The Sound Of Music still alive in Austria's hills 60 years on

The little girl peered out the train window at the green, rolling hills of Austria, the country she had visited in her mind every day for months.

- Jim Tankersley

SALZBURG, Austria — The little girl peered out the train window at the green, rolling hills of Austria, the country she had visited in her mind every day for months.

“Dad,” she said, “Maria was on one of those mountains.” Her eyes lit up.

The Austrians around us did not stir.

It has been 60 years since the Julie Andrews classic The Sound Of Music opened in cinemas. It still enchants American viewers, but — despite bringing millions of dollars in tourism revenue to their country each year — befuddles many Austrians.

For all those Austrians: The 1965 film tells the story of a nun named Maria (Andrews) who becomes a governess to seven Austrian children, brightens their lives with song, marries their father and helps everyone flee the Nazis.

It is oh-so-loosely based on the lives of the singing Von Trapp family, who escaped German dictator Adolf Hitler and settled in Vermont in the United States, where they still run a cosy lodge with excellent pretzels.

Generations of Americans have obsessed over the Hollywood musical film. They include my wife Lily, who watched it repeatedly on videotape as a child, and my four-year-old daughter Nora, whose maternal grandmother streamed the movie for her in 2024.

The Sound Of Music sustained my daughter through our family move to Germany in 2025. In the dead of the Berlin winter, while we waited for our furniture and a preschool opening, Nora watched it on repeat. She renamed several stuffed animals after Von Trapp children — Friedrich the bear, Gretl the elephant — and directed them in live productions. Her Dolly does an excellent Sixteen Going On Seventeen.

Many mornings, I found her stuffed friends on the couch, lined up in rows like airline passengers. “We are flying to Austria,” she would announce.