When we chose our word for this week, “favor,” I knew immediately what today’s song must be. It’s from The Sound of Music, which — amazingly when I acknowledge it as perhaps my favorite musical of all time — I have yet to talk about specifically at Sometimes a Song. I have, of course, featured the magnificent Julie Andrews, singing “I Could Have Danced All Night,” not from the film version of My Fair Lady, but from the cast album of the Broadway production in which she introduced the song. That Lerner and Loewe play ran for a staggering 2,717 performances, making it the longest-running musical of its era (six and a half years), a record it held for eight years. Why haven’t I written before about this musical and the boundlessly talented singer and actress who starred in the film version of it?
The Sound of Music is one of those films which formed my earliest ideas of musical theater when I saw it in its first release, with my father, on the big Cinerama screen at the theater in Montclair, New Jersey (a long ride from our rural town). As was my dad’s wont, we took along cousins so that I, the “only” child in my family, would have company for such an event. And I recall that by the end of the show, on the ride home in the car, my two cousins (girls, slightly older) and I had already memorized and were singing bits from the songs.
When I mention how formative the experience of seeing The Sound of Music on the big screen was for me, I’m not exaggerating. Julie Andrews was not new to me then, for Dad had already taken me (and the same two cousins) to the same theater to see Mary Poppins, a wonderful kids’ story made in every way enjoyable for children of ALL ages. We loved the movie, and so did Dad. A few years later, he took me (again, with different cousins) to Montclair to see “Oliver!” — a musical work of genius that was literally a lifetime in the making (read about the back story of that one, here.) And again, there we kids were, in the car on the ride home, singing songs we had just heard for the first time while watching the film. This can only happen when memorable and lyrical music is in the common air that children are exposed to.
I will frankly confess that the back-stories for The Sound of Music are too numerous for me to do them justice here. But let me throw in one or two things which pertain to how Julie Andrews “became” Maria von Trapp in the 1965 film from which our Sometimes a Song is taken. Julie Andrews was born to music hall entertainers (think Vaudeville), and she was a child actor and singer who worked hard all of her life, both before and after World War II. She was already well-known in England as “the prima donna in pigtails,” and her star was already rising, when at age 18, she was offered the lead in a Broadway Musical called “The Boyfriend” (an American version of a hit musical in London’s West End). The show ran a little over a year, but it introduced Julie Andrews to all of Broadway and put her in a position to be chosen for the lead in Lerner and Loewe’s “loverly” musical, My Fair Lady.
Oscar Hammerstein saw her in that role and predicted that she would become a sensation. He and Richard Rodgers were always interested in trying experiments with their work, and the new venue, television, was becoming a source of real art in those days. The composers wrote their only television musical, Cinderella, specifically for Julie Andrews. Evidently, they made Julie an offer she couldn’t refuse, because Cinderella was rehearsed and broadcast live on a Sunday night, while Julie was still performing in My Fair Lady eight shows each week. Such a schedule requires youth, training, and sheer stamina, all of which Julie Andrews had in abundance. But that teleplay was a huge hit and gave Julie an audience of 100 million viewers in the United States, far beyond the reach of Broadway. In those days, that number of viewers meant that three quarters of American televisions were tuned in to the broadcast.
Oscar Hammerstein did not live to see his prediction fulfilled in the splendid success of Julie Andrews’ career, as he died in 1960 while Julie was in rehearsals for her third Broadway play, Camelot. However, word has it that Julie was always on his very short list of singers/actresses to play Maria in any film adaptation of The Sound of Music. She had been a bit too young for the part in the original Broadway release, but had matured enough to do it to perfection by the time the film was cast. By then, also, “Mary Poppins” (for which she earned the Academy Award for Best Actress) had established her reputation among film producers as a box-office winner. And wouldn’t Oscar Hammerstein have been delighted with her performance?
One last back story: Maria von Trapp — who was known to be a bit of a pest during the filming of the movie version of The Sound of Music and who openly complained about historical inaccuracies in the original Broadway story line — nevertheless loved working with Oscar and Dick. She paid Oscar a public tribute while he was still alive, calling him a saint and adding that “he probably didn’t know it.” That’s some praise from her or from anyone.
So here I give you a wonderful song, even if not my favorite from the entire show, from one of my two favorite musicals of all time!
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. Learn more about our subscriptions by clicking the button below.
A little off the topic but fun fact: Richard Rodgers spent time the summer before my freshman year at Pius X School of Liturgical Music, where nuns and priests would come to learn Gregorian chant. Since he was Jewish, he wanted the opening prelude (“Dixit Dominus”)to be as authentic as possible. He succeeded beautifully and the story circulated for years at the college, when it was still Catholic (Manhattanville).😢
What a great dad to cultivate that love of good movies and music in you!
Two quick notes:
- my dad was friends with the von trapp family from staying at their ski lodge in Vermont for years and years.
- edelweiss (my fav song from the movie) was deliberately written to be an old Austrian folk song and was so well done that mark steyn says that German and Austrian audience members in the early years used to come up to the producers and (impossibly) say they remembered their parents singing it to them as kids!