Front Row Dress Circle

I can answer that one very quickly - 38 times! that was at the last count and that movie is The Sound of Music. Well, it has been said that this is the most popular family film of all time and I can always sit through it again. Actually, this was my very first introduction to the world of cinema…

I was three years old and The Sound of Music was on it’s first release at the beautiful, and sadly now gone, old Mayfair Theatre in Sydney.  Dad took me to see the film and when we walked upstairs, went through the curtains and sat down I thought I had arrived in a whole new world. Remember how those old cinemas used to smell…and feel?

From the opening moments of that film, with the gorgeous aerial vistas of Austria gliding by, I was absolutely spellbound. To this day I still get a thrill when I see the opening scenes of this movie.  Poor Dad though, it was all such a novelty to me that I did what so many young kids do..I asked him several times to take me to the toilet. We were sat in the centre of a long row of seats and Dad had to apologise each time we made our way to the aisle.

For a few years I always thought that the film ended when Maria picks up her bag and leaves the house during the party scene and there was a reaosn for this. That first outing saw Dad get so tired of taking me to the loo that at the interval he took me home. So, I always thought that the interval was the end! I think I was about eight, and went and saw it with Mum at a Manly cinema when I learned that there were two parts!

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