50 things about ‘The Sound of Music’ to help celebrate the movie’s 50th anniversary

Fifty years ago this year, on March 2, 1965, the film adaptation of the musical “The Sound of Music” premiered. 

The film, which starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, has gone on to become one of the most beloved movie musicals of all time.

In honor of the 2015 anniversary, here’s a look at 50 things you might not know about “The Sound of Music” film:

1. In 1962, after the stage version of “The Sound of Music” became a big hit, Julie Andrews appeared in a spoof of the musical with Carol Burnett. Three years later, the movie — starring Julie Andrews — was released.
2. The film version of “The Sound of Music” is based on the stage version of “The Sound of Music,” which is based on a 1956 German film version called “Die Trapp-Familie,” which was based on a book Maria von Trapp wrote about the family.
3. Actor Christopher Plummer did not want to take the role of Captain von Trapp because he did not think the role was his type of role. Director Robert Wise flew over to London to convince him to take the role, and Plummer worked closely with the film’s writer to flesh out his character and give Captain von Trapp more depth.
4. Age was a concern in casting Christopher Plummer — he was in his 30s and there were fears that he wouldn’t look old enough to have a daughter of 16 going on 17.
5. The seven von Trapp children were cast as a result of casting sessions in Hollywood, London and New York. Six of the seven children came from the Los Angeles casting sessions. Only one — Nicholas Hammond as Friedrich — came from elsewhere.
6. Liesl was the last child cast for the film; the young actors and actresses had been rehearsing “My Favorite Things” with a slew of temporary Liesls for more than two weeks before she joined them.
7. Charmian Carr (Liesl) was asked if she would mind changing her name for the film. At the time, she was going by her real name, which was Charmian Farnon, but filmmakers thought the full name was too exotic. Director Robert Wise gave her a list of single-syllable last names and encouraged her to pick one, and she chose “Carr.”
8. According to Charmian Carr’s book, “Forever Liesl: A Memoir of the Sound of Music,” many well-known people auditioned for the film roles of the von Trapp children, including Alan, Wayne, Merrill and Jay Osmond, Richard Dreyfuss, Kurt Russell and Mia Farrow. Her book also states that the Osmonds’ hair was too black to be considered for the roles.
9. Nicholas Hammond, who plays Friedrich, had had an accident while skiing prior to auditioning for the film. He showed up at his audition in New York with a broken arm and with missing front teeth.
10. Angela Cartwright, who played Brigitta in the film, did a screen test as Louisa while wearing a blonde wig. She said it was a relief to be cast as dark-haired Brigitta instead.
11. When filming started, Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) was shorter than Charmian Carr (Liesl). However, Hammond grew six inches in six months, meaning filmmakers frequently had to “cheat” to hide his added height using shoe lifts, boxes and space between the two actors.
12. “My Favorite Things” was the first thing shot on “The Sound of Music” because the schedule called from them to start shooting in April, but they couldn’t shoot in Salzburg because there was still snow on the ground.
13. During filming, Julie Andrews taught all the children to say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” both forward and backward. Considering filming started some six months before “Mary Poppins” was released, the word probably didn’t make much sense to anyone who heard it.
14. It costs a lot of money to film on location, so efforts were made to get group shots done first. The last things filmed in Austria, then, were the shots flying over the city used at the very beginning of the movie, and the shot of Maria singing in the mountains. The opening of the movie was really the close of filming in Austria.
15. Julie Andrews says that the opening shot of her in the film — twirling and singing in the mountains — was captured using a helicopter that would come in sideways across the field with a cameraman hanging out the side. After getting the shot, the helicopter would swoop around and reset for another take, and Andrews says the downdraft of the chopper would catch her every time, absolutely leveling her against the ground.
16. When the filmmakers found the location where they wanted Maria to be singing as the film opened, they thought they made a deal with the farmer to let his grass grow tall. However, when they came back to film, the farmer had cut his grass. It should’ve been longer, director Robert Wise says.
17. According to Julie Andrews, the stream she walks across in “The Sound of Music” was made for the film, and the farmer who owned the land where they were shooting once became irate with their filming and poked a hole in the plastic lining of the stream with a pitchfork, which then drained the stream.
18. During the filming of Maria’s song on the mountain, she looks like she’s all alone. On a film set, of course, that’s not possible — the directors and other people on set were hiding in the trees so the camera could not see them.
19. Marni Nixon — famous without being famous for having dubbed the singing voices of Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” Natalie Wood in “West Side Story,” and “Deborah Kerr in “The King and I” — was cast as Sister Sophia in “The Sound of Music” because director Robert Wise wanted people to see her face and appreciate her work.
20. Choreographer Dee Dee Wood said she and the other choreographers would put on nun habits and walk around as they worked on getting the look and feel of the song “Maria” (aka “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”) just right.
21. Weather in Salzburg was a challenge, so filmmakers used the Mother Abbess’s office as a “cover set,” or a set to be used when the weather was bad and no other filming could be done. The scene between the Mother Abbess and Maria in the beginning of the film was shot over the course of all the on-location filming.
22. During filming in Austria, the real Maria von Trapp showed up on set with some family members. They appear in the background of the song “I Have Confidence,” just as Julie Andrews is walking under an archway.
23. Julie Andrews says she had a real problem with one line of the song “I Have Confidence,” which then affected the entire way she performed that number in the film. The line was: “Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers,” and Andrews says she couldn’t figure out how that line made sense. In order to make it seem believable, she decided to make Maria seem so nervous about her new job that she would go “quite dotty,” so Andrews swung around her guitar case, ran, tripped and did other things to distract herself from thinking about the lyric.
24. It rained frequently in Salzburg, but shooting often continued despite that, because it must be raining very hard for rain to show on film. The scene where Maria stands outside of the gate and looks up at the von Trapp family house, for instance, was shot while it was raining, but you can’t tell.
25. The names of the real von Trapp children were Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna and Martina. Maria and Georg von Trapp had three children together: Rosmarie, Eleonore and Johannes.
26. According to Johannes von Trapp, his father really did use a bosun’s whistle to signal the kids, and they all really did have their own signals that they responded to. The marching, however, was not true.
27. Julie Andrews says she was worried she’d have to hold a real frog when the children play their first trick on Maria as she arrives at the von Trapp home. However, the one in her pocket was not real, which she says made her feel “hugely relieved.”
28. The night before shooing started, the filmmakers decided they needed one more blonde child, so Nicholas Hammond’s hair was lightened from brunette to blonde.
29. On the first take of the dance scene between Charmian Carr (Liesl) and Daniel Truhitte (Rolf) in the gazebo, Carr jumped onto a bench only to discover that her shoes hadn’t had rubber put on them. She slipped, and went right through the glass window. Although she wasn’t cut when she went through the window, she did sprain her ankle. Filmmakers wrapped her ankle and covered the bandage in makeup, put tights on her to hide the bandage and gave her a vitamin B-12 injection. She then filmed the number without any problems. Carr says you can see the bandage on her ankle in older versions of the film, but that it has been removed in later releases.
30. During the Liesl and Rolfe scene in the gazebo, the crew was hidden under black cloths so they wouldn’t be seen in reflections on the glass.
31. When Maria is praying for each of the children on her first night at the von Trapp home, Julie Andrews says “God bless whatshisname” more loudly than the rest of her lines as a signal for Charmian Carr to enter. Carr had a hard time hearing the line over the sounds of the fake thunder and lightning.
32. The scene where Charmian Carr (Liesl) tries to sneak through Maria’s room was Carr’s first scene in a movie. She says she started the movie wet (being hosed down before doing that scene) and ended the movie wet (her final scene was in the rain at the gazebo with Rolfe).
33. Director Robert Wise said he was “very taken” by a glacier in the mountains of Austria while filming “Do-Re-Mi,” so the shot of Kurt and Friedrich tossing a ball around was included in the films specifically so he could get a shot of the glacier.
34. Julie Andrews did not play the guitar when she started the film, so she was taught. Director Robert Wise says she’s such a good musician that she picked it up quickly, although she struggled with playing and singing at the same time. Andrews says playing the guitar was like trying to pat her head and rub her tummy at the same time.
35. Christopher Plummer was also taught to play the guitar for the film, thanks to his needing to play it during “Edelweiss.” He says he “loathed” the guitar because it hurt his fingers. Plummer is a pianist, though, and often performed at night after the day’s shooting was done.
36. When the children and Maria fall out of the boat, Julie Andrews was supposed to fall forward and pick up Kym Karath, who played little Gretl. Karath couldn’t swim, so it was important that someone grabbed her quickly. The first take went fine, but on the second take, Andrews fell backwards instead of forwards. Heather Menzies (Louisa) eventually grabbed Karath, but not before Karath had swallowed so much water that she vomited on Menzies. Andrews says she still feels bad about the incident.
37. The front of the von Trapp house was filmed at Schloss Frohnburg, but the back of the house was filmed at Schloss Leopoldskron. Schloss Frohnburg did not have a lake behind it, which was why two locations were needed.
38. In the scene where Maria and the Captain fight over the children, Maria’s half of the scene was filmed at Schloss Frohnburg while Captain von Trapp’s half of the scene was filmed at Schloss Leopoldskron. That’s the magic of filmmaking.
39. The singing voice Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” was provided by Bill Lee, who also did the singing for the character of Roger in Disney’s “101 Dalmatians.”
40. Julie Andrews says the song “Edelweiss” is probably one of her favorite songs in the whole movie, and that she wishes she had gotten to sing it.
41. The song “Edelweiss” was the last song Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein ever wrote together. Hammerstein died in 1960, several months after the show opened on Broadway.
42. In the song, “So Long, Farewell,” Liesl asks her father if she can stay at the party and taste her first champagne. Although she’s told “no” in that scene, actress Charmian Carr really did have her first taste of champagne while filming.
43. The real Captain von Trapp was a submarine commander in World War I.
44. The von Trapp family was invited to perform at Adolf Hitler’s birthday party, but declined the offer. It was one of several events that helped them decide they needed to leave Austria.
45. Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful men in Germany’s Third Reich, took over the von Trapp villa in Austria after the family fled, making it his headquarters.
46. All of the children have things about the final film they don’t necessarily like. For Nicholas Hammond, it’s the fact that he’s the only one who doesn’t stop pointing at himself while riding in the carriage and singing “Do-Re-Mi.”
47. For Debbie Turner (Marta), the part she dislikes about her performance is that during “My Favorite Things,” at one point she starts to mouth the words along with Julie Andrews.
48. If you watch Heather Menzies and Charmian Carr on the stairs during “Do-Re-Mi,” you’ll see one of them make a mistake, and then both attempt to get back in unison with the other. For 40 years, Menzies believed she was the one who made the mistake; on the 40th anniversary DVD, Carr admitted that it was actually her. Neither thought that was the take that would end up in the film, but it did.
49. The filmmakers saved the poignant moment where Captain von Trapp begins to sing with the children until the very end of shooting. The children, many of whom cry in that scene, say they get complimented about being good actors, but in reality they were crying because they were sad about wrapping the film.
50. The United States Library established the National Film Preservation Board in 1988 to preserve films considered to be “culturally, historically, or esthetically important.” “The Sound of Music” was added to the registry in 2001.