Talk:The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

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"Maria never intended to write anything of her life, but a friend persistently pleaded with her not to allow her story to be forgotten by others. She denied she had any writing skill whatsoever, but her friend was not to be put off and kept on asking her whenever they saw each other. Finally, one day, in desperation, Maria excused herself and went to her room for an hour to scribble a few pages about her life story, hoping to prove once and for all she was no writer. However, this displayed such natural writing talent that she reluctantly agreed to finish what she had started, and her jottings formed the basis of the first chapter of her memoirs."

Any chances of getting sources for some of this?

"hoping to prove once and for all she was no writer"

I'm still campaigning for an "unquantifiable" help file for Wikipedia. How can anyone claim to know what was going on in someone's head? If anyone has any sources I'd recommend deleting the above and starting again with something vaguely encyclopedic. Mglovesfun 00:16, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

There is not a chance of obtaining any sources for this material, because it is complete fantasy and fiction. First of all, Maria was seven months pregnant when she married the captain,. When they came to the United States in 1938, she hired publicity agents and tried to pass herself off as the mother of all of the children, see "Music: Family Choir," Time Magazine (December 19, 1938). That story line did not work, because, in 1938, she was 33, and the oldest child was 27. It is said that Maria and the children were bitterly opposed to one another. It is not difficult to imagine why that might have been so. She intruded herself into the family by getting herself pregnant, and then, engaged the children in singing activities which required them to deny their mother's existence and pretend that Maria was their mother. Then, she writes a book defaming their father, after he was dead and could not defend himself. The whistle scene in the movie is taken from her 1949 book, and the book has a chapter, "The Baron Doesn't Want It," in which she describes activities in which the children could not engage for fear of offending their father, the captain. When Rogers and Hammerstein take her at her word, and write a play and make a movie based on her book, she claims that they misrepresented the captain. Finally, in 1972, Maria shows herself to be a thoroughgoing liar and fraud by writing another book, "Maria," in which she admits that the captain was not at home when she first met the children. At the Abbey, she was never more than a postulant (read her book carefully), and she may only have been a school teacher. As for the State Teachers College for Progressive Education, a Google search supplies about 46 hits, but all refer to Maria, which makes one wonder whether the school existed, or whether it too, is a product of Maria's overactive imagination. It may be the latter, because an inquiry to the Vienna chamber of commerce was unable to return any knowledge concerning the school.John Paul Parks (talk) 05:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

As further evidence that Maria made up the family's story as she went along, and revised it as needed to make it more profitable, see "Music: Family Life in Vermont," published in Time magazine (July 18, 1949). In that article, it is stated that the family came to the United States BEFORE Hitler came to power in Austria. So much for the thrilling or daring escape! John Paul Parks (talk) 14:22, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The escape from the Nazis is only in the musical and film!! It is not in the Trapp memoirs!!!--WickerGuy (talk) 15:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 08:25, 30 April 2016 (UTC)