Just Sharing

[Rudolf Wagner]

Gosh, Salzburg is such a gorgeous city! It’s about a 4 hours’ drive from where we lived. Our grandparents had a holiday house in a village in the county of Salzburg (it’s the name of both the county and the capital city) that we spent some time almost every Winter to go skiing in the surrounding mountains (see photos below). Salzburg is beautiful, and we have very fond memories of our daily activities out in the snow and tranquil hours lazing on the top of the tiled stove like cats.

[Richard McGlenn]

Mona,

Having spent so much time vacationing near Salzburg I would have thought it was impossible that you all didn’t know more about “The Sound of Music” since so many of the movie locations were shot in the Salzburg area and they have such a tourist industry built around the movie.

https://www.salzburg.info/en/salzburg/the-sound-of-music

Did you girls really not have much of a clue about the movie growing up?

[Howard]

Hi Richard. Hope you don’t mind me putting my two bobs worth in here. I was taken to see this movie in 1966 as a fourteen year old by a foster mother. From my understanding of Mona and Lisa and their upbringing, I’d say there’d be several reasons for their apparent lack of interest in this movie.

Mona and Lisa were born nearly 30 years after the movie was made and the movie is set in 1930s Austria, with 1930s style music and Nazi war themes. By the time Mona and Lisa were teenagers, their interest in music was becoming more and more 60s influenced, with the Beatles in particular. They have always given the impression that they were never really taken with Austrian classical and folk type music and preferred Western style pop/rock. This is why they eventually left their homeland.

For people like me at the time (the same age as one of the Trapp children), a movie set in an exotic (for me) location during dangerous times with such beautiful music and scenery, would not have the same impact on two young teenagers for whom the scenery was all around and real, not just in a film, and the music and the story probably wasn’t their thing.

In a nutshell, we were looking into a Europe and story we didn’t know while they were looking out to a world of music they had only just discovered, had a passion for and wanted to explore. For them as young, guitar playing and singing teenagers, I’m sure ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and ‘Help’ would have been far more attractive to the MonaLisa Twins than ‘The Sound of Music’!

[Richard McGlenn]

Howard,

My question isn’t enquiring at whether they liked the movie or the music but rather were that not that aware of the film especially when having spent time in the region where it was filmed. Maybe Mona can give a little insight into how they missed all those billboards and buses in the area taking folks on “The Sound of Music” tours.