Airdate: Climbed Every Mountain: The Story Behind the Sound of Music

Now here is a special I just know is going to win a lot of hearts, Climbed Every Mountain: The Story Behind the Sound of Music.

Actor Nicholas Hammond tells the astonishing true story behind the real Von Trapp family, the inspiration for The Sound of Music.

Hammond the role of Friedrich in the film years before he moved to Australia to live.

The Sound of Music is one of the most enduringly loved films ever made, but behind the scenes lies an astonishing true story. In this award-winning documentary Nicholas Hammond who played Friedrich in the original film travels to Salzburg to discover how the real-life Von Trapp family escaped Austria. He then travels to Ellis Island and Vermont to follow the family’s story and how they became a successful singing group in America in the 1950s. The Von Trapp family lived on a tour bus for up to 22 weeks a year.

Nicholas visits the family at their estate in Vermont which looks uncannily like their native Austria. Over the course of the documentary Nicholas discovers that the ‘feel good’ story of The Sound of Music has a dark undertone. The documentary explores how it seems the one place that The Sound of Music is shunned is in the Von Trapp family’s home-town, Salzburg. There it is either disliked or ignored by most Austrians.

However almost 50 years after the film was first released and subsequently took the world by storm, this intriguing documentary follows Nicholas as he witnesses the first ever known performance of the musical in Salzburg.

8:35pm Friday, 24 May SBS ONE

David Knox blogs Eurovision for SBS