The hills are alive with the sound of birthday wishes! The Sound of Music turns 60 this year and after all this time, it’s still a classic family favourite.
We’ve found some curious facts about the classic film, that starred Dame Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and scooped five Academy Awards, and filled the airwaves with songs like Do-Re-Mi, Sixteen Going on Seventeen and The Lonely Goatherd. Layee odl, layee odl layee-oo!
Stream The Sound of Music now on Disney+ with a mth-to-mth no lock-in contract. Subscribe here.
What a blast
The musical, set in Austria just before the Nazis took over in 1938, tells the story of Maria, who takes a job as governess to a large family while she decides whether to become a nun. In the scene in which Maria spins around on a mountaintop singing the title song, actor Dame Julie Andrews appears serene and unruffled. But nothing could be further from the truth! The aerial shot required a cameraman to be strapped to the side of a helicopter as it zoomed toward her. “The down draft from those jets was so strong that every time the helicopter circled around me, it just flattened me into the grass,” recalls Julie. “I braced myself. I thought, ‘It’s not going to get me this time.’ And every single time, I bit the dust. I was spitting dirt and hay.”
High notes
The film was adapted from the successful 1959 Broadway production in which Mary Martin played Maria. One of the biggest changes in the film version came when Julie added an extra octave to the end of Do-Re-Mi. “I did it because I could!” Julie later confessed. Now aged 89, the beloved star no longer sings after what was supposed to be “routine surgery” permanently damaged her vocal cords. In 1999, she sued the surgeon and in 2000, her lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
The great escape
In the movie, the von Trapps escape Austria right under the noses of the Nazis by climbing over the Austrian Alps to the safety of Switzerland. The real von Trapp family, on which the story is based, however, did no such thing. They dressed up with knapsacks on their backs as if they were going on a family hike, leaving all their belongings behind. They took trains through Italy, Switzerland, France and Britain before finally boarding a ship to America, where they became well known as a touring family of singers.
Blonde ambition
The movie makers decided to give Julie’s brown hair blonde highlights for the role. Unfortunately, they turned orange and the only way to save the situation was to dye her locks completely fair. It wasn’t the only hair disaster. Daniel Truhitte, who played Nazi sympathiser Rolf Gruber, had to have his hair bleached and said, “I lost half my hair and it thinned out a lot.”
Pucker up
It took 12 takes to film the kiss between Julie and Christopher because neither could stop laughing. “We couldn’t help it,” recalls Julie, who says the arc lights used to create a shaft of moonlight emitted a ridiculous raspberry sound. “We’d go back to the scene again and those lights would start groaning at us again! Our giggling got even worse. It got to the point where we couldn’t get through the scene.” In the end, director Robert Wise filmed it mostly in the dark.
Stream The Sound of Music now on Disney+ with a mth-to-mth no lock-in contract. Subscribe here.
