But Panther Creek High School brought a rare twist to its version. Thanks to persistent email exchanges, the cast won last-minute coaching from Daniel Truhitte, who played Rolf, the back-stabbingNazi, in the original movie of the musical.

Truhitte agreed to meet the Panther Creek cast at the urging of senior Myles Travitz, who played Capt. Georg Von Trapp in the show's lead role.

Now 67 and living outside Charlotte, the old Rolf even offered to put on a one-man show in Cary to benefit the school's arts boosters, dipping into his "Sound of Music" song bag.

"I'm still doing the old 'Do Re Mi,' " Truhitte said from his Cabarrus County estate. "And Myles sounded like a wonderful young man. So convincing. So positive."

Half a century after its debut, and 46 years after the Oscar-winning movie, "The Sound of Music" remains one of the top shows performed by high school and middle school students - No. 11 in the last survey compiled by the Educational Theater Association, No. 4 as recently as 2002.

At Panther Creek, the students knew they were performing songs that people have been whistling for the past four decades and acting out the story of tortured love in pre-war Austria that so many know by heart.

Still, they struggled with how to capture their characters' depth.

As Rolf, junior Michael Gallagher endured more than four hours of bleaching to turn his dark hair and eyebrows an Aryan shade of blonde. But he still puzzled about how to be both charming and butch, to deliver his big number "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," with both smugness and naïveté.

Truhitte was a complete unknown when he auditioned for "The Sound of Music" alongside Julie Andrews, who was fresh from her Oscar-winning role in "Mary Poppins."

He won the part because he could sing, dance and play a Nazi - a rare combination.

His performance was critical to the movie because in it, unlike the more benevolent Broadway version, he gave up the Von Trapps to the Nazis.

"He turns them in - a horrific scene I'm known for," Truhitte said. "A lot of people thought the Broadway version was too saccharine sweet. I'm such a good guy, and it feels really good to be a bad guy. Where's the story without the dark and the bright, and the bad people and the heavies?"

Truhitte spent years on stage in Las Vegas, but he never made another film. Today, he mixes real estate with performing - and he always does the song he sang for the character Liesl Von Trapp, who was just 16. (Going on 17.)

As for Travitz, who sent the email messages to Truhitte, he credited persistence. Nobody thought Truhitte would really come - not even Panther Creek's director Bing Cox. Once Truhitte was on board, Travitz collected a lot of wows.

"One of the things that caught his eye was the spelling of my name," Travitz said. "He has a really close friend named Myles."

As for Panther Creek's Rolf, he heard from a man who is 67 going on 68 - a thespian who knows how to channel your inner bad-guy and how to stay lit by the spotlights of your youth.