It might surprise fans to learn that the movie “The Sound of Music,” which turned 60 years old on March 2, was not one of the critics’ favorite things when it hit theaters in 1965.
Pauline Kael called the wholesome, Austria-set musical starring Julie Andrews a “sugar-coated lie” in a pan review that is said to have gotten her fired from McCall magazine.
The New York Times boiled down the film with songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to “romantic nonsense and sentiment.”
The Post was kinder, declaring the story “indestructibly appealing.” But critic Archer Winsten still had his gripes about how the real Trapp family history was “reorganized to ‘musical’ dimensions.”
None of their groans mattered. The flick climbed ev’ry mountain: the box office, the Academy Awards and the hearts and minds of multiple generations.
“The Sound of Music” stands among the most popular films ever made, won the Oscar for Best Picture and is the sixth highest-grossing movie of all time when sales are adjusted for inflation.
Getting it to the screen, however, was a struggle.
In the early 1960s, 20th Century Fox was being walloped by the hugely expensive debacle that was “Cleopatra” starring Elizabeth Taylor.
Tom Santopietro writes in his book “The Sound The Sound of Music Story: How A Beguiling Young Novice, A Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time” that the studio was on the verge of bankruptcy from the historical epic.
“Fox lost $15 million on actual film production, a then astronomical sum that forced the company to sell both stock and real estate,” he writes. “Chairman Spyros Skouras sold off the studio’s fabled and valuable 260-acre back lot to make up the cash shortfall.”
Skouras was fired before “Cleopatra” was even released, and Fox rehired the old head of production Darryl F. Zanuck. The sharp vet knew religious stories sell, even merely adequate ones. “The Sound of Music” was a go.
But the production was not without drama.
Composer Richard Rodgers wanted Andrews, the star of Broadway’s “My Fair Lady,” to play Maria. But Zanuck pushed back. She wasn’t a name. He had his sights set on Doris Day.
Trusting Rodgers, director Robert Wise and associate producer Saul Chaplin flew to California to screen a little unreleased movie Andrews had just shot: “Mary Poppins.”
“After precisely five minutes Wise turned to Chaplin and announced ‘Let’s go sign her right now, before anyone else beats us to it,” Santopietro wrote. The future “Poppins” Oscar winner signed on for $225,000.
Once on-set in Salzburg, her co-star, Christopher Plummer, let his loathing of “The Sound of Music” be known.
He hated the songs. The Captain von Trapp actor wrote to Wise, “I hope something can be done about ‘Edelweiss’ since it is very boring, schmaltzy and trite.”
And Plummer, who died in 2021 at age 91, thought the plot was gooey. He gave the film nasty nicknames, like “S&M” and “The Sound of Mucus.”
He felt he was being wasted, so he got wasted. The actor admitted on a DVD commentary that he was drunk for the music festival scene in which the family sings “Edelweiss.”
“I was shaking, I was terrified with a full orchestra the first time. Julie had to hold me, I would have fainted,” he said.
Later on, Plummer would quote actor Doug McClure, who once remarked: “Watching ‘The Sound of Music’ is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.”
Andrews told The Post in 2015 that Plummer had indeed been none too happy on-set, but came around later in life.
“I believe that, having done as much Shakespeare as he had, he [felt] a little out of his depth at being in a musical of such saccharine quality — he wasn’t sure whether he made the right choice,” the actress said.
“He never once was difficult to work with. We really adored each other from Day 1 and have stayed friends ever since.”
There were other snags.
Because of lousy weather and complex logistics, the iconic number “Do Re Me” took two months to shoot at nine locations. The process was marred by unexpected rain and cold spring temperatures.
Angelic Andrews, Santopietro writes, would actually play guitar and sing for the kids during unexpected breaks.
One of the little ones, Debbie Turner, who played Marta, had her baby teeth fall out during filming. Dentists made temporary false choppers for her.
“The Sound of Music” was finally released on March 2, 1965 and became the global hit that Fox needed.
The studio was in the clear — well, until other commercial failures in the 1960s and ‘70s. Its next knight in shining armor would be Luke Skywalker.
