Oh, I am amusing, I suppose, and I do have the finest couturier in Vienna and the most glittering circle of friends. And I do give some rather gay parties. . . But take all that away and you have just wealthy, unattached little me.
Baroness Schraeder uses these words to describe herself to Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.” Until she died this week at the age of 91, I hadn’t even known her real name: Eleanor Parker. In her most famous role, Parker played the heavy, the woman who stood between the Captain and Maria.
Parker’s death came in the midst of a new Sound of Music frenzy set off by NBC’s broadcast of a live performance of the stage version. Though it was largely panned, such were the ratings that NBC plans to air it again Saturday.
In my bachelorhood, I might never have noticed. These days, however, I am the father of three girls. And for the females in my world, the Carrie Underwood versus Julie Andrews debate is every bit as real as the sports-page argument over the Redskins’ benching of RG III for Kirk Cousins.
It ought not to be surprising. “The Sound of Music” might best be understood as World War II for girls.
My bride, for example, will never understand why an otherwise sane husband will stay up to two in the morning if “The Guns of Navarone” comes on. Turns out it’s much the same reason she and 19 million others tuned in for NBC’s “Sound of Music”: It’s comforting, with each offering the added satisfaction of evil Nazis who get their comeuppance in the end.
The women in my house are not alone in their enthusiasm. While traveling through Salzburg with college friends years ago, we took a “Sound of Music” tour. Though we saw many of the film’s famous shots, we learned the house was not the house the von Trapps actually lived in, the wedding scene is not in the church where Maria and the Captain actually married, and so on.
At the gazebo featured in the famous scene between Liesl and Rolfe, we watched American tourists well into their middle ages happily chirping “I am 16, going on 17” as they glided back and forth.
In my own home, I would watch each of my children go through a short but pronounced “Sound of Music” phase. One afternoon, after watching it for the umpteenth time, my eldest turned to me and asked, “Daddy, did they make it out?”
Her father looked into those trusting 6-year-old eyes and resisted every temptation to say, “Not this time, honey.”
It was about that time I mentioned my girls’ interest to Melanie Kirkpatrick, a colleague at The Wall Street Journal. Melanie arranged tickets for a sing-along “Sound of Music” playing in town. In scheduling our time, we hadn’t realized that families would probably do best to opt for the weekend matinees.
The Saturday evening performance we chose was dominated by an audience of men dressed as nuns, flibbertigibbets and at least one lonely goatherd. My girls were too young to notice that many of the “nuns” had facial hair.
I give the crowd credit: They were an enthusiastic bunch. And I can say you have not experienced the full diversity of the film’s appeal until you have joined with 200 gay men enthusiastically belting out “Climb Every Mountain” with the Reverend Mother.
Which brings me to today. We know the story is more complicated than Hollywood let on. We know the von Trapps themselves were pained by the portrayal of their father as an unfeeling martinet. And we know there were other liberties taken.
We also know this: There is a truth at the heart of this story, however exaggerated, that inspires; that presents faith as a source of strength; that teaches to look for God’s will and combines all these things in a way nothing produced today comes close to. It’s also something a man can watch with his daughters.
In the McGurn house, the female consensus was that Carrie Underwood was brave to give it a go. This contrasts with the critics, as well as with some von Trapps, who let it be known they would have preferred Anne Hathaway.
As for the one man in the room, he prefers the film version if only for the woman who left us this week. This is the once-hated Baroness, who for all her coldness, and even after losing to a younger and prettier rival, ended up letting the Captain go with grace and dignity.
There’s a lesson here, too. And part of the film’s appeal is that you won’t get it until you are old enough to start paying more attention to Eleanor Parker than to Julie Andrews.