Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Celebrates The 60th Anniversary Of Director Robert Wise's The Sound Of Music With The 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack Debut On Sept. 23

The magic happened on a Tuesday at 8PM at the corner of Broadway and 49th Street in New York City.  The date was March 2, 1965 and the venue was the Rivoli Theatre.   

The magic?   The film debut of director Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music.

The reported production budget was right around $8 million (1965 dollars).   Ticket sales, domestically, were a whopping $163.2 million (again, 1965 dollars).   It won Best Picture and Best Director for Robert Wise (as producer and director), which was a double-Oscar repeat for Wise — West Side Story in 1962.

Julie Andrews was nominated for Best Actress, but the members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — perhaps — thought it was little much to give her Best Actress Oscars two years in a row (she won in 1964 for Mary Poppins), so they gave the little gold statue to Julie Christie for her performance as Diana Scott in director John Schlesinger’s Darling.   Ask yourself these 60 years later which is best remember (not saying the Academy got it wrong, mind you).

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has tabbed Sept. 23 (a very short window) as the 60th anniversary celebration street date for the 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack (with Blu-ray) debut of The Sound of Music.    There will also be a double-disc Blu-ray edition available on the same date.  

The 4K Ultra HD disc has a “sing-along” viewing option and also has vintage commentary tracks from, first, filmmaker Robert Wise and second, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Charmian Carr (as Liesl Von Trapp), Dee Dee Woods (choreographer) and Johannes Von Trapp.   

The first of two companion Blu-ray discs is a repeat of the 4K Ultra HD in terms of content.   

The second companion Blu-ray disc contains a collection of featurettes, newsreels and vintage interviews, including documentary filmmaker Steven C. Smith’s 2015 film, The Sound of a City: Julie Andrews Returns to Salzburg and the featurette titled “A City of Song.”