‘Cold’ portrayal of my father is off-key, says von Trapp’s son

‘My father was [not] like the cold, strict, disciplinarian depicted in the film. My mother was more like that’

wrongly portrayed my father as “cold, strict, disciplinarian”, the real-life son of Captain von Trapp has said.

Johannes von Trapp, the youngest of the von Trapp children, said his mother was the stern parent and not like “the sugary sweet character” famously played by Julie Andrews in the film.

Mr von Trapp, now 82, also explained how he no longer enjoys listening to the hit Do-re-mi song from the musical, having heard it “a million times” over the decades.

Now a hotelier in Vermont, Mr von Trapp was born in 1939 in Philadelphia, after his parents fled to America to escape the Nazi occupation.

His father, Georg von Trapp, a decorated Austrian naval officer from the First World War, was immortalised as the austere pater familias played by Christopher Plummer, who commanded his children like military subordinates until softening as he fell in love with their tuneful governess, Maria, whom he later on marries.

Speaking in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine, Mr von Trapp said: “My father was nothing like the cold, strict, disciplinarian depicted in the film.

“My mother was more like that – very determined and less like the sugary sweet character Julie Andrews portrayed.”

The von Trapp family’s story became world famous after the book about their escape from Nazi Austria, penned by Georg’s second wife Maria Augusta von Trapp, was picked up by US producers and turned into a Broadway play that was the basis for the 1965 smash hit Hollywood musical.