The hills come alive in Doylestown
Did Oscar Hammerstein’s inspiration
come from a holiday performance at Aldi?
Thanksgiving is near. For me, that means enjoying “The Sound of Music” on TV. A few years ago, I discovered Bucks County has connections to the musical based on the famous Trapp Family Singers who fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938.
One link is Aldie, the grand mansion in Doylestown of sculptor William Mercer, brother of Henry Chapman Mercer who built the borough’s fabulous Fonthill Castle. The Trapps entertained at Aldie on Dec. 22, 1941 — just two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that thrust the U.S. into mortal combat with Germany in World War II. The other Bucks connection is playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. He was at home two miles from Aldie near the center of town when the Trapps performed. Seventeen years later he wrote the lyrics and playbook for Broadway-bound “The Sound of Music”.
I’ve long wondered if he got his inspiration at Aldie. My daughter Genevieve, family friend Wynne Wert and I visited to get some answers. The Gatsbyesque mansion built in 1927 is the headquarters of the non-profit Heritage Conservancy. In the Grand Hall where the Trapps performed from a balcony, we discussed speculation Hammerstein met the singers at Aldie. Another hypothesis is William Mercer’s sister Elizabeth, who married an Austrian royal, knew the story, and passed it to Hammerstein. No proof of either yarn has surfaced.
The Trapp story is unique. Baron Georg von Trapp, a wealthy Austrian naval commander, was a widower with seven young children. The Nonnberg Abbey in Sulzburg sent novitiate Maria (Julie Andrews in the movie) to educate the captain’s children. Georg fell in love with Maria, they married, and she gave birth to three children. She molded her brood of 10 into a pitch-perfect children’s choir. They toured for years until the Nazis arrived in 1938. Harsh treatment of Trapp classmates who were Jewish, government support of abortion and Georg’s induction into the German navy convinced the family to flee to the U.S. where they began touring. A New York Times review of Dec. 10, 1938, glowed, “There was something unusually lovable and appealing about the modest, serious singers of this little family aggregation … the handsome Mme. von Trapp in simple black, and the youthful sisters garbed in black and white Austrian folk costumes enlivened with red ribbons. It was only natural to expect work of exceeding refinement from them, and one was not disappointed.”
By then Aldie had become an elite gathering place. Comedian Groucho Marx, conductor Leopold Stokowski and dance ingenue Isadora Duncan were among guests. Persian rugs, overstuffed furniture, gold-tile mosaics, a library, a great hall and an orangery made for luxurious living inside the seven-bedroom home.
At Martha Mercer’s Christmas party more than 200 turned out to see Maria an her children singing Christmas carols in the grand hall. Hammerstein having purchased a 40-acre cattle farm near Aldie a year earlier, made it his habit to be in Doylestown weekdays to work on plays. He returned to New York only on weekends. It’s likely he was in the borough that Dec. 22, a Monday, when the Trapps performed. Did he sneak a peek, get his idea for “The Sound of Music” at Aldie?
I contacted Ed Hall, husband of Maria’s folk-singing granddaughter. From the Trapp homestead in Vermont, he told me Hammerstein got his inspiration from Broadway actress Mary Martin in the mid-1950s. Her agent had come into possession of Maria’s 1949 autobiography and West German movie “The Trapp Family.” Mary took the idea to Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers, his collaborator.
Hall added it’s unlikely Hammerstein attended the Aldie performance. “He was Jewish and the von Trapps were Catholic and the program largely was Catholic.” Still the irony of the Broadway legend and the Trapps being in the same place — tiny Doylestown — at the same time in 1941 is irresistible. Who can say for sure Oscar didn’t wander over? As Wynne noted, “Oscar was show biz. I don’t think religion would have kept him away.”
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Sources include “This Was Doylestown, 1941″ by Edward Levenson published in Patch on Dec. 20, 2012.
Carl LaVO, retired Bucks County Courier Times editor, is the author of newly published “Bucks County Adventures for Kids” available at bookstores in Newtown, Doylestown and Lahaska.
IMAGE 1: The Aldie Mansion where the Trapp Family Singers performed two weeks after the Dec.. 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.. (Lavo pix)
IMAGE 2:Wynne Wert gazes at the balcony in Aldie’s great hall where the Von Trapp Family Singers performed at the outset of World War II. (lavo pix)
IMAGE 3: Photo of Oscar Hammerstein II on the mantle in his Doylestown study where he wrote the lyrics to “The Sound of Music”. (Lavo pix).
IMAGE 4: Program featuring the Trapp family’s performance at Doylestown’s Aldie Mansion is on display in the home. (Lavo pix)
IMAGE 5: Oscar Hammerstein II (Public domain)
IMAGE 6: The Trapp Family Singers performing in 1941 in photo on display at Aldie Mansion. (Lavo pix)
