The Sound of Music The Movie in Beijing, China
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Genre: Musical
Synopsis:
A novitiate (Julie Andrews) leaves her convent and becomes governess to Capt. Von Trapp's (Christopher Plummer) seven children in Austria before World War II.
Release Date: 03/02/1965
Running Time: 174
Rating: G - General Audiences
http://www.foxhome.com/soundofmusic/
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Cast:
Maria: Julie Andrews,Captain von Trapp: Christopher Plummer,Baroness Schraeder: Eleanor Parker,Max Detweiler: Richard Haydn,Mother Abbess: Peggy Wood,Liesl von Trapp: Charmian Carr,Louisa von Trapp: Heather Menzies,Friedrich von Trapp: Nicholas Hammond,Kurt von Trapp: Duane Chase,Brigitta von Trapp: Angela Cartwright,Marta von Trapp: Debbie Turner,Gretl von Trapp: Kym Karath,Sister Margaretha: Anna Lee,Sister Berthe: Portia Nelson,Herr Zeller: Ben Wright,Rolfe: Daniel Truhitte,Frau Schmidt: Norma Varden,Franz: Gil Stuart,Sister Sophia: Marni Nixon,Sister Bernice: Evadne Baker,Baroness Eberfeld: Doris Lloyd
Crew:
Director: Robert Wise,Writer (Stage Musical): Oscar Hammerstein II,Writer (Stage Musical): Richard Rodgers,Writer (Book): Howard Lindsay,Writer (Book): Russel Crouse,Writer: Ernest Lehman,Associate Producer: Saul Chaplin,Producer: Robert Wise,Original Music: Irwin Kostal,Original Music: Richard Rodgers,Cinematographer: Ted McCord D.,Film Editor: William Reynolds,Casting: Michael McLean,Production Designer: Boris Leven,Set Decoration: Ruby Levitt R.,Set Decoration: Walter Scott M,Costume Designer: Dorothy Jeakins,Makeup Artist: Ben Nye,Hair Stylist: Margaret Donovan,Unit Production Manager: Saul Wurtzel
Production Companies:
Argyle Enterprises,Twentieth Century Fox
Distributors:
20th Century Fox
Notes:
Production Notes -Notes provided by Twentieth Century Fox- Excerpts From The Original Production Notes Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound Of Music, the most popular motion picture of all time, is the film version of an equally popular stage musical. A tuneful, heartwarming story, it is based on the real life story of the Von Trapp Family singers, one of the world's best-known concert groups in the era immediately preceding World War II. Julie Andrews, who reached super-stardom in The Sound Of Music, plays the role of Maria, the tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey who becomes a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children, and brings a new love of life into the home. Christopher Plummer, the distinguished Broadway star, plays Captain Von Trapp and Eleanor Parker portrays the lovely Baroness Eisa who wants to marry him. Richard Haydn plays Max, the family friend whose skill as an impresario leads the family into the world of music. The beloved Broadway and television actress Peggy Wood makes one of her infrequent film appearances as the Mother Abbess. The Sound Of Music was produced and directed by Robert Wise and was the winner of five Academy Awards@ including Best Picture and Best Direction. In bringing The Sound Of Music to the screen, Wise was reunited with three of the top talents of his first musical, the multi-award-winning West Side Story associate producer Saul Chaplin, screenwriter Ernest Lehman and art director Boris Leven. On stage, The Sound Of Music enraptured audiences around the world with its warm, romantic story and its lilting score. In bringing it to the screen, Wise enhanced these qualities with the sweep and scope of Todd-AO and DeLuxe Color to provide a new and exciting musical treat -- and then took his cast and crew to Salzburg, Austria, to film his story against the authentic backgrounds of the world-famed "city of music. " "Salzburg," Wise remembers, "was more than just the city where this story took place. It was an atmosphere, and this is what we wanted to capture on film in order to make audiences feel the aura that surrounded the people with whom we were involved." The people are the Von Trapp family singers whose singing career started after Maria, a postulant at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg, became governess to the widowed Captain Von Trapp and his seven children and brought music into a household that had, until then, been run on a strict regimen, with no frivolity permitted. To get the feeling Wise wanted in The Sound Of Music, he took a company of 60 persons to Salzburg, spending a total of 11 weeks filming in some of the citys landmarks, like Mirabell Gardens, Nonnberg Abbey, Winkler's Terrace and the Mozart footbridge. Additional scenes were shot in the surrounding Salzkammergut region, where towering mountains surround quiet lakes and the lush green countryside provides an atmosphere of beauty and tranquility. During the course of the location shooting, which occupied almost one-half of the production time, The Sound Of Music company utilized historic Frohnburg Castle, now a dormitory for music students at the Mozarteum, to simulate the Von Trapp villa. The actual home of the family was occupied by Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler during the War and was surrounded by a high wall making it unphotogenic. Other sequences were shot at Leopolskron, once the estate of Max Reinhardt, and since used as the seminar for American studies. The Baroness Von Trapp Von Trapp, real-life heroine of The Sound Of Music, visited the company during its location stay. She had been attending a class reunion in Vienna and made the three-hour journey to Salzburg specifically to meet Julie Andrews and to and to fulfill a long-cherished ambition -- to appear in a movie. At her request, Wise put her in one scene as an extra -but with a few retakes and the various angle shots required for the film, the Baroness did her bit 19 times over a period of three hours before she was finished. "That's one ambition I'm giving up," she sighed. When she first saw the film she told Julie Andrews, "I'm delighted you're playing it as a tomboy -- because that's what I was." In the 11 weeks' time, Salzburgers became more or less accustomed to the activities of the American film unit. They had been prepared for any eccentricity by the pre-production visit of associate producer Saul Chaplin and choreographer Marc Breaux, who rambled through the city and surrounding countryside caring a tape recorder that blared forth a special arrangement of "Do-Re-Mi." From time to time, the strange Americans would halt in front of a Salzburg landmark and go through what appeared to be some sort of tribal dance, to the strains of "Do-Re-Mi." "We are timing out the various segments of the number," Chaplin explained. "We must have looked like idiots, but we managed to save about a week of production time by having each segment timed out in advance. But neither Marc nor I knew enough German to explain what we were doing. Come to think of it, they might have found the explanation even crazier." Salzburgers were too polite to question openly the sanity of their visitors, but many things were obviously puzzling. Like hiring 1,000 residents to play themselves in the Festival scenes -- and then asking them to wear summer clothes to work outdoors from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. with temperatures hovering just above freezing. The Festival scenes were shot in the most spectacular of Salzburg's landmarks, the Felsenreitschule or Rocky Riding School. The stage of the vast amphitheatre is backgrounded by scores of arched tunnels carved out of the rocky mountain that surrounds the city and it forms an impressive backdrop for the climactic scenes of the film. The most intriguing aspect of the production to the Salzburgers was the care and treatment of the youngsters brought over from Hollywood to play the Von Trapp children. Six were of school age, so they were accompanied by a schoolteacher who saw to it they spent a minimum of four and one-half hours per day at their studies. In general, Salzburg went all out to aid the unit, even to the extent of a special postal cancellation stamp which the city authorized on all mail posted in Salzburg from May through September. The weatherman, unfortunately, wasn't as helpful; the scheduled eight-week location stretched to 11 weeks as a result of an unusually rainy spring. Consequently, the unit for a time operated on the basis of three possible calls daily -- one for fine, sunny weather; one for overcast; and one, indoors at the tiny Durer studio, in the event of rain. When Wise finally ran out of scenes that could be shot indoors, the unit sat and waited out the bad weather. Despite the rain and cold, there were no health problems among the children. Not one day was lost because of childhood ailments -- but the normal process of growing up created headaches for the production staff. During the 11 weeks, the kids kept growing, but not in proportion to each other. In order to maintain the same height scale between members of the family, their shoes were fitted with special lifts which, at times, had to be swapped around in order to achieve the desired balance. The possibility that some baby teeth would fall out had been reckoned with ahead of time and false teeth supplied for the younger children. No such precaution was taken with then 13-year-old Duane Chase -- who discovered one afternoon that one of his front teeth was loose and obviously wouldn't last through the night. A Salzburg dentist was called in on an emergency basis and he and dental technicians worked through the night to deliver a tooth the next morning so that shooting could continue without interruption Through the location shooting, the unit was conscious that it was facing a deadline. Whether filming was completed or not The Sound Of Music had to be out of Salzburg by July 10 to make way for the city's annual sound of music, the Salzburg Festival. Hotel reservations for the fete are usually made a year in advance -- and after July 10 there would have been no room for the 60 Americans who made the trek to Austria. Despite the slowdown caused by weather, the unit made the deadline with five days to spare. Shooting was about evenly divided between the locations and the 20th-Century Fox studios where art director Boris Leven created interiors to complement the exteriors shot in Salzburg. One of these, the courtyard of Nonnberg Abbey, was such a faithful reproduction, down to the cobblestones and the stained glass windows, that Salzburg residents who saw that portion of the film could not believe it was done in the studio. The reproduction was necessary because outsiders could not be permitted to work within the walls of the Abbey. The Sound Of Music marked the second time that Richard Rodgers wrote both words and music for the screen. The noted composer contributed two new songs, "I Have Confidence in Me" and "Something Good," to replace two songs from the original stage show which didn't blend well with the changes which Ernest Lehman made in the screenplay The production also marked the "live" debut of Hollywood's most famous "ghost" -- Marni Nixon. She had, for many years, been the voice of top Hollywood stars who had been cast in musicals, singing for such diverse personalities as Deborah Kerr in The King and 1, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. In The Sound Of Music she was both seen and heard for the first time, playing the role of Sister Sophia, For 18-year-old Charmian Carr, The Sound Of Music represented a dream come true, but ironically, it was a dream she herself had never had. She was plucked from the campus of San Fernando Valley State College to play Liesl, eldest daughter of the Von Trapp Family, without ever having had any professional experience, She had not, in fact, even considered a screen career. Charmian was majoring in speech therapy and modeling in her spare time when a friend sent her picture to Robert Wise. He called her in for an interview and discovered she could sing and dance and promptly tested her. As a result of the test, she won the plum ingenue role. One of the highlights of the film version of "The Sound of Music," the puppet sequence, was written into the story by Lehman To make it work, Wise called in Bil and the late Cora Baird, America's foremost puppeteers who created a new series of puppet characters to be used with the song "The Lonely Goatherd" (sometimes called "The Yodeling Song") and then spent three weeks at the studios teaching Julie Andrews and the children how to manipulate the marionettes.
