Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2000

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism?The Sound of Music (1965) fails inGermany and Austria

RUTH A. STARKMAN, University of Utah

When The Sound of Music crews constructed a Salzburg market scene on location, theyaccidentally included a box with the words ‘Jaffa Oranges—Produce of Israel’ in thescene. Although editors excised the tell-tale prop before the � lm’s release, the studiohad already distributed some publicity photos of the still [1]. For many years after-wards, Twentieth Century Fox received letters from around the world inquiring aboutthe box of Jaffa oranges in a � lm set in 1938—10 years before the founding of Israel.That viewers would take such an interest in the � lm’s memorabilia and marginal detailssigni� es its enduring popularity. Indeed, this box of� ce hit, nicknamed ‘The Sound of

FIG. 1. The Sound of Music (1965) publicity still: Jaffa Oranges—Produce of Israel. Author’s collection.

0143-9685 print/1465-3451 online/00/010063-16 Ó 2000 IAMHIST & Taylor & Francis Ltd

64 R. A. Starkman

Money’, rescued Twentieth Century Fox from near bankruptcy in the early 1960s andreigned as Hollywood’s all-time grossing � lm until 1972 when it was surpassed by TheGodfather [2]. The viewers’ response also suggests a public interest in Hollywood’sportrayal of history. However, where The Sound of Music buffs intervened to show aHollywood studio their grasp of historic events, German-speaking audiences displayeda similar attentiveness to the � lm’s construction of history and yet rejected Hollywood’srendering of the Trapp family story. Despite its popularity in the USA and elsewhere,The Sound of Music, dubbed and retitled Meine Lieder, Meine Traume, ran for only 3–4weeks in West Germany and a few days in Austria before it was discontinued in thetheaters.

Some clues to the � lm’s failure can be found in the box of Jaffa oranges, as this imagerepresents the � lm’s repressed historical context. The box bore the name of a countryfounded and legitimized by the Western Allied governments in response to NaziGermany’s annihilation of European Jewry. It also symbolized a post-war condition inwhich nations were more or less reconciled by the dictum of a global economy. In sucha world, Austria purchased oranges from the newly established country of its formervictims, whose economy was in turn sustained by the USA. The Sound of Music arrivedin West Germany and Austria during the summer of 1966 representing the perspectiveof the Second World War’s ‘victor’, who now ruled the global economy. But was itsimply this global perspective that produced such a negative response? The Americantrade press presumed as much and even suggested the ingratitude of the locals, whomit described as basking ‘in the bonanza of tourist booty’ despite having rejected TheSound of Music at the box of� ce [3]. Yet, if this was indeed the case, what motivatedthis act of protectionism against American cultural intervention? Were German viewersexpressing a certain loyalty to their domestic cinema? And, � nally, what are the politicalrami� cations of such a response?

From the outset, it appears Hollywoods’s assumptions of local resistance to Ameri-can cultural intervention were correct. Austrians interviewed by Hollywood tradejournals reportedly objected to the lack of authenticity in everything, from the clothing,to the music score by Rogers and Hammerstein, to the split-location shots of Salzburgand the Trapp family villa [4]. However, if Hollywood’s image of Austria seemedreinvented from the American perspective, neither Hollywood’s globalizing approachnor its efforts at market domination were by any means new to German and Austrianaudiences. The American quest for domination of the world � lm market began in theinterwar era. Keen to adopt German cinema’s technological advances and formalinnovations, Hollywood also campaigned for the attention of German-speaking audi-ences. Such an interest generated much debate in German trade journals aboutAmericanization and the nation-building function of � lm. Whether or not Hollywoodactually attained its goal of world market domination, however, remains a matter ofdebate. In his recent study, Hollywood in Berlin: American cinema and Weimar Germany[5], Thomas Saunders has described the vicissitudes of Hollywood’s success inin� ltrating the Weimar � lm establishment. Where he stresses the enormous in� uenceand popularity of shorts and slapstick comedy in the � lms of Buster Keaton, CharlieChaplin and Harold Lloyd from 1924 until 1929, the number of American andGerman feature � lms shown in German theaters remained equal. Afterwards, theinvention of sound eventually enabled German producers to regain the feature � lmmarket. Other scholars have maintained that, despite American efforts, German boxof� ce records show that Germans have traditionally remained loyal to their own feature� lms [6].

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 65

Entertaining no different global aspirations than the Americans, both Weimar andNazi � lm establishments ultimately borrowed many of Hollywood’s styles of dramatiza-tion, sensationalism and publicity. Under Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany attemptedto emulate and instrumentalize Hollywood’s brand of visually stimulating mass enter-tainment for the purposes of securing the population’s conformity [7]. These effortsyielded roughly 1000 � lms, some of which rivaled Hollywood in their persuasivenonchalance [8]. After the war, Hollywood saw the Allied programs of ‘denazi� cation’as an ideal moment to attempt once again to secure the German market for its products[9]. Although many scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have emphasized thehegemonic role of the USA in exporting its � lm products to Germany, this culturaldomination was also contested by local loyalty to German feature � lms [10].

Given the long-standing competition for the German market, it would be wrong toassume that viewers in 1966 rejected The Sound of Music because they had suddenlygrown hostile to American cultural imperialism. Even under a post-war situation ofmassive American intervention, where the German � lm establishment expressed itsanxieties about the fate of its domestic product, German-speaking audiences them-selves were not always perturbed by Hollywood representations of culture, eitherAmerican or German. Older audiences remained well accustomed to the Hollywoodstyle of appropriation through consumption of American � lms and through Germanemulation, whereas younger viewers found a source of a new post-war identity inAmerican cinema. Star personalities in particular could retain their hold on youngeraudiences, even in a � lm shot on location, which thematized the past. In his study onGerman youth culture during the 1950s, Kaspar Maase argues for the special attractionof rebellious male Hollywood stars, who represented an anti-authoritarian civilian lifestyle. Referring to the cover of Bravo, the popular German fan magazine of that era,Maase describes the appeal of Marlon Brando even though the Hollywood star hadbeen on location in Germany in 1957 for the � lming of Young Lions, a � lm in which heappears in Nazi uniform. Maase makes much of the fact that Bravo chose to emphasizethe free-wheeling, masculine Brando in civilian attire while attenuating the pictures ofBrando in Nazi uniform to the margins [11].

Heide Fehrenbach and Gerhard Bliersbach also elborate on the younger generation’sresponse to Hollywood [12]. Fehrenbach comments on Germany’s response to thegender politics of American cinema and refers to Bliersbach, who presents himself as atypical (enthusiastic, by his account) German viewer whose masculine sense of self andpost-war German identity were shaped by Hollywood [13]. Bliersbach neverthelessdescribes The Sound of Music as the exception to the rule of American popularity. Wasthe � lm not masculine enough to attract young German males who used their spendingmoney to see such stars as Robert Mitchum, Cary Grant, James Dean and MarlonBrando? Having re� ected on his childhood dislike of the unmasculine gender politics ofthe Heimat� lm, Bliersbach refers to The Sound of Music as a Heimat� lm and suggests itmissed its moment: ‘The Sound of Music, one of the biggest box-of� ces successes of � lmhistory, failed in West German theaterhouses—its time had already past’ [14]. TheHeimat� lm, a cinematic form that � ourished during West Germany’s Adenauer andErhard eras, depicted ‘a dream world ful� lling the desires for a healthy Germany, forbeautiful German landscapes and naive, but noble German people’ [15]. If indeed TheSound of Music can be seen as an American interpretation of a Heimat� lm, it can alsobe seen as lacking the same kind of daring, sexually charged stars of its contemporaryHollywood � lms. However, if younger, often male viewers were a less likely potentialaudience, the � lm might still have appealed to older people, women and children, the

66 R. A. Starkman

FIG. 2. Die Trapp Familie (1956). Ruth Leuwerik as Maria in Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s highly-successfulGerman version of the Trapp family’s story. Publicity photo. Kranich Photo Berlin.

largest 1950s Heimat� lm audience, even as the genre began to falter amid the German� lm establishment upheavals of the early and mid-1960s [16]. These audiences,however, already had two beloved Heimat� lme on the same topic.

A decade before the Hollywood musical arrived in West Germany and Austria,Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s versions of the Trapp family story, Die Trapp Familie (1956)and its sequel Die Trapp Familie in Amerika (1958), had been two of the most popularGerman � lms of the 1950s [17]. Die Trapp Familie was no less vague about historicalplaces and situations than The Sound of Music, nor was it exactly authentic in itsstyle—the children wear playclothes that look like 1950s Hawaiian resort wear. In fact,it grandly displayed a 1950s local landscape in� uenced by American consumerism.Yet, Die Trapp Familie also balanced its American elements with the ethos of RuthLeuwerik, a popular post-war German actress who had remained in Germany [18] and,most importantly, a historical narrative with national appeal. Watching these � lmsalleviated Germans and Austrian from the need to repress the national socialist past.Instead, they could relive it in a revised, sanitized fashion, identifying with the � lm’splucky Leuwerik, who had resisted the call of Hollywood and with the Trapp family,who had opposed the Nazis. Because of the kind of conciliatory memory they pro-moted, Liebeneiner’s � lms succeeded in binding the public’s emotions on a large scale.To be sure, German and Austrian attachment to these Trapp family � lms remained sointense that it would endure well beyond the 1960s—long enough to afford Die TrappFamilie a fair revival in 1985.

Thus, The Sound of Music’s failure to compete with Liebeneiner’s � lms suggests

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 67

divergent attitudes toward Americanization, on the one hand and Hollywood treat-ments of Germany’s past, on the other. Depending on the age and gender of theaudience as well as the nationality of the � lmmaker, Americanization offered both achance at rebellion from Germany’s older generation and a vision of resplendent,homey material abundance of the sort depicted in Die Trapp Familie. However, TheSound of Music proved one particular American vision which evoked a response ofcultural protectionism because it competed both with a local product and with localunderstandings of history. Whatever complaints about the musical comedy’s inauthen-ticity or its culturally imperial Hollywood vision, these arose under the circumstance ofthe � lm’s intervention in processes of public memory [19].

As a Hollywood � lm with the historical backdrop of the Second World War, TheSound of Music raised issues which continue to vex Germans and Austrians today. Whoand what should be the purveyors of German historical consciousness? How shouldGerman-speaking audiences respond to American depictions of the Nazi past? To whatextent do Germans and Austrians have a right to shape their own national self-under-standing? Amid the struggle of German–American cultural relations, � lm has increas-ingly become the vehicle of public memory [20]. Remarkably, the situation remains asconfusing in the 1990s as it was 30 years ago, particularly in situations where Holly-wood ends up reinforcing revisionist views of German history. The overwhelminglypopular reception of Schindler’s List is one such recent example. Although Schindler’sList was an unapologetic product of the Hollywood � lm industry and, thus, an obvioustarget for criticism of American imperialism, the audience most upset about theblockbuster’s cultural appropriation consisted of European � lmmakers like ClaudeLanzmann [21]. Meanwhile, the German public, by and large, saw in the � lm a chanceto identify with ‘one good German’ who had acted virtuously during the war [22]. Onthe one hand, the popular reception of Spielberg’s � lm demonstrates the youngergeneration’s greater willingness to debate its Nazi past; on the other, it also reveals theextent to which memory and public efforts to construct memory remain opportunisticand interested in securing a positive national self-image. Where enormous ticket salesand public discussions characterized the arrival of Schindler’s List in Germany, TheSound of Music met the exact opposite response, despite the fact that it presented no lessof an opportunity for Germans to identify with the ‘good’ Trapp family over and againstthe Nazis. Not until the NBC television series Holocaust arrived in 1979 would there beanother Hollywood media event that could provoke debates about German history andits cinematic representation [23].

In 1966, on the eve of the Munich premiere of The Sound of Music, German theaterof� cials seemed to have anticipated the reaction of the local audiences. Wolfgang Wolf,the German manager of Twentieth Century Fox theaters cut the � lm after the weddingsequence and removed the last third which depicted the family’s escape from the Nazis.Hollywood staggered in surprise. Rumors circulated in the American trade press thatthe German theater managers had made the cuts because they were under pressurefrom neo-Nazi groups [24]. Director Robert Wise insisted the ending be restoredand that the German head of theater sales be punished [25] In an article entitled,‘Cutting of 20th Sound of Music to appease neo-Nazis costs Wolf his job’, Varietyreported that

Wolfgang Wolf is out as German sales director for [Twentieth Century] Fox.It was via his okay that the anti-Nazi segment had been spliced off of TheSound of Music. The repercussions from this knuckling under to lingering

68 R. A. Starkman

local. Hitlerian tendencies cause 20th [Twentieth Century Fox] technicians towork through the night to get the expurgated footage back into the � ve localcinemas in its original unabridged version [26].

Hollywood seems only to have been able to imagine the � lm’s supposed political forceas a source of its failure. A year later, an article entitled ‘Anti-Nazi ‘Sound hit all overbut not in Germany’, attempts to account for this lack of popularity and propose a newmarketing strategy.

Although the principal reason for apathy toward the � lm has not beenpinpointed, it is widely felt that the anti-Nazi aspects of the � lm have militatedagainst its German acceptance … The � lm in some countries is into its secondyear in which it opened, but in such German cities as Berlin and Munich, itwas pulled after four weeks, three in other cities … Whether the � lm will begiven another chance in Germany later has not been determined but 20th[Twentieth Century Fox] evidently is hoping that the news of its success inother countries will eventually work back into Germany, creating a ‘want-to-see’ feeling [27].

Articulating its understanding of Germany’s post-war audience in the same breath at itsconcern about generating markets, Hollywood imagines a sort of international con-sumer peer pressure exerted by other audiences it reached with greater success.

International enthusiasm never moved the German-speaking audience. In the end,Hollywood settled for implanting Sound of Music attractions for tourists in Salzburg.But even as it was snubbed by locals, The Sound of Music became one of the West’s coldwar endi� ces in remembering Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria to the ThirdReich. In fact, the Hollywood musical offered a chance to remember that differed littlefrom that of its German precursors, the two Liebeneiner � lms.

It is not that The Sound of Music was such a ‘war � lm’. There is no war to be seen,no gun� re, no archival footage, no Kristallnacht , no cheering crowds in Salzburg’spublic spaces. Nor is it that Austrians just wanted ‘to forget’. Indeed, the reception ofThe Sound of Music had more to do with the way in which German-speaking audienceswanted to remember and the fact that they already had their own versions of the Trappfamily story which would help them do so.

Remarkably enough, however, The Sound of Music offered a chance to rememberwhich differed little from that of its German precursors. Both the American andGerman versions of the Trapp family story mobilized one of the most tenacious mythsof the Cold War era—the myth that Austria was Hitler’s � rst foreign conquest on theeve of the Second World War. Popularly remembered as ‘the rape of Austria’, thisimage of Austria as the supine female to Nazi aggression was no simple local lore.Rather, it was considered a historical truth of� cially endorsed by the four Alliedgovernments in the Moscow Declaration [28]. Signed in early November 1943 byFrance, the UK, the USA and the USSR, the Moscow Declaration named Austria as ‘the� rst free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression’ [29] Substantiating the myth ofAustria’s victimization, this decree enabled the West to excise the memory of thecheering crowds of 1938 and helped lay the foundations for post-war attitudes towardsAustria which remained largely unchallenged until the Waldheim Affair in 1986.Employing the myth of Austria’s victimization, Die Trapp Familie rendered Austria asymbolic Germanic Heimat where the inhabitants rejected Nazism. This fantasmatic‘Großdeutschland’ image enabled Germans as well as Austrians to identify with theTrapp family, as ‘resistors’ of national socialism and to view themselves as ‘victims’ of

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 69

a regime which ‘invaded’ their private lives. Meanwhile, The Sound of Music projectedonto Austria an American Cold War longing for a wholesome nation steeped inauthentic traditions and endowed with special powers of resistance against invaders.Imagining Austria as a safe, uncorrupted tourist playland for American post-warculture, the Hollywood musical displaced both Jews and Austrians (the would-bevictims) from its own fantasmatic image of a national ‘home’.

While these two nationally self-interested narratives about the Anschluß appealed totheir respective local audiences, both the German and American � lm versions occludethe Transatlantic element of Maria von Trapp’s original memoirs. Entitled The Story ofthe Trapp Family Singers (1949) in English [30] and Die Trapp Familie. Vom Kloster zumWelterfolg (Frick 1952) in German, Maria von Trapp’s autobiography is � rst andforemost an emigrant’s tale that views the events of 1938–1945 from the lens of theAmerican culture of the immediate post-war period. Most signi� cantly, the story, incontrast to the German and American � lms it spawned, focuses less on the Anschlußthan on the question of assimilation to a new culture and new times. Indeed, its greatestenergy lies in retracing the steps from refugee life to the American dream. When Mariavon Trapp wrote her memoirs the Trapp family was still ascending to the height of itspopularity as an American institution that included a roadshow, radio music concerts,books of recorder music, Christmas carols and family recipes and a summer camp andski lodge.

Maria von Trapp describes her family’s early struggle for success in the USA as acon� ict between their native and adoptive cultural aesthetics. As she sought perform-ance outlets for her musical troupe, an American producer con� ded that Americancompanies were reluctant to sign such a dowdy, foreign-looking group singing long andheavy religious pieces. Apparently, the Baroness lacked ‘sex appeal’ (p. 180). Writingin 1949, from the perspective of an already seasoned and of� cially naturalized Ameri-can citizen, Maria attempts to reconstruct her initial Austrian naivete: ‘So back I walkedto Steinway Hall. On the way I mused to myself whether “sex appeal” was somethingyou put on your head, whether it is part of your appearance, whether you buy it by theounce or the inch (p. 181).Once in the music producer’s of� ce at Columbia Concerts,she is told

It has nothing to do with your musicianship, I want you to understand … Stillit’s the worst program I’ve ever heard … That piece by Bach is forty-� veminutes! That’s for music enthusiasts, but do you think people across thecountry want to listen by the hour to quaint ancient tunes? … But by far theworst thing is your appearance … No charming smile, and no good lookseither … those long skirts, high necks, hair parted in the middle, braids in theback, shoes like boys, cotton stockings! Can’t you get decent store clothes soone can see your legs in nylon stockings, get pretty high-heeled shoes and puta little red on your face and lips? (p. 181).

So much for the Austrian look and sound. But the industry’s vision of totally Americanhomogeneous looks also proved naive. For Maria’s efforts to reinvent and preserve thegeneral Austrian aura of the group—with a few concessions about rouge and smiles forthe children, extra yodeling and little down-home humor—sold better than theircontractors ever imagined. This hybrid image lent a little showbiz magic to theirAustrian fairy tale and launched the Trapp Family Singers on stage. In 1949, Maria hadno idea what further transformations were to come with the � lm versions. But shewould later regret having sold the rights to her story to another emigrant, Wolfgang

70 R. A. Starkman

Reinhardt, the son of Weimar and Salzburg impressario, Max Reinhardt, for a mere$6000 without the possibility of royalties [31].

In contrast to Maria von Trapp’s text, Die Trapp Familie’s central narrative interestremains the Anschluß itself. Likewise, Die Trapp Familie in Amerika, although itcontinues the family’s life story in the USA, is more of an epilogue to the events of theAnschluß that depicts a happy end for a family who rejected Nazism. Such thematicsmust be considered in the context of the � lm’s director and his connection to theformer Nazi establishment. Wolfgang Liebeneiner was an actor/director, who bene� tedfrom the exodus of Germany’s entertainment personalities in the 1930s and continuedto work in � lm and theater after the war into the 1980s. In 1938, Joseph Goebbelsdescribed Liebeneiner in his dairies: ‘he is young, modern, eager and fanatical. I amlooking for such people’ [32]. Goebbels later named Liebeneiner an honorary doctor in1942 and made him UFA production chief in 1943. Post-war critics have calledLiebeneiner ‘a symbol of the continuity in German � lm’, a master of ‘the cult of theunpolitical [33] and a ‘technician of perfect mediocrity, who made neither especiallybad nor especially good � lms’ [34]. These descriptions also correspond well with hisbiggest post-war commercial successes, the Trapp family � lms. Filled with sentiment,heroism and nostalgia for a functioning private sphere, Die Trapp Familie and Die TrappFamilie in Amerika are by no means ‘fanatical’ in the values they attempt to reinforce.Nor are they overt apologies for the erstwhile Nazi director and his audience.

Rather, the � lms display a strange combination of Nazi and post-war aesthetics. Likemany Nazi � lms of the 1930s and 1940s, the post-war Trapp family � lms remaintenaciously, almost pedantically faithful to the original literary text, but articulate theirpolitics with visual prologues and formal techniques that comment on the action [35].For example, Liebeneiner places two socially critical scenes, one of female competitionfor the Baron’s heart and another, a discussion of the Austrian bank failure of 1931, ina claustrophobic study � lled with bored, frivolous-looking wealthy people. Thesepeople both look and act impotent in such a manner that it implicates them in thefailure of interwar society. Here, the � lm’s critique recalls the romantic anti-capitalismand social reaction of Veit Harlan’s scenes of the French-in� uenced court in Der grosseKonig (1942). However, these aesthetics, which are reminiscent of Nazi � lm, contradictDie Trapp Familie’s post-war quality, its otherwise indulgently voyeuristic fantasy ofmaterial plenitude. Consisting of long takes of the villa’s historic architecture, baroquefurniture and resplendent Christmas festivities Die Trapp Familie appears for the mostpart an opportunity for post-war consumers to identify with the wealthy. Seeminglyeven more contradictory given the � lm’s conservative critique, the scenes which appearmost covetous of the family’s means are those which purvey the � lm’s revisionistmessage. During the children’s production of a Christmas shadow play of SleepingBeauty, the action comes to a halt for nearly 10 minutes. This lavish sequence, whichshows how these happy, tuneful nobles possess enough resources to organize anelaborate dramatic production, tells the story of a fairy tale heroine who provides anallegory for Austria. Sleeping Beauty recalls the Baron’s response to the Anschluß,‘Austria … you are not dead. You will live in our hearts. This is only sleep. We promisewe will do all we can to help you wake up again’ [36].

In addition to this image of Austria as Sleeping Beauty, the � lm offers a secondallegory for the Anschluß. Die Trapp Familie opens with a perspective from NonnenbergAbbey. A group of nuns walk past on the way from morning vespers and then the starRuth Leuwerik appears. When the abbess tells her she must leave to become agoverness to the Trapp family children, the camera provides a long shot of the chapel

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 71

and altar where Maria goes for one last prayer, then she leaves through the gate andlooks over the city of Salzburg. This is the � rst and one of the few outdoor shots. Thecamera pans right over the skyline and holds for a moment with a shot of the actressfrom the back looking contemplatively at the city. Reminiscent of Nazi � lm’s romanticimages of heroes depicted from the back, this shot both establishes the uniqueness ofits historic setting and also universalizes the situation of the young novice. The � lm’s1950s public is encouraged to forget its particular post-war situation and identify withan innocent pausing to look at a city where a new life adventure awaits. A vision ofindisputable chastity, Leuwerik presents a second, alternative allegorical embodimentof Austria. In this case, her role is not the passive slumbering one of Sleeping Beauty, butrather an active, af� rmative one. She both recalls the image of Austria as the womanviolated by ‘Hitlerite aggression’ and reinvents Austria as the plucky heroine who resistsa brutish force: Austria as virgin.

When the Anschluß comes, it literally arrives knocking on the door. Here, Die TrappFamilie duplicates the setting of The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, when the familyis sitting in the living room listening to the radio when it hears the announcement of theAnschluß. The butler, Franz, who is depicted in the � lm as a kindly old man, stepsforward and makes what seems to be an unlikely pronouncement that he has been amember of the Nazi Party for 3 years. Franz says to the Captain ‘You mustn’t forgetto hang the � ag’, while the Captain, still stunned from the news, responds ‘What � ag?’.Franz then gently and con� dently says ‘the Nazi � ag’. Although he is a party memberhis presence in the house is depicted as a lesser intrusion than the rude knock at thedoor from the local Nazi leader, Vogler, who demands to know why the family is not� ying a Nazi � ag. This crude individual stands in the doorway and looks sinister withthe evil gap-toothed smile of a cartoon villain. His presence leaves no question as towhat the Nazi movement is about: these are brutish authoritarian individuals whothreaten the peace of the private sphere. The exchange between the Captain and Voglerpresents the positions for and against Nazism as a battle of propriety: Vogler salutes andshouts ‘Heil Hitler! Well … you are in charge here? Why didn’t you put a � ag upoutside?’. Von Trapp responds, ‘I want you out of my house!’. Vogler, momentarilyfrustrated in his attempt at accessing the Trapp family home, resorts to more crudity:‘We’re aware of all’, he says and suggests that the Baroness has been known to pay alittle too much attention to ‘a certain clergy man’. Insinuating an implausible in� delityin the family’s home, this cartoon � gure at once demonizes and ridicules Nazism for theaudience.

In addition to creating an image of national socialism as completely alien to thehappy lives of these Austrians, Die Trapp Familie also endeavors to palliate the image offormer Nazi Party members. Where Vogler embodies an invasive, authoritarian ThirdReich, Franz conjures a different set of associations. Although Franz is a party member,he helps the family escape and lies to Vogler when the latter returns to recruit theCaptain. Representing the kind of individual whose heart was never really in hispolitical activities during the war and who, in moments of crisis, chose the family overand against the regime, Franz allows a 1950s audience to account for the seemingcontradictions of their memories of themselves.

Identi� cation with the Trapp family and its household not only extends imaginaryabsolution to an audience of Germans and Austrians alike, it transforms them intoexiles and transports them to a fantasmatic place—New York City. In the sequel, DieTrapp Familie in Amerika, Liebeneiner makes a few subtle changes in Maria vonTrapp’s story for the sake of this audience. In the sequence where the Baroness hears

72 R. A. Starkman

from the American music industry executive that she lacks ‘sex appeal’, Ruth Leuw-erik’s character, in contrast to the real Maria von Trapp, who eventually accommodatessome of the demands of the industry, indignantly tells the executive he is idle comparedto her who ‘has to face all of America’. He responds by saying, ‘darn it, I’ve never seensuch a woman! I’ll manage you.’ This small refusal and subsequent triumph providesa German-speaking audience with a little tale of resistance against the American cultureindustry. It shows how a European heroine can win over an American businessmaneven in an era of the USA’s massive cultural intervention in Germany and Austria. Yet,this culture industry tale proved less compelling than the Anschluß drama of theprevious Die Trapp Familie. Despite its bigger budget and ample footage of New YorkCity and Vermont, Die Trapp Familie in Amerika did not fair as well at the German boxof� ces [37].

In 1960, Twentieth Century-Fox was planning to make a � lm version of the Rogersand Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music, which starred Mary Martin and hadbeen running on Broadway since 1959. After purchasing the rights to the show, thestudio also bought up the rights to Die Trapp Familie and Die Trapp Familie in Amerikain order to protect its investment. The two German � lms were combined, dubbed intoEnglish, retitled The Trapp Family and then released in the USA in March 1961.Americans who had seen the Rogers and Hammerstein musical and expected showtunes were a bit put off by the sacred music and Volkslieder. Hollywood expressed littleenthusiasm as well.

Robert Wise, the director Twentieth Century-Fox ultimately hired, devoted his chiefefforts to making a visually exciting, escapist narrative about a picturesque country.Where Die Trapp Familie studiously describes the Austrian bank failure of 1928 andsuggests some of the turmoil of the interwar period, The Sound of Music reconstitutesinterwar Austria as a historic and tourist-attracting place. This shift in cultural atmos-phere is best characterized by the substitution of the puppet play The Lonely Goatherdfor Sleeping Beauty. Instead of staging an allegory of a slumbering Austrian people, themusical invokes and reinvents Austria’s folk culture in the form of a kitschy puppet playwith wooden marionettes dressed up in traditional clothing. This commodi� cation ofAustria’s local culture also extends to the landscape, which, like the puppet play, seemsto have appealed to a public longing for authentic landscapes and traditional ways of life(at least outside of the actual place the � lm represents). A critic who remarked on thearti� ciality of the Broadway musical’s setting, extolled the enormous impact of theestablishing landscape shot in the Hollywood � lm:

… the stage show, for all its Franz and Brigitta, could have taken place in theWest Bronx … [in the � lm] … one shot of Andrews whirling alone in thegreen hills as the camera swoops down and the title song whips in havingpassed into the nation’s memory [38].

Conveying Austria’s authenticity, the � lm’s landscape serves a nation-building functionfor American viewers whose collective memory beholds a vision of a mythicallywholesome land. If Americans lack the Heimat� lm genre, then this musical, as viewedby Americans, � ts the fairy tale genre [39]. Like all fairy tales, which express a kind ofUtopian longing, The Sound of Music invents Salzburg’s landscape as a place of mythic,serene beauty uncomplicated by social questions. In screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s � rstfull version of the opening sequence, he describes his vision of Salzburg as seen fromthe air—mountains, lakes and castles are enveloped in ‘utter’ reverent silence and theabsence of human life and commerce is conspicuous. Lehman commented: ‘no people,

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 73

they would be foreign to this � oating shot’ [40]. Beginning high in the snowy BavarianAlps ‘alive with music for a thousand years’, this establishing shot recalls the GermanBerg� lm, mountain � lms of the 1920s, which also marveled at the monumental eternityof nature. The helicopter swoops down on an in� nitesimally small � gure on the groundand Julie Andrews’ introductory number begins.

Once this sequence is over, the credits follow in a sequence of stills showing varioushistoric vistas in Salzburg. The last of these is a shot of Salzburg with the Monchsburgin the background, with golden script that announces the setting: ‘Salzburg in the lastgolden days of the nineteen thirties’. Just as in Die Trapp Familie, Nazism is presentedas an external invading force, which, also in keeping with American Cold Warparanoiac fantasies, has in� ltrated the household. In The Sound of Music the butlerFranz appears as a sinister, stony-faced character from the moment he opens the doorto Julie Andrews. Sure enough, he turns out to be an un� inching collaborator [41].Likewise, Rolf is such an ardent Nazi that he even rejects his sweetheart Liesl in publicand tells her he has more important things to do now that the Anschluß has come. Inthe Broadway musical, Rolf takes one last look at Liesl and does not betray the familyas they try to escape. The Hollywood � lm, in contrast, makes a gesture more similar tothat of Die Trapp Familie, which demonizes Nazism as thoroughly other—only hereNazism appears not as a gap-toothed villain, but rather a disease that singing telegramboys can also catch.

Hiding in the graveyard at the abbey, the family escapes the searching rays of theNazi � ashlights, but when Liesl sees Rolf among them she gasps, he stops, turns, takesanother look and the family comes out of hiding. In a tense stand-off moment, theCaptain motions his family out of the graveyard and takes Rolf on himself.

Captain: Wait a minute … Maria … children … run.Captain: Put that down.Rolf (frightened): It’s you we want, not them. Don’t make another move or I’llI’ll shoot.Captain: You’re only a boy. You’re not one of them (he moves forwardslowly).Rolf (desperately): Stay where you are!Captain: There’s still time for you to be saved. Come away with us before it’stoo late …Rolf (panicking): Not another step I’ll kill you!Captain (reaching for the pistol): Give it to me, Rolf …Rolf (sobbing): Didn’t you hear me? I’ll kill you!Captain (gently taking the gun away): You’ll never be one of them …Rolf (cries out): Lieutenant! (he dashes inside the Abbey crying)* They’rehere Lieutenant. They’re here!!*An earlier version adds ‘desperate to disprove what he’s afraid is true’ butthis is dropped to make his commitment to Nazism appear less ambiguous.

Although the screenplay describes the Captain as ‘gently taking the gun away’, in the� lm sequence, the Captain steps close to Rolf and abruptly grabs the gun from him.This display of masculinity suggests the Captain retains his power and potency despitethe fact that he has lost his country to the likes of Rolf. Austrian collaboration,meanwhile, is represented as unmasculine; Rolf is ‘only a boy’. Surrounded by doubtand cowardice, Rolf appears incapable of responsibility for his political af� liation.

74 R. A. Starkman

FIG. 3. Confronting Nazism. The Austrian Nazi Captain Confronts Rolf von Trapp in the graveyard.The Sound of Music. Publicity photo, 20th Century-Fox.

The Captain, meanwhile, transforms his identity from an authoritarian military maninto an emotional patriot and this transformation ultimately enables him to bond himwith his fellow Austrians. Lit up by a spotlight during a nighttime � lming shot, Captainvon Trapp tells the audience he will sing ‘a love song’ and begins a refrain of ‘Edelweiss’which he had � rst sung at home with his family. This is the same song that wins JulieAndrews’ heart when she watches him singing to his children [43]. Here, ‘Edelweiss’goads the Nazi villains as they sit disgruntled looking in the foreground while facelessextras in traditional Austrian attire begin to join in and sing ‘Edelweiss’ with theCaptain. The Captain’s audience forms an until-now unseen and unheard ‘silentmajority’ who, led by this one man, stand up for their country. This is the last imageof Austrians seen as a collective in the � lm. They, along with the nuns who strip theNazi cars of their spark plugs, are the resistors of the Anschluß.

Captain von Trapp then leads his family over the Alps to a refrain of ‘Climb Ev’ryMountain’—the very same song which inspires Maria to pursue her ambivalent noblesuitor. With this doubled image of exodus and gold-digging marital ambition suggestedby the refrain of ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain,’ the camera zooms out and leaves the audiencewith an image of individuals who left home and country in order to climb the mountainof prosperity. However, the shot makes little sense regarding the geography of the

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 75

FIG. 4. Climb every Mountain. The doubled image of exodus and Maria’s gold-digging maritalambition. The Sound of Music. Publicity Photo, 20th Century-Fox.

region. The mountains above Salzburg border on Germany, not Switzerland and, thus,the family climbs toward ‘freedom’ in the direction of Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s eagle’snest. Such a blatant disregard for the landscape suggests that the Hollywood studioimagined an audience who would either not know its geography or would be sotransported by the narrative that it would not register the fact that the Trapp family wasmarching off to Nazi Germany. Perhaps The Sound of Music fans were indeed trans-ported enough not to worry about the direction in which the Trapp family marched tofreedom.

German audiences, meanwhile, ignored and rejected Hollywood’s musical comedyout of loyalty to their own cinematic versions of the Trapp family story, Die TrappFamilie and Die Trapp Familie in Amerika. Yet, these home-grown ‘German’ productsalso bespoke the style of the most Hollywood identi� ed of all former Nazi directors.Liebeneiner’s � lms, which differed little formally from the � lms of the 1930s and1940s, enabled German-speaking audiences to see themselves both as prosperouspost-war citizens and as heroic actors who resisted the evil forces of their nation’shistory. Although The Sound of Music conveyed similar thematics, it remained a storytold by the conquering power. Audience attachment to the two Liebeneiner � lms thusdemonstrated the importance of a domestic population’s sense of ownership over itsown history; anything else became an outside appropriation that offended the localsense of proprietary and autonomy. American trade journals were correct then in their

76 R. A. Starkman

assumption that German-speaking audiences were hostile to American cultural imperi-alism. But this animosity arose not because American cinema had proven so completelytriumphant over the German product and certainly not because The Sound of Musicimparted any politically critical message. But, rather, because the musical comedythreatened local historical self-understanding. In the end, The Sound of Music’s fate inGermany and Austria becomes a strange tale of a local effort to preserve its sense ofcultural sovereignty against Hollywood, the unlikely, unintended and unsuccessfulcosmopolitan bearer of enlightenment, whose equally specious historical vision failed tocompete with a domestic product.

Correspondence: Ruth A. Starkman, San Francisco, CA, USA. E-mail:rstark@cinemaspace.berkeley.edu

NOTES

[1] For a discussion of this publicity photo and other memorabilia see Julia Antopol Hirsch,‘The Sound of Music’: the making of America’s favorite movie (foreword by Robert Wise) (Chicago,1993).

[2] Robert Sklar, Movie-made America: a cultural history of American movies, revised edn (New York,1994), p. 327. Grease surpassed its earnings as a musical in 1978.

[3] Whitney Williams, ‘Salzburg snubs The Sound of Music but basks in the bonanza of tourist bootyleasing of 20th-Fox brought to the town,’ Variety; 20 June (1969).

[4] Ibid.[5] Thomas J. Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin: American cinema and Weimar Germany (Berkeley, 1994.)[6] Joseph Garncarz, ‘Hollywood in Germany: the role of American � lms in Germany,’ in David W.

Ellwood and Rob Kroes, eds, Hollywood in Europe: experiences of a cultural hegemony (Amsterdam,1994), pp. 94–138.

[7] On Nazi attitudes, see Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi feature � lms and their afterlife(Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 103–112.

[8] Ibid; Julian Petley, Capital and Culture: German cinema 1933–1945 (London, 1979); Peter Reichel,Der schone Schein des Dritten Reiches: Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus (Munich, 1991),pp. 180–207; Karsten Witte, ‘Nationalsozialismus,’ Geschichte des deutschen Films, pp. 119–170.

[9] Hans-Peter Kochenrath, ‘Kontinuitat im deutschen Film,’ Film und Gesellschaft in Deutschland.Dokumente und Materialien, Wilfred von Bredow and Rolf Zurek, eds (Hamburg 1975),pp. 286–292. For a polemic about US imperialist interests in maintaining status quo in Germany’s� lm industry after the war see Klaus Kreimeier, Kino und Filmindustrie in der BRD: Ideologieproduk-tion und Klassenwirklichkeit nach 1945 (Kronberg, 1973). For a discussion of the situation inAustria, where US cultural intervention dealt local entertainment industries, particularly � lm, alethal blow, see Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-colonization and the Cold War: the cultural mission ofthe United States in Austria after the Second World War, trans., Diana M. Wolf (Chapel Hill, 1994).

[10] Heide Fehrenbach shows Hollywood’s role in American occupying efforts to have been highlycontested especially where the Heimat � lm was concerned. See her Cinema in DemocratizingGermany: reconstructing national identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill, 1995), p. 164.

[11] Kaspar Masse, Erkundungen zur Jugendkultur der Bundesrepublik in den funfziger Jahren (Hamburg1992), pp. 113–115.

[12] Ibid., pp. 166–168.[13] Gerhard Bliersbach, So grun war die Heide … Der deutsche Nachkriegs� lm in neuer Sicht (Weinheim,

1985), p. 19. Bliersbach suggests that American cinema was a kind of liberation from the parentalethos, see pp. 38–40. Fehrenbach, ibid., pp. 166–168. See also Kaspar Maase, Bravo Amerika,ibid., pp. 95–103.

[14] Ibid., p. 169.[15] Bliersbach, ibid.[16] In 1961 Joe Hembus attacked German cinema for its calculated historical oblivion. Der deutsche

Film kann gar nicht besser sein (Bremen, 1961). On German � lm in the 1960s see Norbert Grob,‘Film der schziger Jahre. Abschied von den Eltern,’ Geschichte des deutschen Films, ibid.,

American Imperialism or Local Protectionism? 77

pp. 211–248. West German � lmmakers on Film: visions and voices, Eric Rentschler, ed. (New York,1988), p. 2.

[17] Geschichte des deutschen Films, Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes and Hans Helmut Prinzler, eds(Berlin, Stuttgart, 1993), p. 538.

[18] Walter Grieder, Ruth Leuwerik. Grosse Karriere mit kleinen Hindernissen (Liestal, Switzerland,1962), pp. 109–110.

[19] In his analysis of the famous Historikerstreit, the historians’ con� ict of 1986, Charles Maier hasshown the importance of memory and acts of commemoration in Germany’s efforts at nationalself-understanding. Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: history, Holocaust and German nationalidentity (Cambridge, MA, 1988). See also James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaustmemorials and meaning (New Haven, 1993).

[20] Kaes, ibid. See also Robert A. Rosenstone, Revisioning History: � lm and the construction of a newpast (Princeton, 1995).

[21] Interview with Claude Lanzmann by Daniel Heiman of Le Monde, published in Hebrew in theIsraeli Weekly Zeman Tel Aviv 3 March (1994), pp. 48–50. Also, Claude Lanzmann, interview onMoving Pictures, BBC 2 television 4 December 1993. ‘… typical of American Jews, wanting toappropriate the Holocaust’.

[22] Lilliane Weissberg, ‘The tale of a good German,’ in Yosefa Loshitzky, ed., Spielberg’s Holocaust:critical perspectives on Schindler’s List (Bloomington, 1997), pp. 171–192.

[23] On the reception of the NBC mini-series, see Kaes, ibid., pp. 107–108. Also Thomas Elsaesser,‘Subject positions, speaking positions: from Holocaust, Our Hitler and Heimat to Shoah andSchindler’s List,’ The Persistence of History: cinema television, and the modern event Vivian Sobchack,(New York, 1996), pp. 145–183.

[24] ‘Wise shocked by Munich’s Nazi cuts,’ Variety, 7 June (1966).[25] Wise hits high-handed 20th staffer who slashed Nazi footage from The Sound of Music,’ Variety,

2 June (1966).[26] ‘Cutting of 20th Sound of Music to appease Neo-Nazis costs Wolf his job,’ Variety 22 June 1966,

p. 15.[27] ‘Anti-Nazi ‘Sound’ hit all over but not in Germany’, Variety, 12 April 1967, p. 4.[28] ‘A design for a charter of the general international organization envisaged in the Moscow

Declaration of October 30, 1943 and in the resolution adopted by the Senate of the United Stateson November 5, 1943’ (New York, Reprinted for the Commission to Study the Organization ofPeace, 1944).

[29] For an article on the Moscow Declaration and its recent anniversary see ‘Towards a “GeneralInternational organization,” ’ (UN commemorates 50th anniversary of the Declaration of the FourNations on General Security, October 30, 1943, Moscow, Soviet Union) UN Chronicle 30 (4)(1993), p. 71.

[30] Maria Augusta Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (Philadelphia, 1949).[31] ‘Even before The Sound of Music became a $200 million box of� ce smash, the Baroness von Trapp

regretting having sold the movie rights to her life story for a paltry $6,000,’ Hollywood Reporter 12June (1987).

[32] Karsten Witte, ‘Nationalsozialismus,’ Geschichte des deutschen Films, ibid., p. 121.[33] Das UFA-Buch: Kunst und Krisen, Stars und Regisseure, Wirtschaft und Politik: die internationale

Geschichte von Deutschlands gro b ten Film-Konzern, Hans-Michael Bock and Michael Toteberg, eds(Frankfurt am Maint 1992), p. 446.

[34] Karsten Witte, ‘Die Wirkgewalt der Bilder,’ ibid., p. 24.[35] See, for example, Marc Silberman, ‘The ideology of representing the classics: � lming Der

zerbrochene Krug in the Third Reich, German Quarterly 57 (4) (1984), pp. 590–602.[36] Maria August Trapp, ibid., p. 113.[37] Variety reports ‘This is the sequel to “Trapp Family’, one of the biggest German postwar grossers.

It falls considerably short of the original’ in Die Trapp Familie in Amerika, Variety 8 April (1959).[38] Ethan Mordden, The Hollywood Musical, ibid., p. 203.[39] Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (Bloomington, 1987), 371ff.[40] First full draft which was ultimately discarded on 19 June 1963. The Ernest Lehman Papers,

University of Southern California Film Archive; ‘I will not describe speci� c locations. I will tellyou the mood, the feeling, the effect I would like to see. We are � oating in utter silence over ascene of unearthly beauty. Majestic mountain peaks, lush green meadows, deep blue lakes, thesilver ribbon of a winding river … As we glide in over the countryside we see an occasional farm,animals grazing in the meadows, houses nestling into the mountainside, a castle besides the lake,

78 R. A. Starkman

the steeples of churches, but no people, they would be foreign to this � oating shot and nowsomething is happening to us as we gaze down at the enchanted world. FAINT SOUNDS arebeginning to drift up and penetrate our awareness? (p. 1)

[41] Although some versions suggest Lehman thought about making him perhaps appear ‘like his heartwasn’t really in it’, the � nal version gives the impression of Nazis as an insidious in� ltrating force.

[42] This is also the same moment Ernest Lehman promises William Wyler would make the � lm abox-of� ce hit. The Sound of Music, Fox Video 30th Anniversary Laser Disk, 1993.

Ruth A. Starkman received her PhD in comparative literature in 1992 and taught in the departments ofrhetoric and Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley, 1993–1997, before becoming visitingassistant professor of German at the University of Utah. She has published articles on Leni Riefenstahl, Nazicinema and recent German cinema and is the co-editor and contributor to a forthcoming volume of essays onGerman culture after uni� cation. She is currently � nishing a book on representations of the Holocaust incommercial cinema.