From the moment I heard there would be a 60th anniversary re-release of The Sound of Music, I looked forward to seeing it once again on the big screen.
For those who are too young to remember and those who might need to be reminded, The Sound of Music was huge, with a backstory that reads like a Hollywood movie about Hollywood. Before the film and its star exploded in that unprecedented way, Julie Andrews had achieved great success on Broadway in My Fair Lady and Camelot, as well as starring in a television special of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella in 1957. But she had never made a movie, and Jack Warner wanted a name to play his fair lady, so the part went to Audrey Hepburn.
But karma, some would say, soon turned this disappointment into the sweetest comeuppance in Hollywood history. Sweet, that is, because a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Walt Disney offered Ms. Andrews the title role in Mary Poppins. Ms. Andrews accepted, and the die was cast. Let the games begin.
Meanwhile, over at 20th Century Fox, Cleopatra had cost the studio a fortune. Despite the myth that Cleopatra was a bomb of epic proportions, it wasn’t. It was the highest-grossing film of 1963, was nominated for Best Picture, and won four Oscars. But it wouldn’t turn a profit until its sale to television for a record-breaking $5,000,000 in 1966. Darryl Zanuck needed a hit, and a big one at that. The studio had held the movie rights to The Sound of Music since 1960, and now was the time to dust it off and bring it into production.
Zanuck hired Ernest Lehman to write the adapted screenplay, and Lehman wanted Julie Andrews to play Maria. At this point, Mary Poppins had not been released, so Lehman took director Robert Wise to Disney Studios to see some advance footage. Within minutes, another die was cast. Ms. Andrews would get the part.
Mary Poppins was released on August 27, 1964, showered with praise and money from the box office. My Fair Lady came out on October 21, with good reviews and lots of tickets sold. The only fly in the ointment was Audrey Hepburn. The New Yorker said she wasn’t “particularly convincing as a Cockney flower girl,” while The Washington Post described her casting as the film’s “basic flaw.”
Oscar, of course, was waiting for both films. When the nominations were announced on February 23rd of the following year, Mary Poppins led with 13 nods, with My Fair Lady right behind with 12. The one that prevented Jack Warner’s crowning achievement from tying up the race was his choice for the title role. Audrey Hepburn had not made the cut.
A week later, The Sound of Music opened, and the juggernaut began. Many critics derided the film. “Romantic nonsense and sentiment”–“Icky sticky”—“the sugar-coated lie people seem to want to eat”—that sort of thing. Pauline Kael in McCall’s criticized moviegoers as well as the movie, accusing the audience of turning into “emotional and aesthetic imbeciles . . . humming the sickly goody-goody songs.” Oh, well, how do you solve a problem like Paulina?
By the time the dust settled on Oscar night a month later, Mary Poppins had won five awards, including one for Julie Andrews, with My Fair Lady taking eight, including Best Picture. Warner had won the battle for the gold, but Walt Disney won the battle for the green.
Mary Poppins would be the highest-grossing film of 1964, and Disney’s biggest hit at that time. On the other hand, My Fair Lady had come in second, but it was a distant second. Warner made a quite healthy return on his investment, more than $4 for every one spent. Disney made a whopping $17, such huge profits that he invested in a land development in central Florida, which might appropriately have been named Poppins World.
The Sound of Music was number one at the box office on that Oscar night and would remain so for most of the rest of 1965, and for eleven weeks into 1966 for a total of 41 weeks in the top spot. No other movie has ever come close. Of course, it was the biggest hit of 1965, followed with an Oscar for Best Picture of that year. A few months after winning that award, The Sound of Music became the highest-grossing film of all time, topping Gone with the Wind. (Today, Gone with the Wind is the highest when the numbers are adjusted for inflation.) The initial theatrical release for The Sound of Music finally ended on Labor Day 1969, and that four-and-a-half year span is still the record.
I always wondered why it was such a huge hit. It’s a great movie, but it’s not the best movie ever made. It’s arguably not even the best musical ever made. But it hit when the tumult and anxiety of the 1960s were growing. Its release was just a little over a year after the assassination of John Kennedy, and less than two weeks after that of Malcolm X. During the initial release, the Vietnam War was escalating, the movements for civil rights and women were going forward with the predictable backlashes to both, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were shot dead.
After all that has been happening in these last few months, the reason I was so particularly anticipating this screening of this movie was not just because it was going to be on the big screen with all the bells and whistles. It wasn’t to be inspired or even to be entertained. It promised a three-hour escape, counting an intermission, and it delivered. That’s why those people years ago went, and many of them more than once or twice. At the rate things are going, I’ll need to watch it again before Halloween.
On a lighter note, this whole story of Hollywood also includes the most delicious shade ever thrown at someone to his face. When she accepted the Golden Globe for Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews ended with, “My thanks to a man who made a wonderful movie and who made all this possible in the first place—Mr. Jack Warner.”
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, indeed.
