for the sake of the children and because the abbess told her it was "God's will" that she do so. They were also married for over a decade prior to fleeing Austria, and Maria had two children by the Captain during that time (another would follow after they fled the country).

They also fled to Italy (and then the US), not Switzerland, and I've read that if they'd done what they are portrayed as doing in the movie geography-wise they would've ended up even deeper in the heart of Nazi country, not neutral Switzerland, so the whole "escape over the mountains" thing was a dramatic invention.

They did get it right that Captain von Trapp had served with some renown in WWI, for his bio check here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Johannes_von_Trapp

He also wrote a book about his naval service in that war which I haven't read but I've been told it's quite good.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Salute-Me...nnes+von+Trapp