The Sound of Music: Behind-the-Scenes

Every great movie has great behind-the-scenes stories and photos. Here are a few from The Sound of Music.

 

It took several takes to get the perfect opening shot. Julie Andrews remembers she would come from one side of the hill and the helicopter with the cameraman hanging out the side would come from the other. When the helicopter circled around her, the downdraft would fling her to the ground. She kept motioning for the helicopter to not circle so close but all she kept getting was a thumbs up. After they got the shot, Andrews was whisked away by helicopter to another mountain where they filmed the ending hike.

Rehearsals. Andrews, Plummer, and Carr (Liesl) all had to learn guitar for their roles. Andrews has said that "Edelweiss" is her favorite song from the film. However, it was Plummer's least favorite.

Goofing around

From Charmian Carr's memoir, Forever Liesl: "Kymmie [Kym Karath] was an adorable and very self-assured little girl. I always used to tell people that, even though her birth certificate said she was five, she was really forty-two. She would climb up into my lap and squish my cheeks together as if she were my grandmother and say, 'Oh, I just love your dimples! You're so cute!' "

Skateboarding on the lot

Drying up after the boat scene

Preparing to film the conversation between Maria and the Captain. This was shot in two locations: one with the back of the house (Frohnburg) and the other with the "back yard" (Bertelsmann). Also on the same day, the scene where the Captain and Maria return from their honeymoon was filmed.

 

 

Trying to stay warm

 

With the director, Robert Wise

One place I read said this is a photo of Julie Andrews finding out that she has been nominated for her performance in Mary Poppins. Another said they're looking at the script, but it doesn't look like a script to me.

Andrews, Parker, and Carr

 

With Angela Cartwright

Julie Andrews freshening her make-up; sound check for Eleanor Parker; Plummer waiting on the set

 

 

Carr getting her make-up freshened

 

Parker with Duane Chase and Debbie Turner

Here's the story behind this photo of Parker and Richard Haydn (you may also recognize his voice as that of the caterpillar in Disney's animated Alice in Wonderland): Haydn had appeared on an episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show who could imitate the call of a red-bellied gudgeon fish. In this photo, he got the very elegant Parker to do the imitation with him, much to the delight of everyone else. (Forever Liesl, 58).

With the real Maria Von Trapp. You can see her crossing a street with one of her daughters in the background of the "I Have Confidence" number.

 

Oh, I must stop these doubts, all these worries. If I don't then I know I'll turn back!

 

 

 

Plummer and Chase

Debbie Turner, Duane Chase, and Kym Karath

 

On the set

Karath (looking like she just stepped out of the turn-of-the-century), Andrews, and Turner

Andrew's stand-in, Larri Thomas (right). Thomas is in the train scene and the tree-climbing scene, both some of the last scenes shot on location.

 

Andrews and Plummer couldn't stop laughing during the scene. The solution was to film them in silhouette. You can see them smiling in this (weird orange) photo.

 

The wedding gown had a 14 foot train and was very heavy. It took Andrews half a day to learn how to navigate it down the aisle.

With director Robert Wise

 

Doing some sightseeing

 

Shopping for postcards in Austria

 

Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with a Valentine.

 - Christopher Plummer

The kids now

 

 So long! Farewell!

 

More behind-the-scenes photos 

View the rest of my Sound of Music posts here!

Five Stories You Didn't Know About 'The Sound of Music' As Told By Julie Andrews

'16 Going On 17' Things You Probably Didn't Know

 

Other sources:

Forever Liesl: A Memoir of 'The Sound of Music' by Charmian Carr, 2000.

IMDb - lots more interesting tidbits here!

Photos also found via Pinterest.

New in September: It's All About Pacing

This month's new offerings are a bit deceptive. On the one hand, most of the titles showing up in the first few days of September don't inspire a lot of excitement. There was the return of a number of on-again, off-again classics (welcome back, Ms. Hepburn and Messrs. Cooper and Wayne), a bunch of 1980s and '90s comedies and sci-fi/horror, and a handful of returning kid flicks. So far, so predictable. But once we look forward, things start to get interesting, with the debuts of a number of recent films that are undeniably top tier, as well as new seasons of quite a few notable TV shows.

Robin Williams down but not out

Flubber

But let's take a moment to break out the older and returning titles. First off, last month's loss of two Robin Williams movies, Popeye and The Fisher King, was certainly bad timing given the actor's own untimely departure. But Netflix seems to be making up for that with the joint arrival of Barry Levinson's beloved wartime comedy, Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), and 1997's Flubber, a serviceable remake of Jerry Lewis' Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). Which means the late Mr. Williams hasn't been totally left out in the cold, even if his incoming titles are arguably a downgrade from the outgoing. Perhaps the Michael Keaton comedy two-fer of Mr. Mom (1983) and Multiplicity (1996) will help balance the scales?

Hello, kiddies

It's also more or less a wash as far as family films go, with last month's expirations being offset by a number of (mostly returning) titles. Among those are the above mentioned Flubber, Barry Sonnenfeld's witty remake of TV's The Addams Family (1991), Disney's Fox's animated Anastasia (1997) and live-action Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Mel Brooks' Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs (1987), Pee-Wee Herman's second big-screen appearance, in Big Top Pee-Wee (1988), and the welcome return of Martin Scorsese's sumptuous ode to cinema, Hugo (2011). Also making its way to streaming is that rite-of-passage film for generations past, Old Yeller (1957), which may be a bit musty but should still leave a tot or two bawling by the end credits.

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January's Lost & Found (2014)

Following last month's mass movie-title massacre, it would be easy to join the chorus of Netflix naysayers and cancel the streaming service in a noisy, indignant huff (see also: Netflix Huff). But a funny thing happened on January 1: a lot of great new and returning titles appeared, going a long way toward filling the gap left only hours earlier. Sure, it's going to be tough to make up for losing the Charlie Kaufman films or the incomparable Miller's Crossing, but this month's additions arguably go toe to toe with last month's departures.

Classic sci-fi fans may have cried foul at the loss of Robert Wise's The Andromeda Strain, but in its place we got not only the director's even more classic The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), but the first of the Star Trek films, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Sure, it's not the franchise's best, but it's far from the worst, and it has the distinction of being much closer in spirit to the exploratory/philosophical nature of the original series than the flat-out action-oriented installments to come. And to those of us who saw this on its first release and thought: "Wow, look how old those guys are!" it's refreshing (and a bit painful) to now think: "Wow, look how young those guys were."

Robert Wise fans (and I know you're out there) may also get some satisfaction from the availability of West Side Story (1961), a multi-Oscar-winning musical about star-crossed lovers from the opposite side of the tracks. This should ease the loss of not only Franco Zefirelli's Romeo and Juliet, but another award-winning epic about equally mismatched lovers, Titanic. Richard Beymer is no Leo, of course, but then Billy Zane's no Rita Moreno, either (thank goodness).
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Expiration Watch: TWO FOR THE SEESAW

There's a lot to be said for blunt, literate dialogue between two characters--something more common to plays, books, and high-caliber TV dramas than today's big-studio releases. Equally refreshing are movie romances minus the pinches of Hollywood fairy dust that often cloud the screen, especially if you prefer to see relationships with some semblance of real life. Functioning as a kind of companion piece to Billy Wilder's The Apartment, only less witty and with a narrower scope, Two for the Seesawthrives in its carefully observed portrayal of two lost souls learning to trust each other in 1962 New York.

The details are what sell it. From the Oscar-nominated location photography to the peeling paint inside the cramped and sagging downtown dwellings, this is a world that's been lived in. Not that the film is some gritty kitchen sink drama soaked in gin and reeking of broken childhoods. But director Robert Wise seems to have taken great care to dispense with movie shorthand and actually show what living in New York was (and still is) like for the average striver. Accounts are regularly tallied, dollars saved, geographical integrity honored. Given the film's pedigree--from the director of West Side Story, starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine, shot in gorgeous widescreen black and white--such fidelity comes as a refreshing surprise.

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