Von Trapp Family didn't really climb every mountain

From Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com
Thanks to: http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2007/12/13/go/doc4761758ab4353480848029.txt

Re: Von Trapp Family, The Sound of Music, Von Trapp, Von Trapp Children, Christopher Plummer, Julie Andrews, Maria Von Trapp

"This is the West, sir: When the fact becomes legend, print the legend."

So goes the famous line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," director John Ford's classic meditation on the tendency to mythologize history without due regard to the record.

If the legend makes for "better" history, then so be it ... and so print it.

It doesn't have to be the West for that dictum to rule, of course.

When it comes to taking a historical episode and dramatizing it for the stage or the screen, few holds are barred.

Take, for example, the case of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music," which tells the story of Maria von Trapp from her beginnings in an Austrian nunnery to her eventual role as tutor to a widower baron's large brood - the Von Trapp Family.

She teaches them to sing, weds the baron and escapes with her new Von Trapp family from the invading Nazis.

As presented on the stage in 1959 and the screen in 1965, the musical adaptation was a gigantic success in each medium, delighting audiences around the world.

But it was definitely a case of "printing the legend," agrees Maria's singing granddaughter Elisabeth, who sees little connection between the Maria Julie Andrews played on screen and the Maria she called grandmother.

Following is a list of the fictions set forth in "The Sound of Music," per both Elisabeth von Trapp and historian Joan Gearin from the U.S. National Archives & Records Administration's Winter 2005 newsletter.

• Fiction: Maria was hired as governess for Baron von Trapp's children.

• Fact: She was actually hired to tutor one of his children, Maria, stricken with scarlet fever.

• Fiction: Maria and the baron were married right before the 1938 Nazi takeover of Austria.

• Fact: They were married in 1927, 11 years before the Nazi invasion.

• Fiction: There were seven von Trapp children.

• Fact: There were 10 von Trapp children (seven from von Trapp's first marriage, three with Maria).

• Fiction: Maria taught the children how to sing and harmonize.

• Fact: The children already were into their musical education long before Maria arrived.

• Fiction: The children were named Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta and Gretl.

• Fact: The children were named Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, Martina, Rosemarie, Eleonore and Johannes.

• Fiction: Baron von Trapp was aloof from his family and initially disapproving of their musical pursuits.

• Fact: Baron von Trapp was a loving, gentle soul who enjoyed his singing brood from the get-go.

• Fiction: Maria, the Baron and the kids eluded the Nazis by fleeing on foot over the Alps to Switzerland, suitcases and instruments in hand.

• Fact: The von Trapp clan left Austria and the Nazis by boarding a train to Italy, with suitcases and instruments stored in baggage.

• Fiction: Maria von Trapp was forever sweet and even-tempered.

• Fact: Maria von Trapp, says granddaughter Elisabeth, "was a forceful personality of mythical proportions."