"'Cause they taped it on only one day..." - NBC's The Sound of Music

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...The NBC-TV remake of Rogers & Hammerstein's THE SOUND OF MUSIC as a " live play " production's airing is about one month in the past now , and I meant to post about it here before that ! But I didn't...

  With 18 million viewers IIRC , it certainly qualified as " a hit " . NBC even repeated it a week-and-a-halfish later .

  I saw it both times:-) .

  It was meant to be a " TV play/live production " in the mode of the PLAYHOUSE 90/BELL TELEPHONE HOURs of yore , NBC claiming " For the first time in fifty years..." . I , myself , on the West Coast of the continguous 48 states of the USA (California) saw it as an immediate taped repeat , anyway , being 3 time zones to the west of the Eastern Time Zone , where it would have indeed shown live ~ along with the Central Time Zone .

  The Mountain Time Zone , especially for such a " holiday special " as this , I am not so sure about . Anyone ?????

  Has it shown outside of the U.S,. yet ~ I know we have Australian and Canadian residents here , others ???

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...The as-performed book of the play had a brief line dropped , of course , by the maid to explain the obvious readon why he was retired from the " Austrian Navy " - of course , it was the pre-/11/11/18 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE Navy which a considerable sea cost to launch from/defend .

[Richard Willis]

As you reminded us, in World War One Austria-Hungary was one of the empires on Germany's side. I found a map of the pre-1918 empire. At that time they were not land-locked. They had access to the Adriatic Sea, which has access to all the world's oceans.

[Richard Willis]

I'm a map junky. I worked with maps for 18 of my 31 years with Los Angeles County.

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...Liked 'em myself as a kidnick !!! :-)

Richard Willis said:

As you reminded us, in World War One Austria-Hungary was one of the empires on Germany's side. I found a map of the pre-1918 empire. At that time they were not land-locked. They had access to the Adriatic Sea, which has access to all the world's oceans.

[Jimmm Kelly]

When I was in university I took a cartography course, which was hard work but i enjoyed it, however I had to drop it for personal reasons (in addition, the cost of materials for doing quality cartography was a lot for a poor student like me).

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was key to how WW I started. Because of alliances that the different European powers had formed, once Austria-Hungary went to war against Serbia, all of those other powers were obligated to take a side.

Fortunately, my grandmother and her parents had left Austria-Hungary some years before the war. They were ethnic Germans living for generations in the Hungary part of the Empire. After the war this became part of Yugoslavia, now Serbia, when the winners carved up the region, with little respect for national identity.

After the First World War and Second World War there were reprisals against the ethnic Germans--called Swabians. After WW II, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Swabians were tortured, imprisoned, killed and buried in mass graves.

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...Sez Wikipedia in their page on Theodore Bikel (who was considerably younger than Mary Martin):

  Bikel rather disliked the part , think that there wasn't enough singing for him , I think , especially , and low visibility for him in general .

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...I got the expanded CD of the 1959 show's OCA a bit back and noted how " Edellweiss " was only lead-sung by Bikel , with Martin's character not participating (Just , yes , as the NBC version had it .)...I rather wondered then whether the song had been put in at some point in the out-of-town trials , to give Bikel at least some sort of showcase .

  If there had been a comic book adaptation of the Fox film from Gold Key or Dell in the 60s , who do you think would have drawn it ???

  Dick Giordano over Don Heck ? Dan Speigle ? Frank Springer ? Jerry Grandenetti ? Tony Tallarico ? Lee Elias ? Bernard Bailey  ? Ramona Fradon ? Wally Wood ?

  Can you picture how it might have been broken down into 32 (I suppose) adless  pages ?????????

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...Naturally enogh , NBC has announced plans to do more live musical remakes .

  ( BTW , I remember that , during the 90s and maybe into the Oughties , there was a cycle of made-for-TV , more conventually filmed , remakes of vintage/warhorse Broadway musicals although the only I can recall now are an I-missed-it one of THE MUSIC MAN , and one of BYE BYE BIRDIE which had , for the 2nd time I can think of , Vanessa L. Williams (Still?? the SAG-forced screen name of the ex-Miss America " Save The Best For Last " singer .) following Chita Rivera - she had replaced her in the Broadway musical of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN and now took the role , of Abert's gf , which Chita had done in the B'Way version .)

  Briefly , I have thought of two maybe-too-obscure suggestions - PAL JOEY and... ...IT'S A BIRD , IT'S A PLANE , IT'S SUPERMAN !

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...Okay , Ill say it ~ Given his being noted for his opinions here about portrayal of members of the military , especially officers...What is the good Cmdr. Benson's opinion of " The Sound Of Music 's" , both the Fox film and the earlier stage version which the NBC/Underwood performance was of , portrayal of a retired naval officer ? 

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...But , Jimm , would you suggest they do two back-to-back performances of the same show ?

  Or , have a show that goes on on the East Coast at 10 PM start on the West Coast at 7 ???

 

(That's even leaving out non-continguous Alaska and Hawaii ~ And you up there have FIVE linked time zones , the Maritimes being in a zone East of the Eastern  one here...)

Jimmm Kelly said:

I've never bothered to look into getting a box, because I figured I was better off without TV and I can get a lot on my computer--and because I'm stubborn.

I think they're cutting their own throat by not broadcasting live to the west coast. The whole attraction of live events these days is that you can go on twitter and other social media and talk about how terrible it is as it happens. 

I'm sure in a few years, there will be more live television like this to counter the tendency for people to binge watch.

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...I've second-hand seen that both NBC and Fox have announced classic musical live remakes , NBC announcing PETER PAN - I believe the same Post-War version that Betty Comden and Adolph Green were involved with that was done for TV during the 50s with Mary Martin - and Fox announcing a three-hour GREASE , which will combine elements ofthe original New York-opened 1971?? version and the movie from the late 70s ~ Stage productions of Grease over the years since the movie have tended to be revamped some to reflect the movie more , with addition of the songs by other writers than Casey and Jacobs that were added to the movie , even adding " original 50s " oldies tunes ! I guess the original final song , " All __ Up " , has been replaced by the movie's #1 hit , " You're The One That I Want " , now...Of the original

New York version , sources

 have said that the original feeling of the characters being more working-class and residents of Chicagoland have tended to fall away , never mind how that would've been presented in the pre-NYC Chicago theatrical version !  About 2011 an anniversary version was presented in Chicago that was something of a " director's cut " restoration/packing together of the more adult humor in the earlier versions , apparently...

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...I guess it was 1972 , not /1 , when the NYC version opened , and the final song of the play is " All Choked Up "...I wanted to check , my first instinct was to write the title of the Elvis song which the Grease song clearly references , " All Shook Up " , but I knew that wasn't it...I realized that leaving a blank space as a " placeholder " could let it be thought that I  was , instead ,  indicating something way naughtier than either " Choked " , or " Shook ", but what you gonna do ??? :-).........