relative values

Johannes & Sam von Trapp

The youngest of the real von Trapp children and his son on the trouble with The Sound of Music

Johannes I admit I have mellowed and changed my opinion

When people ask me how the 1965 movie The Sound
of Music affected our lives here, I am quick to tell them
that after it appeared, everything — and I mean
everything — changed. We became instant celebrities.
Before the movie and the earlier Broadway musical, my
family, the Trapp Family Singers, were well known
among people who liked baroque music but we were
not widely famous. But once the film came out we
became the property of the public.
Suddenly the clientele that came to our small lodge
here in Stowe, Vermont, where we settled in 1942 after
we left Austria [in 1938, after it was annexed by Nazi
Germany] were very different. And instead of asking us
to sing madrigals and classic songs they expected us to
sing Do-Re-Mi. Believe it or not, some lodge guests still
expect to be greeted by the singing von Trapp children,
even though the movie is almost 60 years old. Of ten
children only Rosmarie and I are still alive [Georg von
Trapp had seven children with his first wife, Agathe.
Johannes, Rosmarie and their late sister Eleonore are the
children of Maria von Trapp, who became the matriarch
of the family when she married Georg in 1927].
Incidentally, it’s no secret that I am not a great fan of
Do-Re-Mi. It’s not exactly that I hate it, I’ve just heard it
a million times. In fact for years the piano player here at
the lodge had an agreement with me. If he were playing
Do-Re-Mi or Edelweiss for our guests and he saw me
come in, he’d immediately switch to play a different tune.
The rest of the family also had some issues with the
movie. For example, 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.
There are a lot of other mistakes in the movie but we
realised that was par for the course with a Hollywood
production. After all, the film is a Hollywood version of
the Broadway version of the German film version of the
book that my mother wrote. So it’s not surprising that it
was less than accurate.
about the movie over the years. I’ve come to realise that
it means so much to so many people because it expresses
such universal themes as love of country, of a man and
a woman, and of family.
Of course it has been good for business, it has
certainly brought us guests. But we haven’t raked in
as much money in royalties as some may suspect. My
mother is partly to blame. Instead of having an agent
and a lawyer advise, she sold the movie rights to her
book to a German company for a pittance. The
producers of the Broadway musical felt badly about this
and cut my mother in on some of the royalties. We do
have a participation in royalties but not a huge amount.
I was the only one of the children who was born in the
US; most of them came to this country as adults and
their lives changed drastically. I may have found things
easier because of that but I had never intended to end
up running the family business [the Trapp Family
Lodge, a Austrian-styled mountain resort in Stowe].
I earned a master’s degree from Yale University’s School
of Forestry and intended to get a PhD, but I came back
to help with the lodge and left again to operate ranches
in British Columbia and Montana before returning
here to take over the running of the place.
My time away from home helped me eventually to
tell Sam to go off and do his own thing for ten years.
I thought it was important he experienced the real

“It’s no secret that I am not a great

fan of Do-Re-Mi. It’s not that I hate
it, I’ve just heard it a million times”
8 • The Sunday Times Magazine
 world and not just this little island we have created
here. I remembered it was crucial for me to get away
from the family mystique for a while and do my own
thing. That helped me balance my outlook on the world
and I felt it could do the same for Sam.
Sam
I’ve often described my own relationship with The Sound
of Music as confusing. I’ve only seen it once, when I was
about seven or eight, and it wasn’t a big part of my life
growing up. Thinking back, I realise my sister, Kristina,
and I grew up watching some of our relatives who were
tired of constantly having to answer questions about it.
Over time, we had a chance to form our own
relationship with the musical. I eventually felt it
was quite selfish to see it only from our own
perspective. More than a billion people have seen the
musical and we’ve heard so many stories of its positive
james buck for the sunday times magazine, patrice cleaves
impact on so many of them. And I don’t know if Dad
knows this, but I actually like Do-Re-Mi. I know he
hates it. In fact, a week or so ago I sang it to my two
sons, who are five and three.
Dad was careful to never spoil us. Or let us feel that
we were movie stars. Kristina and I started working at
the family lodge when I was eight and she was ten. Our
first job was cleaning the coffee station in the ski centre,
then we both worked as bellhops. I had a hard time
carrying bags because I was so short but I loved being a
bellman because it gave me interaction with the guests.
I did it through high school and college. I liked being
the first and last contact the guest had with the lodge.
After college I left home and taught skiing in Aspen
and in Portillo, Chile. I think my father thought it was
important for me and my sister to have experiences in
other places. He thought that if you are going to live the
rest of your life in the town you were born in, it’s
beneficial to live somewhere else for a while so as not
to have regrets later in life. After ten years I got the call
that he wanted help. He called me up one day and said,
“If you don’t come back, son, I am going to sell the
place.” A couple of months later I was back.
It has certainly been a dynamic 18 months for our
industry since the pandemic began. First we closed
everything down, then we learnt to navigate operating
a people-centric business during a pandemic, and now
we’ve just had our busiest summer ever.
My father is a little bit of a rogue as a business person.
His attitude or philosophy is often, “Damn the
torpedoes, full speed ahead!” For example he planned
our first brewery in the middle of the recession, with
the understanding that he needed to do something
that was uplifting for us, our employees and our guests.
It was an exciting project at a time when life was
Main: Johannes, 82, somewhat pessimistic. He was not the banker’s best
and Sam, 49, at the friend — they want to know what’s happening in the
lodge, and, above, next six months — but my dad with a degree in forest
with Sam’s children. ecology thinks in hundred-year time frames. He has a
Left: the von long-term approach. And it has worked wonderfully n
Trapps perform at
Christmas, 1943. Interviews by Robert Kiener
Johannes is the boy Photograph by James Buck
in the centre Visit trappfamily.com
The Sunday Times Magazine • 9