When Mary Martin saw the film, she was so excited that she took the story to Rodgers and Hammerstein, who wrote the songs for the musical "The Sound of Music."
When Maria von Trapp published her memoir "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers", Hollywood was immediately interested. However, American producers wanted to purchase the rights to the title only whereas Mrs von Trapp wished that the entire story be used and made into a film. Thus she sold the rights to producers in Germany who produced this film and its sequel Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (1958) and later sold the rights to America, where a more fictionalized version was produced first as a stage musical, then as a film under with title The Sound of Music (1965).
In the film, the young nun Maria is hired as a nanny for the children. The real Maria was hired as a private teacher for one of the daughters who was ill and unable to attend school.
For release in America (in 1961), the film and it's sequel 'Die Trapp Familie in Amerika (1958)' were edited into a single feature film with a run time of 106 mins and dubbed in English.