Sound Of Music, The

This is a difficult movie to dislike and I have tried. The combination of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the Alps, and Julie Andrews ultimately more than offsets the nuns and kids aspects of the story which is loosely based on the life of Maria Von Trapp. Andrews was fresh off her Mary Poppins triumph and The Sound of Music assured her a spot at the top of the Hollywood heap for a short time. The film garnered a second Oscar for director Robert Wise after his win for West Side Story in 1961. He and Andrews teamed again for a sophisticated biography of Gertrude Lawrence called Star!. It was a huge failure with audiences at the time, but its reputation has increased substantially through the years and deservedly so.