Age discrepancy in "The Sound of Music"

[snopes]

Comment: In "The Sound of Music", my kids claim that when the Mother Superior describes the Baron's family to Maria (Julie Andrews), she says that the Baron's wife had died "seven years ago". Later, Gretel says she is 5 years old. I found the controversy online, most said the Mother Superior says "several" not "seven" years ago, but several insist that she did indeed say seven.

[Morrigan]

Just watched the movie. The captions read "several."

Morrigan

Even if she did say seven, how come in movies nobody is allowed to make a simple mistake. If she had happened to say seven (which she didn't) that may of been her mistake in this ficticious world not the movies.

[Morrigan]

I also just noticed an error that the e-mailer did.

If they're so obsessed with the "facts," then why didn't they spell the girl's name correctly?

(It's spelled Gretl.)

Morigan

[Artemis]

That's true. I don't think the Mother Superior has ever met the Captain (not the Baron...although he is engaged to the Baroness for a while), so even if she had said seven, it could've been her mistake.

ETA: That is, she never meets him until the last scene where they seek refuge in the abbey.

[kmcm]

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

Even if she did say seven, how come in movies nobody is allowed to make a simple mistake. If she had happened to say seven (which she didn't) that may of been her mistake in this ficticious world not the movies.

The world isn't ficticious. It's based on a true story.

Originally Posted by kmcm

The world isn't ficticious. It's based on a true story.

Unless it's a biography and in the biography they sang all the songs including the sheet music then the world is ficticious.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

Unless it's a biography and in the biography they sang all the songs including the sheet music then the world is ficticious.

I saw Mrs. Von Trapp on the Dinah Shore Show many years ago. Dinah Shore asked her how accurate the movie was and she said something along the lines of, "We didn't sing when we were fleeing. When you flee, you flee quietly!"

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by kmcm

The world isn't ficticious. It's based on a true story.

I think in the "real world" there were more children.

[MegansMom]

According to the Von Trapp Family website, the youngest of the girls (called Martina in real life) was 5 when Maria arrived in 1926. The National Archives page on the family says that the captain's 1st wife died in 1922 of scarlet fever. So, definitely several years, not seven.

Also interesting to note is the discrepancy in the birthdate of Georg and Maria's first child between the Archives and the "official" family website. The family site lists Rosemarie as being born in 1929, more than 1 year after Georg and Maria's November 26, 1927 wedding. Maria's Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen (from the Archives site) lists Rosmarie's DOB as February 8, 1928, less than 3 months after her parent's marriage.

[Ramblin' Dave]

Originally Posted by lazerus the duck

Even if she did say seven, how come in movies nobody is allowed to make a simple mistake. If she had happened to say seven (which she didn't) that may of been her mistake in this ficticious world not the movies.

Interesting coincidence - this is one of two currently active threads in this section about movies, and the other one is about It's a Wonderful Life, which contains the exact same mistake. (Clarence tells George his brother drowned "when he was nine," but even as he says it, you can see the dates on his tombstone: 1911-1919. So he was no older than eight.) In both cases, interesting catch but no big deal.