Youngest von Trapp went AWOL to watch 'The Sound of Music'

STOWE, Vt. – It's impossible to hear the name von Trapp without conjuring up images of a certain beloved movie about a singing nun.

“The Sound of Music” stands as one of the most popular and highest-grossing films of all time. The 1965 musical won five Academy Awards, including best picture, and remains deeply embedded in the memories of people around the globe.

Some parts of the story are even true.

With March 2 marking 50 years since “The Sound of Music” premiered in New York, America Tonight’s Adam May sat down with Johannes von Trapp – the youngest of Baron Georg and Maria von Trapp's 10 kids. He's one of three children born after the timeframe (and the seven-child brood) portrayed in the movie.

Their Q&A has been edited for clarity and brevity. Editor's notes are italicized.

Adam May: Has there always been this struggle with the movie that you don’t want it to be about the movie, you want the story to be your real family?

Johannes von Trapp: No, but for the first 26 years of my life, it wasn’t about the movie, it was about my family. The film made us a household word around the world. "The Sound of Music" was one of five foreign films that was allowed to be shown in communist China.

In the movie, Sister Maria introduces the von Trapp children to music. In real life, the von Trapp family was singing long before Maria arrived as their governess. First, they sang for fun, then for necessity.

What parallels between your family's life and the movie are real?

I think it’s easier to say that the main theme of the movie is accurate and then pick out a few inaccuracies and correct them. One is the timeframe. My mother and father were married in 1927. Hitler invaded Austria in 1938. So there were 11 years there that went up in smoke in the movie ...

There’s a missing character in the film, Father Franz Fresno, the priest who was our conductor who was living with us while he was teaching at the University of Salzburg. He became our musical director. When my father lost his money in 1936 – his bank went broke – we began singing professionally to earn a living then. We couldn’t have done it without him ...

Liesl most closely corresponds to my sister Agatha, who was a very quiet, introspective, almost inhibited person. When we first saw the film and we saw the song and dance routine with the telegram messenger, we were sort of rolling in the aisles laughing at the thought that this should be Agatha.

Several other major elements in "The Sound of Music" were fictional. The movie's family used a performance for a Nazi audience as a trick to escape Germany. In reality, the baron refused to let his family sing for Hitler. And in real life, the family didn’t escape the Nazis by crossing the Alps, von Trapp said. They would have been killed. Instead, they took a train to Italy and continued on to America where they kept on singing.

What did singing do to your bond with your siblings?

Well, we were very close and yet we fought just as much as you might expect in any normal family.

Was that tough, getting up on stage and all of a sudden everybody had to smile and forget that you’re annoyed with your sister?

The arguments stopped the moment the curtain went up and the smiles came on. If you had a cold, you didn’t cough, you didn’t sniffle.

Baron von Trapp had been disdainful of having his children “sing for their supper” until finances demanded it – a sensibility passed on to the next generation. In America – out of financial necessity – the family turned their private Vermont home into a ski lodge – a reminder of the home they had left behind in Austria. Today, they’re adding a Bavarian brewery on the resort grounds.

What motivated your family to open a ski lodge?

It came from the unreality of having grown up in an aristocratic household where one just didn’t talk about money; it just wasn’t done. I remember once laying out a business scheme and one of my sisters looking at me and saying, "But we would only be doing that to make money." I said, "Yes, that’s the idea” ...

Do you remember watching that film for the first time?

I was 26. I was in basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I couldn’t get a weekend leave to come up to New York. I was able to get a friend who owed me a favor to sleep in my bunk that night and cover for my absence, and then another guy lent me his car.

So you went AWOL to go and see the movie?

That’s right! (laughs) I made it, checked into the hotel, they’d brought some civilian clothes down for me and suddenly, I was out of the Army for a few hours. It was very nice.

Holding the family’s tale together was Maria – the nun in training-turned-Baroness von Trapp. She wrote “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” that inspired "The Sound of Music." Her book was first made into a German film with the story rights going to the film's producers who in turn sold them to American producers to create the Broadway play “The Sound of Music” as well as the beloved movie. While the movie musical made the family known around the world, the von Trapps only indirectly cashed in on their famous name, but the legend surrounding their history is still going strong.

Your parents were immigrants to this country. And under the EB-5 visa program, you're fueling a new round of immigration. Do you see some parallels here?

I've always said that it's a privilege to help someone move to the United States. For all the mea culpas that Americans are constantly expressing, this is still probably the most wonderful place in the world to live and [has] the most opportunity in every way ...

My mother loved Austria, and for a long time she would go back to Austria every year. Then, she’d fly back and say, "Oh, Johannes, I’m so glad to be back here again! Now I can breathe." Because in Europe she felt oppressed by the centuries of history, tradition, class differences, all sorts of things. But here she felt able to spread her wings.

Why do Americans love the storyline of "The Sound of Music" so much?

It’s a masterpiece of moviemaking. It deals with so many themes that are fundamental to the human condition: Love of family, love of a man and a woman, love of country, love of home, and I think these themes all resonate with people. And then, the thought of overcoming obstacles.

 “Climb Every Mountain” is really very metaphorical. I’ve been told many times that people have felt inspired by the film.