7 Behind-the-Scenes Stories You Didn’t Know About the Making of ‘The Sound of Music’
Sixty years ago, on March 2, 1965, The Sound of Music hit theaters and was an immediate hit. The wholesome musical about the singing von Trapp family, the whimsical nun-in-training who becomes their nanny, and their daring escape from Austria on the eve of World War II has captivated families for generations — but life behind the scenes of the film was not all raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Christopher Plummer had too many pastries (and too much booze, and too short a fuse), Julie Andrews kept getting knocked down, and Liesl high-kicked her way to an on-set injury … the hills are alive, with the sound of behind-the-scenes stories!
1 Christopher Plummer gained so much weight snacking on Bavarian treats, his costumes didn’t fit
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Plummer’s conflicted feelings regarding his most famous film are well documented — sometimes he praised it as a wonderful film, sometimes he called it “treacly” and referred to it as “the Sound of Mucus.” But in his 2008 memoir, In Spite of Myself, Plummer makes clear that he loved at least one thing about the experience of shooting the film on location in Austria: the food.
After a few weeks off, which Plummer spent indulging in the area’s food and wine, director Robert Wise told him, “Young man, you better go on a diet right away. How are you going to get into your clothes?” Plummer writes that “all my costumes had to be let out to their fullest, a couple of them were entirely remade, and the makeup man was obliged to use an inordinate amount of dark shading as I was beginning to resemble Orson Welles.”
2 Julie Andrews kept falling during her famous hilltop scene
Andrews twirling in a verdant mountain field, singing the film’s title song, is one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. But while the actress portrayed Maria as engaging in some carefree outdoor frolicking, the reality was a lot less charming.
As Andrews explained during a 2023 interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, in that scene, “We had this monstrous helicopter that had a camera man very bravely strapped to the side.” When Wise called action, Andrews and the helicopter would move toward each other across the field. But “every time the helicopter had finished, it went around me, but the downdraft from the jet engine just flung me into the grass. … We did this about six or seven times, and I was spitting dirt and hay, and I kept saying, ‘Couldn’t you take a wider circle around?'”
The scene also took forever to shoot, Andrews recalled, “because the weather was not kind to us. Somebody forgot to mention that Austria has the seventh highest annual rainfall, and so we had a lot of rain while we were shooting.” Much of the filming was done in a light rain that just didn’t read on film.
3 Plummer once interrupted a take and screamed at director Robert Wise … because he forgot he had a day off
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In his memoir, Plummer admitted to having a major freak-out because he hadn’t received a call sheet one morning. “I went ballistic! I threw my clothes on and ran all over Salzburg trying to find the unit. I finally came upon them filming a scene with Julie [Andrews] and the children on the outskirts of town. They were in the midst of a take, but I didn’t care. I walked right into the shot and let forth a stream of abuse at Mr. [Robert] Wise and everyone present for their lack of manners.”
It was only after Plummer was finished his rant that he was reminded that no one had given him a call sheet because he wasn’t scheduled to work that day.
4 There was almost a drowning on set
Kym Kareth was only 5 years old when she appeared as youngest von Trapp child Gretl, so it’s no shock that she didn’t yet know how to swim. When they went to film the rowboat scene — where the von Trapp children get so excited to see their father that they flip the boat and end up in the lake — right before filming began, the assistant director told Andrews that Kareth couldn’t swim and asked her to grab her as soon as they fell in the water.
However, Andrews accidentally fell off a different side of the boat from the young actress. “Well, of course, I fell back instead of forward, and I had to swim like mad to get to her, the poor kid,” Andrews told Graham Norton in a 2019 interview. “I could see her flailing away. She went under at least twice, came up and then threw up!”
5 Liesl had a crush on Captain von Trapp (& Friedrich had a crush on Liesl & Captain von Trapp had a crush on Maria)
As we know from “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” Liesl is into older guys … but actress Charmain Carr, who played Liesl, was apparently looking for someone a little more mature than Rolf. “I had a huge crush on [Christopher Plummer]” the actress admitted on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010, remembering the pair hitting the bars in Salzberg together (though they had a 13-year age difference). “He was so perfect, and he spoke with this perfect British accent.” When Winfrey asked Carr what she had learned from Plummer on set, she replied: “Drinking!”
But that wasn’t the only bit of unrequited love going around the von Trapp family. Nicholas Hammond, who played Friedrich (and was seven years younger than Carr), told the Daily Mail in 2015 that “I had a crush on Liesl, Charmian, she was so beautiful. God, those wonderful, beautiful blue eyes.”
Hammond didn’t keep his thoughts to himself and told Carr about it, but she only had eyes for Plummer: “[Charmian and Plummer] stayed in the same hotel, would have a drink or two after work. They didn’t have an affair but she sort of implies now she wished they had. [Plummer] had a string of girlfriends so beautiful you couldn’t believe your eyes. He was so good-looking. I couldn’t compete with him.”
At the Oprah reunion, Plummer admitted to a secret crush, too — he had a thing for Andrews prior to shooting: “I’d fallen in love with her in My Fair Lady on Broadway, so I had a crush on her forever.”
6 Liesl danced through a plate glass window
During the filming of “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” Carr put her foot through one of the windows during the glass gazebo dance sequence. Luckily, she only sprained an ankle — but according to the official Sound of Music Facebook page, her ankle bandage is visible in some shots.
7 Plummer and Andrews laughed so hard in one scene, they had to be shot in silhouette
Have you ever wondered why the romantic number “Something Good,” in which the Captain and Maria declare their love for each other, is basically shot in the dark? According to Plummer’s memoir, it was because the overhead lighting made it sound as if someone was “prodigiously and continuously farting.” The sound gave Plummer, Andrews and the crew the giggles, and by his estimate, there were 30 takes that were totally unusable due to laughter.
After a lunch break, the actors returned to set, where the lights were still giving off the sound of flatulence. “‘Turn off the lights. We’ll shoot in the dark,'” director Robert Wise declared. “And we proceeded to play in silhouette, hoping no one saw us giggling,” Plummer wrote.
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