On today’s date in 1965, the now-classic and mega-iconic musical film “The Sound of Music” officially debuted at the Rivoli Theater at Broadway and 49th Street in New York City.

Since we at COMPOSERS DATEBOOK are notorious for mentioning “little known facts,” let us state in our best Cliff Clavin manner, that the first test audiences to see the film did so in fly-over country—first in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and subsequently in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about a month before the film’s New York debut.

The Midwestern audiences were ecstatic, and director Robert Wise knew he would have a hit on his hands when his film starring Julie Andrews opened on Broadway, not far from where the stage version, starring Mary Martin, had originally debuted back in 1959.

The 1965 New York Times film review was a little snarky—well, what else is new? It began by referring to (quote) “the perceptible weakness of its quaintly old-fashioned book” and the show’s “cheerful abundance of kirche-küche-kinder sentiment,” grudgingly admiring, “the generally melodic felicity of the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein score,” and ended by opining, “Businesswise, Mr. Wise is no fool.”

Indeed, Mr. Wise’s film won five Oscars and displaced “Gone with the Wind” as the highest-grossing film of all-time. Its songs are known by heart by most of us—thanks chiefly to Mary Martin and Julie Andrews, of course, but also to others ranging from John Coltrane to Stephen Hough to Lady Gaga.