It Was The Last Rodgers And Hammerstein Musical.
The musical theatre partnership between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II yielded Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and The King and I, among others. The Sound of Music, based on two German films about the von Trapp family (as well as a memoir by Maria von Trapp), opened on Broadway in 1959 to tepid critical reviews. In 1960, Hammerstein died from stomach cancer. The last song he wrote was "Edelweiss."
Edelweiss" was the last song Oscar Hammerstein ever wrote, at the last minute during the show's tryout in Boston.
Hammerstein wrote "Edelweiss" for the character of the Captain because he thought original star Theodore Bikel's talent as a folk musician was being underutilized. The same year Sound of Music opened on Broadway, Bikel co-founded the Newport Folk Festival with Pete Seeger, Oscar Brand and George Wein.
Audience members were totally convinced that "Edelweiss" was an actual Austrian folk song.
The Sound of Music opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 16, 1959. Both major New York critics hated it, finding it way too saccharine, but producers already had $2 million in advance ticket sales so it didn’t really matter.
During her two years in the Broadway show, Mary Martin only missed one show.
Due to the design of the two-story set, Martin had to run three miles during every show to make her entrances and exits.
The play won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical and a third Best Actress for Martin (she already had trophies for South Pacific and Peter Pan).
Even though two of the von Trapp children were boys, the entire children's cast was nominated in the Best Featured Actress category as a single nominee. They lost out to Mother Abbess, Patricia Neway.
The original cast recording of The Sound of Music was nearly as popular as the show itself. Recorded just a week after the show's Broadway premiere and released by Columbia Records, the album was number one on the Billboard charts for 16 weeks.
