Hollywood Archives – Thomas Froese

Doh, o doh, some tourist dough

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / October 2, 2004 / 2004, cultural myths, Froese biography, Hollywood, Salzburg Seminar, The Sound of Music, Von Trapp family / 4 minutes of reading

ST. GILDEN, AUSTRIA ✦ OK, for the record, nobody rocks like Mozart. But Julie Andrews made plenty of Austrian stores come alive with the sound of ka-ching, after her famous opening to the Sound of Music, filmed 40 years ago on a mountain near this lake-district resort town.

The movie initially raked in a cool $165 million, about $800 million in today’s dollars. Now tourism cash still flows from it like a river, especially an hour from here in Salzburg, Mozart’s hometown, where the visitors never really leave.

Doh, o doh, some tourist dough Read More »

Can this Pied Piper lead us to the Promised Land?

On a warm day on a busy walkway in a large square in Berlin, a young man sits playing his flute for a pocketful of change. His hair is spiked like the Statue of Liberty and he wears a dark tank top. I draw near to him and see his shirt’s message: “Jesus didn’t die for my sins. He died for His own.”