Fifty years after its premiere, “The Sound of Music” is still among millions of fans’ favorite things.
The Julie Andrews film, about the von Trapp family and its “problem” governess, Maria, is beloved enough to have spawned audience singalongs. The performers who played the von Trapp children remain close, doing joint interviews and publishing a book. The film even prompted a live NBC musical, which — though it was roasted by critics — still managed stupendous ratings.
Of course, there remains one notable dissenter: Christopher Plummer, who has long had a grudging opinion of perhaps his most famous role.
“It was so awful and sentimental and gooey,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2011.
That may have been its charm. The movie, which premiered on March 2, 1965, went on to earn five Oscars — including best picture — and grossed more than $110 million in its initial run, equal to about $800 million in today’s money. That made it one of the most successful movies of all time at the box office, up there with “Gone With the Wind,” and it wasn’t truly surpassed until “The Godfather” came out in 1972.
It even helped save 20th Century Fox two years after the studio’s debacle with “Cleopatra.” No wonder the Mad magazine parody was called “The Sound of Money.”
