The Reverend Mother was a secondary hero in the 1965 movie The Sound of Music. A kindly older woman, the Reverend Mother was the Abbess of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg in 1938. In that year a young novice named Maria came to to abbey. Her free spirited nature led the Reverend Mother to conclude that Maria would do better outside the Abbey. She gave Maria the assignment to Georg von Trapp, an Austrian Naval officer engaged to be married to Baroness Elsa Schraeder.