With a budget of $8 million and, "The Happiest Sound In All The World!" The Sound of Music was released to phenomenal commercial success in 1965. More notably still it skillfully adapted the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical, itself a version of the Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse Broadway show, to produce a true American screen classic.

Two years before the musical made its Broadway debut, however, Paramount Pictures had purchased the rights to the real-life Von Trapp Singers story with the intention of casting Audrey Hepburn in the lead part of Maria. When she later declined the role Paramount dropped plans for the film whereupon 20th Century Fox picked up the property once the stage musical proved a success.

Originally intended as a project for famed director William Wyler the film was eventually turned over to Robert Wise who reprised his familiar role as director-producer that had been previously employed to Oscar-winning success on West Side Story in 1961. His version of The Sound of Music likewise benefited from his skill at handling large musical production numbers and logistically difficult circumstances of which this film abounded.

Relying on the wildly talented Julie Andrews and her four-octave, all secured for the salary of $225,000, Wise's movie was densely filled with songs and stunning art direction. Inscribing the picture in its historical setting the production designer Boris Leven worked with set designers Ruby R. Levitt and Walter M. Scott who together piggybacked their efforts and capitalized on the film's spectacular Austrian backdrop. With the Von Trapp family's true-to-life environs scaled up a few notches the resulting look and feel of the film is very nearly breathtaking from the opening frames through the movie's finale.

Opening in Salzburg in 1938, a free-spirited young convent woman named Maria (Andrews) is assigned a secular position to broaden her ideas about the world. Worried that her young charge isn't appropriate for the nunnery, Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood) sends Maria to the Von Trapp family as their newest in a long line of governesses.

Arriving with considerable joy she quickly revises her expectations upon meeting Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). Now a retired navy man he lords over his seven children like the crew of a ship complete with minute-by-minute schedules, mandatory roll calls and the strictest code of required conduct. All is cleared up when Maria learns that the surface order is merely a cover for the Captain's broken heart as he pines away for his dead wife who once filled him with laughter and love.

After a few days with his new governess the Captain leaves home to court his would-be second wife, the Baroness Schraeder (Eleanor Parker). In his absence Maria forms a quick connection with his children aged five to 16. Teaching them the brilliance of music, outdoor life and play she instills in them the seed of happiness that was lost with the death of their mother. So too the Captain and Maria gradually fall in love much to her confusion in relation to the nunnery alongside his reluctance when remembering the Baroness.

A subplot develops concerning the children's' Uncle Max (Richard Haydn) who hears them sing under Maria's tutelage and wishes them to enter a Salzburg music festival. Though they're a terrific talent the Captain is set against the proposition since it reminds him of his deceased wife while also unnecessarily encouraging public scrutiny of his over-sized clan. While local fame isn't the worst sort of problem the encroaching Nazi regime looms as something for more sinister with its fascistic threat and the possibility the Captain will be unwillingly commissioned into the fuehrer's navy.

As events unfold, and as the Baroness removes herself from the Von Trapp estate, the Captain and Maria follow the blossom of true love. Marrying under the watchful eyes of the children, they honeymoon for a month but return to dramatically different circumstances.

In their absence the Nazis have taken hold. Now pursuing the Captain with a naval commission the family is forced to flee their home but only after winning the music festival that serves as their cover for an escape attempt. Finally relying on the convent sisters and the Mother Abbess, the Von Trapps hike their way across the Alps to freedom and a new life in Switzerland.

Grossing some $163 million at the domestic box office The Sound of Music was a runaway hit by all measures. Its three-hour length, including an overture and entr'acte, provided some of the most beloved movie entertainment of a generation. Its score similarly produced a bevy of memorable songs like "Do Re Mi", "My Favorite Things", "Edelweiss" and the title tune that have all been standards in popular music for at least two generations.

To this day the lasting appeal of the movie is its steadfast commitment to optimism and honest emotion delivered by a wonderful cast but headlined, of course, by Julie Andrews. Among her many distinctions and laurels in nearly 50 years contribution to the theater and filmed entertainment, perhaps no other performance of her career, her Oscar-winner Mary Poppins included, is more famous or beloved than her turn as Maria. With bold strokes she sketches a maiden on the verge of adulthood who is simultaneously set upon by the inspiration of first love and the complications of world circumstance.

Naturally enough the advent of World War II is only pointed out in the film, since it isn't, of itself, the movie's subject. Still, the shadow of world war is cast over the movie thereby allowing Maria's voice to punch holes of light into the darkness of the proceedings that make her homespun wisdom and sunny disposition the marks of her highest virtue.

Aside from the central love affair between Maria and the Captain, the secondary affair between her and the seven children is equally charming. In their romp through Salzburg, their picnic in the mountains and the travails of otherwise learning to be children despite their father's more fatalistic worldview, the eight foundlings form a bond of innocence that's difficult to ignore it's so infectiously happy.

For many fans The Sound of Music's major production numbers are what stay in memory along with the lavish Von Trapp estate placed just under the monolithic form of the Materhorn. Beginning with the film's first musical number, the title song, audiences are instantly catapulted into a world devoid of physical pains yet jauntily balanced on the rise and fall of musical notes.

As an interesting historical note that first number was shot in late June and early July 1964. Despite it being summertime with a sunny appearance the mountain glade was quite cold. For her troubles Andrews was repeatedly knocked off her feet from the downdraft of the helicopter's camera crew although the resulting sequence is one of sheer liberation and joy. Fortunately for us such pains are left out of the release print although they reveal the many problematical aspects of a movie with such an epic scale, not just for its musical sequences but for its outdoor settings as well.

Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award alongside the likes of Darling, Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools and A Thousand Clowns, The Sound of Music's win of the top honors was all but assumed. As a box office champion, popular favorite and critical darling, it was, by nearly all accounts, the movie of the year.

Even to a crusty movie fan like me who finds it difficult to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy spontaneous dance and song routines, I found the film to be a genuine pleasure. In fact, ever since seeing it for the first time after all these years spent avoiding it at all costs I've come to feel it might be in my best interests to revise my bias against musicals.

One result of this new open-mindedness would be the recognition of an entirely new, previously untouched, section of my local video store. Another would surely be my just reward for seeing cinematic entertainments following in the precedent set by The Sound of Music.