“The Sound of Music” cast reveal the dark truth behind the film
It’s one of the most beloved family classics but The Sound of Music film was originally plagued with problems.
The 1965 Hollywood music, which tells the real-life story of the Von Trapp family and their life just before World War II, hit a snag the moment production began in Salzburg, Austria.
“The town didn’t want us there,” actor Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) told Closer Weekly, revealing the town opposed the film’s political message. “They provided no co-operation whatsoever.”
The 67-year-old said even a local marionette theatre refused to let their puppets be used in ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ scene.
“They said, ‘This is a classy operation we do here,’” he recalled. “We don’t want them in some tacky Hollywood movie.’ So the puppets we used had to be made.”
The unpredictable Austrian weather also proved to be challenging, almost ruining the film.
“We had what was on record as the worst spring weather [Salzburg] had in 50 years,” he explained. “It rained almost every single day. In an awful lot of the shots where it looks sunny, it wasn’t at all. They had to blast a lot of huge arc lights to try to make it look like the sun was shining.”
The poor weather pushed back filming so much the child actors began to grow too quickly.
“I was 7, and I lost all four of my teeth across the bottom,” Debbie Turner (Marta) told the magazine. “Then I lost all four across the top so I had a retainer-type thing that had fake teeth on it!”
Hammond, who was 160cm tall at the start of filming, also shot up by 15cm.
“The wardrobe man would joke to my mother and say, ‘Why don’t you just hit him over the head so he stops growing?’” said Hammond. “I started with great big lifts in my shoes, but then they took them out, and I eventually had to stand barefoot because I got to be much taller than Charmian Carr (Liesel).”
One of the children almost died as well, Hammond revealed. In the river scene in which the Von Trapps all fall into a lake, Kym Karath (Gretl) suddenly sank to the bottom.
“It was 10 seconds before anybody realised there were only six kids in the boat, not seven,” said Hammond. “All those crew guys went rushing into the lake and pulled Kym up, and she promptly threw up all over Heather Menzies (Louisa)!”
Julie Andrews, who starred as Maria, has previously spoken about how her iconic scene singing on the Austrian mountains was very difficult to create.
“A giant helicopter came at me sideways with a very brave cameraman hanging out [its] side,” said the 81-year-old. “Every time he went around me, the downdraft from the jets would fling me down into the grass.”
Despite all the trouble filming the musical, it brought the cast closer together. To this day, they stay in touch.
“It took nine months to film the movie in its entirety, and we had a lot of interaction …” said Karath. “We’re on email or the telephone all the time. We’re not kidding about it being a second family.”