Flashback to Childhood – “My Favorite Things”

A few weekends ago our friends Ann and Leif visited us with their two children, Catherine and Henry. Catherine is four and testing out her voice by singing lines from Do-Re-Mi, a song from the movie The Sound of Music. Catherine got the movie as a Christmas present, but Ann had only just been introduced to the movie too.

I was surprised: The Sound of Music was a fixture in my childhood, as familiar as Lucky Charms cereal and She-Ra cartoons. We watched the DVD, and I think Ann and Catherine were a little surprised as I sang along.  And then I broke out the pictures from an as-yet unmentioned episode of our travels: the day Mark and I went on the official “The Sound of Music” tour in Salzburg, Austria.

As a kid, one of the big events in our house was when we got our first VCR. Suddenly it was possible to record things off the TV! To watch shows when you wanted to! This was many years before the creation of such wonders as Tivo and Hulu.  And blank VCR tapes being rather pricey (at least to my Dad), we got to watch the same tapes over and over (and over) again. One of the first movies my family recorded was “The Sound of Music”. Set in Salzburg, Austria, the film adaption of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was a favorite in our limited library.

I preface the rest of this post by saying I half expect to be mocked for this in the future, but so be it – the story will be told. It was even requested by Ann. Now let us go back in time…back to a warm day in August 2010…

Mark came to Austria nine years ago, and loved the mountains, music and beer. We both love Mozart, and since Salzburg is Mozart’s birthplace as well as the setting for “The Sound of Music”, it is an easy stop to add to our journey.

Happily, I find there is a tour that visits several of the film locations. And bonus – there is a sing-along to the film soundtrack while we ride! We sign up. The 70+ occupancy tour bus is full, mostly with women and a few reluctant partners.

Curiously, our British guide tells us most Austrians know very little about TSOM. Prior to the Broadway musical and U.S. film, a German company bought the rights to Maria von Trapp’s autobiography and made a film called “The Trapp Family” (such an efficient title) featuring German actors and bona fide Austrian folk songs. It was so popular with Germans and Austrians that they made a sequel “The Trapp Family in America”. Unlike the movie, in real life the von Trapps did not hike to Switzerland to escape the Nazis. They took a train to Italy, and then sailed to America where they eventually settled in Stowe, Vermont and opened an inn.

On the tour we learn lots of behind-the-scenes details about the film. Some funny, some disappointing, some surprising, such as:

• Remember Liesl, the oldest girl von Trapp? The oldest von Trapp child was actually a boy named Rupert.
• Christopher Plummer’s voice is not singing those songs. His parts are sung by a guy named Bill Lee. Apparently Plummer’s voice was good, but not quite in the same opera house as Julie Andrews’ voice, hence the dub.
• “Edelweiss” is NOT the Austrian national anthem. I suppose that it is sung in English is a giveaway. It is, however, the national flower.
• In the last scene, Christopher Plummer (Captain von Trapp) is shown carrying Gretl, the youngest child, on his back. The filmmakers used a body double, because the child actress had grown “too fat” for Plummer to carry her.

It was strange and little surreal to be on a tour bus filled with (mostly) Americans and Brits who knew all the songs too. Poor Mark, he just didn’t know what to make of all these women singing “My Favorite Things” at full volume. And it took me back to childhood, to long summer days when I would play with Jessica, my childhood best friend.

Jessica and I knew the words to every song, with the exception of the icky love duet between Maria (Julie Andrews) and Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). Too young for the romance, I suppose. We would practice singing in Jessica’s basement, among the gallons of bleach-treated tap water and stacks of canned goods (in retrospect, I think her family may have been survivalists).

Dressed in homemade costumes, we would regularly torture Jessica’s mom with our performances.  I recall we tried to make puppets and a stage, in homage to “The Lonely Goatherd”. Though my memory of the length of this Austrian infatuation is a little hazy, it must have lasted awhile because even now I can still recall the lyrics to most of the songs.

In retelling this story to Ann, we mused about whether children today would play the same way. Would they make up their own stories and build stage backgrounds and make costumes? Build their own world based on snippets of songs and imaginings of what another country is like? Or would the seductive sirens of video games, TV and on-demand video lure them into a slack-jawed zombie state?

I expect a lot of it comes down to what children are exposed to, and how much time they are unplugged from entertainment. On the other hand, technology can enable some really creative play, such as enabling digital storytelling with software like Toontastic.

The next morning the TV was off, and Catherine and Henry were no where to be seen. Then the sofa started giggling; the children had created tent forts, built with sofa cushions and throw blankets. Catherine was keeping an eye on the snow bunny built in the backyard, checking to see if any real rabbits had come to eat the carrot planted in the snow.

Today is a special day  – my dad’s birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!!!