The Sound of Music

Making a movie is no easy picnic.

War films and musicals and sci-fi and chick flicks.

Think you could do it?

Listen to the song.

These are a few of the things that go wrong.

Shooting with Kubrick till Tom Cruise is broken.

Ben-Hur was gay, but it shall go unspoken.

Swayze and Jennifer can't get along.

These are a few of the things that went wrong.

Wilder takes sleeping pills right up the anus.

Disney hates humans, my cartoons are famous.

J-Lojed Mariah Carey's best song.

These are a few of the things that went wrong.

If the script sucks, there's regime change, terrorists attack.

I simply remember the things that went wrong, and then it won't seem

so

bad.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a timeless classic that, again, unfortunately feels oddly relevant to our current times in some interesting ways.

I agree.

As always, I am Chris Winnerbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett, who will be our intrepid guide through which film?

The sound of music, Chris.

The hills are alive.

Yeah.

Or as you said, the hills have eyes and music.

Yes.

I kind of wish that's what it was, but no, it's very much for, I think, children, but also very enjoyable for adults.

We're going to talk about how it came to be, how seemingly no one really wanted to be a part of this and was pretty embarrassed for most people.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Interesting.

Yeah, but I agree.

I do think this is a timeless classic.

This was, of course, the winner of our musicals poll.

I did not think this was going to win.

I thought for sure it would be Westside Story or all that jazz.

However, Chris is looking very smug right now because he said immediately the sound of music will win.

Because Chris also is a plebeian with no taste and thought, yeah, I'd pick the sound of music.

It's the one I recognize the most.

Well, you were right.

It's a good one.

I'm glad you all chose it.

It's not the one that I would have picked out of that poll.

We'll probably do some of the others.

We are going to cover all that jazz, which was in that in a little bit.

But yeah, this was a really fascinating one.

So, Chris, I'm assuming you had seen the sound of music before.

Yes.

But what was your experience the first time you saw it?

And what was your experience re-watching for the podcast?

I'd seen it a couple of times as a kid.

Didn't make a big impression upon me.

Knew the melodies to a few of the songs, obviously.

Knew that it dovetailed into the Anschluss, as I learned this time, but Nazis' annexation of Austria.

Lizzie,

I loved it.

It's great.

I was utterly, I was stunned.

I was in.

I was locked in for three hours.

I started tearing up when he starts singing for his children.

Oh, what a scene.

Yeah.

And his final performance when he sings Edelweiss for the crowd is...

amazing.

I was like, is this maybe the best movie we've covered this year?

It's up there with Doctor Strangelove for me.

I really, I don't want to oversell it, but I actually, I really thought this movie looks incredible.

I thought all the performances were amazing.

I really liked the music, and I'm not a huge musical fan, generally speaking, but all the songs I think do a great job of furthering the story.

And it's a very heartfelt story that can feel, I think, a little sentimental at times, but has just enough of that undercurrent of real stakes with what Captain Georg von Trapp is facing and his family with, you know, the loss of a sense of national pride and Austria's independence independence that, again, I was blown away.

And so I just, I'm very excited to talk about it.

And I was, when you just said no one wanted to be involved, I'm a little stunned.

I know.

I think it's held up so well.

I agree.

So anyway, I've had a great time watching it.

I had a similar experience.

I'm sure I'd seen this a bunch of times growing up, you know, very familiar with the songs.

I did not appreciate how great the songs are.

I think that they are amazing.

It is just banger after banger in this.

There's really no duds, which is hard to come by in a musical.

I have sort of the opposite experience of you.

I remembered the Nazis being so much more prominent in this than they are.

Oh, interesting.

They really don't show up heftily until the last like 30, 40 minutes of this.

It's like post-intermission is really when they start to really materialize as a threat.

Right.

Which I have to admit.

Maybe this is just because I recently re-watched Cabaret, which is one of my all-time favorite movies ever.

I felt like it wasn't quite enough.

I still really, really enjoyed this movie.

I agree with you.

I think that there are extremely relevant themes here, you know, in terms of the conversation he has with Max, his friend, when he's like, whatever, they're like, let them do whatever they want.

It's not going to affect you.

And Georg is just, you know, has a bit of a hissy fit and an understandable one.

But yeah, I guess because the final chase sequence had always stuck so much in my head as a kid, because I thought it was very scary.

I really thought that that was more of the movie.

And it's not.

So I think that's interesting.

And I, the reason I bring up Cabaret is because that one does such a fantastic job of really seeing the slow burn build in the background of the hold that Nazis end up having on Germany.

So I missed that a little bit here, but I understand that was a very conscious decision, as we will get to, as to why they didn't build that up more.

But I, you know what?

I could have used a little bit more of it, maybe.

All right.

So the note from Lizzie is more Nazis, as we've learned today.

Honestly, it is, which as you'll see, someone involved in this production agreed with me.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's get into it.

The Sound of Music was released March 2nd, 1965.

That was the New York premiere.

The wide release was April 1st, 1965.

Directed by Robert Wise, written by a lot of people.

Here we go.

Of course, Maria von Trapp.

based on her own book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplay, Russell Krauss and Howard Lindsay, who wrote the book for the stage musical, and then partial ideas from Georg Hertelich.

It stars, of course, the absolutely fabulous, and I would argue, lynchpin of the whole movie, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Charmian Carr, Heather Menzies, Nicholas Hammond, Dwayne Chase, many, many more people, just a million children.

We'll get to some of them.

Debbie Turner, Kim Carrith, Angela Cartwright, Peggy Wood, Richard Hayden, Eleanor Parker, and more.

Produced by Saul Chaplin and Robert Wise.

And the IMDb log line, as always, is: A young novice is sent by her convent in 1930s, Austria, to become a governess to the seven children of a widowed naval officer.

It's the beginning.

That is the beginning.

So, Chris, let's start at the very beginning.

It's a very good place to start with the real Maria von Trapp.

Okay.

Because if anyone is not familiar, the Von Trapp family is a real family.

Although they took, this is a loose adaptation

of their as Hollywood adaptations tend to be.

So the real Maria von Trapp was born Maria Augusta Cucciera.

I'm probably mispronouncing that.

I'm sorry.

On January 25th, 1905, just before midnight, on a moving train en route from Tyrol to Vienna.

Wow.

Apparently the conductor politely asked her mother to please, for the love of God, get off this train.

And her mom was like, nope, I told my husband to pick me up in Vienna, so that's where I'll be scooting off to today.

So she just had the baby on the train and then got off in Vienna.

It seems strong will runs in the family.

It was probably as sanitary as an actual hospital in the early 20th century.

At that point, sure.

Although, side note, you know this, Chris, but I had to fly at 38 weeks pregnant, and I was so sure I was going to give birth in the Isle of the Alaska flight.

So I cannot imagine actually doing it on a moving train in 1905.

No.

Sadly, two years later, her mom died of pneumonia, though, so Maria never really got to know her.

Her dad then promptly dumped Maria Maria at a house full of his elderly relatives with no kids.

So she always imagined having a huge family of her own to keep herself entertained because she grew up around a lot of older adults.

Specifically in her head, she had 11 children.

And she will almost meet that goal, Chris, but not quite.

Eventually, she wound up living with a mentally ill and abusive uncle after her father died, who was constantly spanking her.

So she figured, you know what?

If I'm going to get spanked no matter what, I am just going to break all the rules and do whatever the hell I want.

So she had a very rebellious streak and described her upbringing as that of a wild boy.

And though the first relative she lived with had taken her to church, her uncle raised her as an atheist.

So in college, when she attended a lecture by a Jesuit priest, she decided afterwards to go give him a piece of her mind, but she left the meeting very moved.

And after college, she went off to Salzburg to become a nun.

Just as she was in the movie, she was indeed a problem in the abbey.

She was running around, whistling, sliding down banisters, and just generally being a giant pain in the ass to all of the nuns.

She also had terrible headaches, so the mother superior called her in and said that for her health, she needed to leave the mountains for a few months and go be a governess for Captain Georg von Trapp, father to seven children whose wife had died a couple years earlier from scarlet fever.

So off she went, and Chris, in many ways, the similarities to the movie kind of end there.

Got it.

First of all, Captain von Trapp was 25 25 years older than she was

and decidedly not as smoking hot as Christopher Plummer.

She did end up marrying Georg, but it sounds like it was very much not out of love for him, but instead out of love for the children.

She would grow to really love him over time, but she said she was basically marrying the kids.

She really, really loved them.

I think they try to honor that a bit here by starting their relationship on such starkly opposing terms and points of view.

I think it was less that she just didn't care about him at all

early on.

Yeah.

But they had three more kids for a total of 10.

So she got pretty close to her goal of 11.

Wow.

And at that point, I think they were pretty much required to form a family band.

So they did.

Yeah, exactly.

They toured around Europe, but when Hitler invaded Austria, they fled by train, not on foot, to Italy, then to France, then England, and eventually arrived in the U.S.

with $4

total in their pockets.

But that was $7 million

In the current economy, you can buy a house with $4.

So, yeah, what you see in the movie, of course, is this very exciting chase sequence and then them escaping on foot over the Alps.

That did not happen as far as I understand.

They basically just got on a train and left.

Not saying it wasn't traumatic.

I am sure that it was.

They performed as the Trap Family Singers and for at least two years actually lived in their tour bus.

And remember, there are 12 of them.

So, Chris, how do we know all of this?

Because in 1948, 1948, one year after the captain died, Maria wrote a memoir called The Story of the Trap Family Singers.

So, pretty soon after the book was released, some Hollywood producers came calling, but there was a problem.

They only wanted to buy the title rights.

Chris, can you explain what that means?

Meaning, literally, they just want the title?

Correct.

Okay, so they want to make up an entire story behind it?

I think so.

They literally just want the title rights.

Fair enough.

Probably because if they were a well enough known family band, then they could use that name as a way to sell the movie.

But then obviously they don't have to honor any of her actual lived experiences and she doesn't have to be involved.

Right.

Well, she didn't think that sounded too great, so she said no.

But in the mid-50s, Wolfgang Reinhardt, a producer and son of famous director Max Reinhardt, showed up and offered her $10,000 for the rights to the entire story.

Now, Maria's lawyer pushed her to ask for royalties, but then Reinhardt decided to swindle her.

He told her that it was illegal for a German film company to pay royalties to foreigners.

Of course, at this point, she had become an American citizen.

This was, of course, a complete lie.

That law did not exist.

And he told her if she agreed to only $9,000, he could pay her in full now.

And sadly, she needed the money, so she took the deal.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

So, unfortunately, the real Maria did not see much money.

She saw a little bit of the money of success, but not very much.

In 1956, Detrappe Family premiered and was successful enough to garner a sequel, Detrappe Family in America.

I mean, they've just been doing it forever.

The bad sequel that nobody ever needed, and not just Americans, obviously.

Germans are out there.

Germans, too.

That's right.

Yep.

Now, in the two years between those films, Paramount bought the film rights and began planning to turn it into a Hollywood movie.

Okay.

They hired Broadway and TV director Vincent Donahue to direct, but something odd happened.

He decided he wanted to buy the rights from Paramount and make it into a play instead, starring Mary Martin, who by that point already was a huge Broadway star and a muse of musical powerhouse duo Rogers and Hammerstein.

She actually had originated the lead role in South Pacific in 1949.

But Paramount just let the rights lapse and dropped their option.

So Vincent started writing letters to the real Maria von Trapp, not realizing that Wolfgang Reinhardt's company actually held the rights.

Now, Maria was busy.

She was doing missionary work in New Guinea when she got the letters.

And she was like, A, how could this possibly be on stage?

B, who the hell is Mary Martin?

And C, why do I care about any of this?

So back into the jungle she went.

She just tossed those letters in the garbage.

But Vincent and now Mary Martin's husband, producer Richard Halliday, did not give up.

Halliday actually waited for Maria's ship to come in to the San Francisco harbor, met her at the dock, and basically accosted her and was like, please come see my wife, Mary Martin, in Annie, Get Your Gun tonight.

She agreed.

She loved what she saw.

She loved meeting Mary in person.

She's like, sure, go right ahead.

And they're like, fantastic.

And she's like, by the way, I don't own the rights.

Thanks for the dinner and show.

Yeah, go to Germany where my life rights were taken with the Anschluss.

So Halliday made a deal with the German producers, and even though he didn't have to, he did cut Maria in, giving her 3/8 of 1% in royalties.

So not great, but not nothing.

But this movie, I believe, did very well.

Yes, it did.

Yeah.

Now, originally, they wanted to use the traditional folk music that the Von Trapp family actually sang with only one song from Rogers and Hammerstein.

But Rogers and Hammerstein said, no, thank you.

We will be doing all of the music ourselves.

And so they did.

And the sound of music opened on Broadway, November 16th, 1959.

Maria von Trapp absolutely loved it.

Critics, however, did not.

Chris, can you guess what their problem with it might have been?

Not enough Nazis in the first half, so it feels like a left turn in the back half, Lizzie Bassett's criticism.

They seem less concerned with the Nazis and more concerned with the fact that it's just too saccharine, that it's just too sweet, too sort of childish.

They really didn't like it that much, but just like cats, it didn't matter because audiences absolutely ate this up.

Yeah.

It ran for over 1,400 performances and won five Tonys.

Wow.

Now, Spiro Skouras, then president of 20th Century Fox, was in the audience on opening night, and he apparently was crying like a baby by the time the lights came up.

And that was good news because it turns out Fox actually had first right of refusal over any Rogers and Hammerstein show.

Chris, do you want to explain what first right of refusal is?

Yeah, so when the show premieres, and presumably then Hollywood Studios would be interested in optioning it, and it's perhaps possible that even before the show premieres, this could happen.

Fox has a first look or first right of refusal, meaning they can buy the rights, option the rights without the script or project being shopped around town.

They don't have to open it up to everybody else.

And that's an exclusive relationship and they may be paying Rogers and Hammerstein, you know, some fee to have this overall deal where they get first bite at the apple of whatever work that they're producing.

And does that kind of mean that they're inherently avoiding a bidding war?

Exactly.

In June of 1960, Fox went ahead and bought the rights.

Do you have any guesses on what they might have paid?

And this is 1960 money.

Are you suggesting it's a lot or a little?

I don't know.

$500,000.

$1.25 million.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

That's, I think, because I just did Ben-Hurd, that's over $10 million in today's money.

It's a lot.

For just the rights.

It was $1.25 million against 10% of the gross for a 15-year lease on the property.

Wow.

Now, Variety reported that was the most a studio had ever paid for a literary property.

I believe that.

It's a lot.

This is our James Cameron musical.

This is where the money is.

Yeah, clearly.

You got to go for it.

Audience, just so you know, Chris and I have semi-jokingly, but not jokingly, been noodling the idea of a musical entitled, I Told You So, a musical in titanic proportions following James Cameron's life.

If you'd like to see it, let us know.

Maybe we'll make it.

This episode of What Went Wrong is brought to you by Saley.

Have you ever been lost abroad?

Needed an internet connection with no Wi-Fi in sight?

Something like Alex Garland's The Beach?

Saley is the lifeline that every traveler needs.

It gets you online immediately with an e-SIM wherever you are, and Leo could have used one.

Ditch the local SIM cards, avoid scams, and cut out the roaming fees with Saley.

All you have to do is download the Saley app, install the e-SIM once, and you're good to go.

Destination hopping?

You can even get a regional or global plan to cover multiple countries.

Saley is backed by NordVPN, so it is chock full of security features that keep you protected.

Chat support is available 24-7, and the app works on Android and iOS.

Blue text, green text, it's all good.

So download the Saley app today in your app store.

Use code RONG at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase.

That's Saley, S-A-I-L-Y code RONG.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, your favorite all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online that's helped your favorite podcast full stop stand out and succeed online.

When we were starting this podcast, we knew we needed help.

And one of the first places we turned was Squarespace.

We needed to build a website where we could sell our merch, allow our fans to reach out to us, and easily update our homepage to show folks what movies were coming each week, week after week.

That means that it had to be simple and easy to use because even though we know how movies are made, I have no idea how the internet works.

And Squarespace keeps everything all in one.

We got our domain through Squarespace.

We use their SEO tools to make sure that people find us online.

And as podcasts are slowly just becoming television, Squarespace allows us to showcase video content through our Squarespace site whenever we decide to make that leap.

So head to squarespace.com/slash wrong for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code RONG to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Go to squarespace.com/slash wrong using domain code wrong to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Now, Chris, as you mentioned, this is a ton of money.

So you would think that they would want to get right to work on this.

But it turns out they couldn't because the deal stipulated that the movie could not be released in the U.S.

or Canada until the musical had stopped running or until December 31st, 1964, whichever came first.

Wow.

But while they waited around, Chris, something else was costing them a whole assload of money.

We have covered this film already.

Any guesses what was gobbling up all that cash?

It's got to be Cleopatra, right?

It is Cleopatra.

That's the one.

That's the one.

Hoover vacuuming all the money into those enormously amazing sets and that dead, lifeless scripture making that movie.

Into so much blue eyeshadow.

It's fun.

Sort of.

It is fun.

Give it a watch.

Listen to our episode.

I mean, it's huge.

Yeah.

So many gold bikinis, more than you would anticipate.

It's a Katy Perry music video before there were Katy Perry music videos.

Now, this wasn't Fox's only problem.

The studio was essentially falling apart at this point.

They had had a revolving door of leaders since Daryl Zanik left, a string of box office flops, and stiff competition from TV.

And of course, again, Cleopatra eating up, I believe, more than $40 million.

It wasn't just the most expensive movie.

It just kept leapfrogging so far beyond what any movie had ever cost before.

I think adjusted for inflation, it may be one of the most expensive movies still.

Even today.

Yeah.

So Scouris avoided shutting down the entire studio by selling 260 acres of the back lot, which, fun fact, would eventually become Century City, but that wasn't enough.

In 1962, he was demoted and replaced by Daryl Zanik, who came back and immediately put his son Richard Zanik in charge as head of production.

Richard shut down the studio, laid off a thousand employees, moved everyone who was left to one floor and said, we're going to gather momentum.

Sounds like Amazon's policy of frugality.

Yeah, the return to work call begins.

Yeah, return to office, which is now 10 square feet on this one floor.

So he started poking around for their next big project that was going to save the studio.

And much to his surprise, the sound of music was just sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

He couldn't believe that no one was working on it.

They did not even have a writer on it.

Wow.

His point was, even though you can't release this movie until December...

Get it ready?

Yes, get it ready.

Yeah, movies take a while, guys.

He's like, what the hell can't be december 30th we're gonna man we should probably crack this thing open i want to go ahead and start working on that so in december of 1962 zanik hired ernest lemon to write the screenplay at this point he had been nominated for three academy awards for writing sabrina which was based on a play north by northwest and of course westside story He had also adapted The King and I, which was a musical originally written by Rogers and Hammerstein.

So he's pretty much a perfect pick.

He got to work right away, much to the chagrin of all his friends and professional contacts, who kept insisting that Fox was using him.

They told him there's no way they're actually going to pay up.

You're making a huge mistake.

And they also thought the musical itself was a bit of a career killer.

Billy Wilder reportedly said, no musical with swastikas in it will ever be a success, which I wonder if Mel Brooks was like, hold my beer.

Yeah, I was going to say.

Well, I mean, isn't the producer, isn't Springtime with Hitler?

That's the whole point.

Yeah.

A riff on the sound of music.

I don't know if it's a riff on the sound of music.

I mean, their goal is to make the least successful musical of all time.

So they cast Hitler as the lead.

The concept.

Yeah, exactly.

It's the inverse of the sound of music.

Right.

It's more Nazis.

It's all of the Nazis.

Yeah.

But Lehman had been in the audience of the Broadway show, and unlike the critics, he felt strongly that it was going to be a hit movie, and he didn't care what anyone else said.

So he pulled mostly from the stage play and the original memoir, though he did adapt a few scenes from the German movies.

For example, the German movie included a shadow play, which, of course, he takes and transforms into the lonely goatherd puppet show, which I love.

It's a great sequence.

The most complex puppets, there's no way a child could possibly operate, and that's fine.

Those are German children.

They are very good at engineering.

You're right.

I'm sorry.

They're very dedicated.

There were at least a couple songs he removed entirely, and he also rearranged the order of appearance of a few other songs.

And finally, to add suspense, he is the one who added the car chase between the von Trapps and the Nazis and the sort of chase through the Abbey at the end of the movie.

So they didn't return to the Abbey in the earlier iteration?

I'm not sure about that, but they definitely didn't have that kind of chase sequence as the way it's set up in the movie.

It's so effectively done the way that, you know, she says this is not a place to keep the problems of the world out, and yet that's precisely what they do in the third act of the movie when she tries to help them.

It's really well written.

It's like structurally very tight.

I also love that the nuns have ripped all the cables out of the cars.

I've committed a sin.

Yeah, it's so good.

So right away, Lehman suggested Robert Wise, who had just won an Oscar for Westside Story.

But he said, no, thank you.

Technically, he was busy on another project called the Sand Pebbles, but it seems like he could have shifted things around to make this work, especially because I believe the Sand Pebbles was also being produced at Fox.

However, his agent told Lehman it was, quote, not his cup of tea.

And so begins the long string of people turning down the sound of music because everyone thought it was hot trash.

Oh, it's like Middlebrow, right?

It's commercially successful and it's not dissimilar from Ben-Hur, the way people viewed Ben Hur when they were going to adapt that.

It sounds like everybody thought this is a really popular book, biblical fan fiction, as Lizzie says, but it's not highbrow fare.

I'm not interested.

Twilight for the Bible.

Or sorry, not Twilight for the Bible.

It would technically be 50 Shades of Gray for the Bible.

Even worse.

Even worse.

Now, to your point, yes, this was a huge commercial success.

It was not a critical success.

They're very worried that it is made for kids, that it's too sickly sweet.

And they also do worry if the whole musical with Nazis thing may turn people off a little bit.

So next they tried Stanley Donan, who had directed Singin' in the Rain, Funnyface, and Damn Yankees.

He actually lived in Switzerland and had been an investor in the original show, and he still said no.

Lehman then pitched the idea to Gene Kelly, who apparently said, quote, Ernie, go find somebody else to direct this kind of shit.

Gene.

And he tap-danced his way out of Brampton's business.

Lehman's fourth choice, Chris, was someone we just talked about and you just mentioned his movie.

It was Ben-Hur director William Wyler.

Billy Wyler.

Go listen to our episode on Ben-Hur for more.

Now, he was available.

He was looking to get back into directing after a little break, and there was just one problem.

Can you guess what it was, Chris?

Aside from not loving the material?

No, that's it.

He hated the sound of music.

Okay,

yeah, exactly.

He didn't like it.

He hated it.

Lehman actually took him to see the Broadway musical, and as he walked out, he said, quote, Ernie, this is terrible.

I hated the show, and I'm not going to do this, but keep talking to me anyway.

Which is basically what happened with Ben Hurt.

He did not like it.

And then Sam Zimbalus, the producer, basically had to say, Look, I will give you a million dollars and we will spend more than anyone's ever spent.

And he said, fine.

And then he won Best Director.

So there's a formula here that they can follow.

Yeah.

But as you said, he and Lehman kept talking that night.

Lehman was desperate to convince him.

So he's just throwing out all of his ideas to make the movie better.

Someone call Gorbidal and see if they can make it gayer.

Yeah, exactly.

So everyone's gay.

Everyone's gay.

Everyone's gay.

It's full of gay Nazis.

You're going to love it.

If you're wondering why we're talking about that, go back and listen to Ben Hurst.

At 2 a.m., he finally asked Wyler, quote, Willie, I know you hated the show, but just tell me one thing.

What did you feel at the moment when Captain Von Trapp started singing the sound of music with his children?

And Wyler apparently told him, I almost cried.

And Lehman said, that's what it's all about.

Yeah, it's the linchpin scene of the movie.

That's right.

But still, Wyler told a friend, they want me to make this picture, and I don't know what to do.

The people in this musical are playing a scene, and all of a sudden, somebody starts to sing.

Sometimes they're just walking along, and somebody starts to sing.

Why the hell do they start singing?

All right, so William Wyler's not watched a lot of musicals, clearly.

Well, okay, yes.

It's kind of the conceit.

He did just describe a musical, but I think his point was more that he didn't understand the motivation for any of the songs.

Sure.

But yeah, to your point, I think pretty much everything prior to Really Cabaret was this convention of musicals where people would just break out and song randomly.

That's like one of the first ones where they started to sequester the music separate from conversation, basically.

Regardless, he very reluctantly said yes.

But it wasn't just Wyler who had doubts.

Lehman was second-guessing his decision to work on it all while trying to convince Wyler.

Basically, everyone who goes to see the musical on stage goes, oh, oh, no.

So I don't know what it was about the stage musical that they really didn't like, but it's so funny.

Well, every once in a while, you'll be brought in.

I've had a couple of instances where I've been brought in to consider pitching on something, you know, a writing job or something.

And they'll say, up front, we know this is terrible.

Like, we know this thing, like this original movie or short story, we don't think it's very good or script.

And we're going to acknowledge that, but we think we could make it great.

I think they take a slightly different tack these days in approaching people.

It's just, hey, we're going to lean into it.

We understand.

It's not working.

Here's why it could be great.

Well, in some ways, this is kind of the inverse of cats or sort of similar to cats because like huge, huge commercial success.

People are going, they're looking at it.

They're going like, I do not think this is going to translate well to the screen.

Of course, it does.

But that was sort of the same problem with cats.

So in May of 1963, Lehman had a finished outline and he and Wyler were off to scout locations in Salzburg.

But he had a nagging feeling that old Willie was not 100% in and he had reason to be concerned.

As he slept through the location scouting.

Yeah, yeah, he had a few reasons to be concerned.

So Weiler was actually good friends with Wolfgang Reinhardt, remember the original German producer, and he was often consulting with him on the film instead of Lehman.

Wyler was also taking calls about other projects.

And Chris, how did Lehman know this?

Well, apparently, Wyler asked him to be his interpreter on them because he was hard of hearing.

Yeah, Wyler could only, he he had like one bad ear.

We discussed in our Ben-Hur episode.

Get it together, Willie.

And he's a 10-time Oscar, maybe 11 by this point, best director nominated, four-time winning director.

He's sure getting a lot of phone calls.

Oh, for sure.

And one of those projects was a film called The Americanization of Emily.

It was in the same stage of pre-production as The Sound of Music and was set to star a young British actress named Julie Andrews.

By July, Wyler was officially attached to direct and produce the Americanization of Emily, but somehow he also still planned to do the sound of music.

In fact, when Lehman turned in his full draft of the script in September of 1963, Wyler was like, I love it!

There was just one little point of contention, Chris.

The Nazis.

Wyler said, quote, I knew it wasn't really a political thing.

I had a tendency to want to make it, if not an anti-Nazi movie, at least say a few things.

So you know what?

You know who agrees with me that they needed to up the Nazis a little bit?

William Wyler.

His solution, according to Zanek, was, quote, to make it very heavy-handed at the end.

He wanted tanks.

He wanted a real invasion blowing up the town and everything.

I didn't see any need for all this right in the middle of a musical.

I didn't need them to blow up the town.

No, I think you were saying, let's feather in a little more at the beginning.

And Wyler is suggesting the full might of the Third Reich rolls through the town as we sing, it'll lie.

Yeah.

The tanks going off.

Yeah, exactly.

So when Wyler threw a party at his house just a few days later, Lehman took it as an opportunity to do a little snooping.

In Wyler's office, he found a pile of scripts.

Only one was placed face down.

It was for a film called The Collector.

And Lehman immediately sent the updated script to Robert Wise again because he correctly guessed that Wyler was planning on making the collector.

He was, and his agent almost immediately asked them to postpone the sound of music so he could make that.

To which Zanik basically said, no, absolutely not.

He was like, we're not postponing the sound of music.

You go ahead and make that.

You've been in enough trouble.

Get out of here.

So turns out Robert Wise was now available.

And did he just sign on right away?

Of course not.

Certainly not.

He took a lot of convincing.

It sounds like Lehman called up Saul Chaplin, Wise's associate producer on Westside Story and a good friend to both of them, and asked him to read the new script.

And he ended up being able to kind of, alongside Lehman, convince Robert Wise to do it.

Now, Chaplin was dreading this, just like everybody, he had seen the musical, thought it was absolute crap, and was preparing himself to tell Wise to run away screaming.

But then he read the script and he said, quote, I was never so happy reading a script in my life.

So it was Chaplin who convinced Wise to go for it, and he signed on as a producer on the project himself.

Lizzie, I'm wondering if, since Robert Wise directed The Haunting right before Sound of Music, based on the Shirley Jackson novel or short story, I can't remember which, that movie I don't think did very well.

I think it flopped decently hard.

And I wonder if the sound of music, the commercial appeal appeal was suddenly a little more appealing, possibly, coming off of a flop like The Haunting, although that movie's been acclaimed, you know, in the years since.

That would make sense.

I mean, this is something where, you know, it was commercially extremely successful on stage.

I'm sure they're offering a lot of money.

I could see that being the case.

Yeah, I just wonder.

And they did really like the script.

Wise and screenwriter Lehman immediately saw it eye to eye on a few things.

First of all, The sentimentality and, this is a German word, gemüchlichkeit, or feeling of coziness, worked on stage, but it was going to be overwhelming on screen, so they wanted to make sure that they dialed that back.

Second, they wanted to take advantage of not being confined to a stage, so they moved various numbers outside, most notably Do Re Me.

They also wanted two more songs for the movie to improve Maria's emotional story arc.

The first is Something Good, which is written by Richard Rogers because Hammerstein had actually died back in 1960.

And the second is I Have Confidence.

However, this one ended up being a collaboration with Saul Chaplin because they wanted something more upbeat than what Richard Rogers was turning in.

So Chaplin and Lehman pieced together a new version.

And Chaplin actually used a woman who we're going to talk about in just a minute named Marnie Nixon to sing the demo of it to send to Rogers and not Julie Andrews because he didn't want Julie Andrews to know she was singing a song not fully written by Richard Rogers.

Marnie Nixon, as we'll get to, was someone who was frequently used to dub actresses in musicals on film.

Richard Rogers listened listened to it, said, it's fine.

I liked mine better.

Go ahead and use it.

And by the way, Chaplin had a background as being a music supervisor as well.

I believe he was on Westside Story.

Now, I briefly mentioned Julie Andrews earlier, so let's go ahead and talk about her now.

Though other names were tossed around, including Doris Day, Grace Kelly, Anne Bancroft, and Audrey Hepburn.

Ann Bancroft is a bit of a weird choice.

Did she, I didn't know if she sang.

Well, I don't know if that mattered that much.

It sounds like there was really only ever one top choice for the role of Maria von Trapp, and that was Julie Andrews.

Julie Andrews was not a household name yet, and she was only 28 years old, but she'd already been around for a long time.

Andrews was something of a child prodigy, performing both with and without her parents from a very young age.

She made her West End debut in 1948 at only 13 years old and debuted on Broadway in The Boyfriend in 1954 at just 19.

Wow.

Now in 1956, and this is why I said I'm not sure if it matters if they can sing, she originated the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway, only to lose the role in the film to Audrey Hepburn.

There was a rumor at the time that people didn't think Andrews was photogenic, and that's why she wasn't cast, which is, she's gorgeous.

I don't understand that at all.

And fun fact, Chris, they ended up dubbing almost all of Audrey Hepburn's singing with Marnie Nixon, who, as we just mentioned, is who tempt the vocals for I Have Confidence, who was also used to dub Natalie Wood in Westside Story and Deborah Kerr in The King and I.

Even funner fact, Marnie Nixon appears appears in The Sound of Music as Sister Sophia.

And the funnest fact, she was born in Altadena, California.

Wow.

Yeah.

You just one-upped yourself three times.

I know.

I'm impressed.

Okay, back to Julie Andrews.

After seeing her play Guinevere in Camelot, Disney cast her in Mary Poppins.

Now, Mary Poppins was still in production when The Sound of Music was casting, and there's some debate as to who brought her onto the project.

William Wyler said he saw her in My Fair Lady and was so impressed he was considering her for the role.

However, according to Lehman, it may have been that he was considering her instead for the Americanization of Emily, which of course she did eventually get, but Wyler did not end up directing.

According to Julie herself, though, Bob Wise was invited to see some of her footage from Mary Poppins, and it was this that sealed the deal for him and Zanik, and they wanted to sign her immediately.

But just like everyone else in this episode, Julie Andrews really wasn't sure about the sound of music.

Carmella made the point, I don't think this is true, but it was a funny joke in the first five minutes when she said, is Maria Von Trapp the first manic pixie dream girl?

David said the same thing.

I do think the answer is yes.

Yeah.

Now, she had actually already played a version of Maria von Trapp in a parody of the sound of music as part of a special she'd taped with Carol Burnett.

I want to play you two little clips from this, Chris.

It is absolutely delightful.

Oh, great.

They're called the Pratt family singers in this, and the first one is going to be them introducing themselves.

I'm Mama.

I'm Papa.

I'm Ben.

I'm Franz.

I'm Ludwig.

I'm Johann.

I'm Wolfgang.

I'm Hans.

I'm Rickard.

I'm Rudolph.

I'm Adolph.

I'm Burt.

I'm Gustav.

I'm Gerhardt.

I'm Dusty.

I'm Kurt.

I'm Vermont.

I'm Ellen.

I'm Walter.

I'm Fritz.

I'm Paul Boeing.

I'm Cynthia.

I have to wonder if the Lawrence Welk sketch with Kristen Wigg and I'm Denise honestly is ripping this off a little bit.

It's based on this, yeah.

Because this whole thing is at the end there.

You heard Carol Burnett just show up from the side saying, I'm Cynthia.

As the drunk child.

I want to show you one more section, which is even more reminiscent of sound of music and very, very clearly making fun of it.

Ding, long,

that's what the bell says.

Young, young.

That's what we say when we're eating.

All right, you get the idea.

Love Carol Burnett.

They're having a great time.

They're very clearly ripping on the actual Bontrap family and sound of music.

Now, in addition to being concerned that the role was, again, way too saccharine, she was also worried that this was her second nanny role, because, of course, Mary Poppins is also a nanny.

She was concerned she may have to fake an Austrian accent and that it would be a long time away from home.

Now, the last one, I think, was true, but of course, the Austrian accent was not.

Bob Wise and Saul Chaplin convinced her they were taking a far less sentimental direction in the stage production.

No Austrian accent required.

I think they're doing sort of a mid-Atlantic accent across this movie.

So she signed on to a two-picture deal.

Both Bing Crosby and Yul Brynner were considered for the role of Captain Georg von Trapp.

I think Yul Brynner would have been interesting.

But Bob Wise always wanted Christopher Plummer.

He had seen him on stage and felt like his edge was what the character and the movie needed.

But Plummer was mostly known as a theater actor at this point.

How old was Plummer at this point, Dino?

He's not old at all.

He's in his 30s.

Oh, wow.

He looks 40s.

He looks 10 to 15 years older than Julie Andrews.

He's not.

Yeah, they're almost the exact same age.

They age him up a little bit in the movie with some makeup.

And by the way, this was not the first time he'd been considered for this role.

Speaking of the age gap, he was actually considered for the original stage production when he was only 26.

Wow.

But when he found out he'd be performing opposite Mary Martin, who was 50-ish at the time, he told the team he was meeting with, I hate to say this, but don't you think our age differences are a little staggering?

Apparently, they were just seeing anybody at that point.

So to your point, he was now 34, so still technically too young, but it didn't even matter because he read the script and he said, no, thank you.

Yep.

So Wise went on to see Yule Brenner, Sean Connery.

Oh,

give me that one.

Would have been, would have been

Such a stinker.

Stephen Boyd, Richard Burton, also.

How drunk is Captain Georg von Trapp?

Quite.

David Niven, Peter Finch, Walter Mathow, Patrick O'Neill, and more.

But he still wanted Christopher Plummer.

So he flew out and managed to convince him in person.

Then he even let Plummer work with Lehman to adjust the character of the captain.

Plummer said, Ernie Lehman was not just one of Hollywood's best screenwriters.

He was a prince among men.

He made me feel that all his valuable ideas were mine alone.

Of course, it was impossible to turn von Trapp into Hamlet.

But Ernie had made remarkable strides, and the result was a far cry from the tepid original.

At least now, the poor, soft-centered captain had some edge to him.

Interestingly, they didn't seem to care much about what the actual Captain von Trapp was like.

Maria was a little pissed that nobody on the film production had asked her anything.

With the musical, she'd said it was very out in the open, but the only thing she hadn't liked was that her husband was portrayed as a strict disciplinarian when she said actually he was very, very sweet to the kids.

And, quote, that he called his children with a boatman's whistle was really because of practical reasons i get it there were seven of them chris and it was a big house but look we need a dramatic arc we need somewhere for him to go if he just starts out warm and fuzzy we don't really have a movie maria come on that's true now as you said there was the concern that he wasn't old enough so wise slapped some old age makeup on him dimmed the lights and sent some pictures back to daryl zanik yes he's definitely lit dark compared to maria because he looks so tanned as a result.

I know.

Yeah, they're just putting him in the corner in some shadow and they're like, it's fine.

Yeah.

It's effective, though.

I bought it.

I thought he looked at least 10 years older than her.

I always wondered about that because then he's, you know, he's not that old later on.

So, but yeah, it's because he was 34.

And by January of 1964, he was cast.

Now, Charmian Carr, who wound up playing Liesl, wasn't even an actress and only did the audition because her mom, a former vaudevillian, signed her up for it.

She also had zero time to prepare and thought the name Liesel was pronounced Lysol.

I probably would have made the same mistake.

Well, it didn't matter.

She got it.

They had a really hard time filling this role.

They saw tons of actresses, including Mia Farrow, Patty Duke, and Terry Garr.

But according to Carr, the notes on the other actresses included, quote, too hammy, too short, too tall, too old, too young, too, too, can't act.

Nothing great but nice face.

Good looking, but awful reading.

Too bad, heavy in the legs, big and fanny, not strong enough, not outstanding, not for us, a little too worldly and pregnant.

No, Wise was still hesitant when they came back to Carr, worrying she might look too old.

I would argue she does, and that her super blue eyes might look weird on camera.

They do.

Her eyes are strikingly blue.

Yeah, I mean, she's beautiful, but she's like, I am 16.

Going on, 35.

Apparently, Chaplin told her she temporarily had the part, but still had to pass a screen test.

By the time she was cast, almost everyone else was well into rehearsals.

I believe she was the last of the Von Trapp family to be cast.

And she was almost the last person cast in the movie, but that honor actually goes to Daniel Truehit, who plays Rolf.

He was the last person cast.

By the way, those are the two oldest teenagers.

I mean, I know that they did this all the time, but she and Nazi youth cue for Salvador.

Yes, they're both

clearly in their 20s, at least.

No, he's shaving between takes.

That was more of a Grease-style casting.

Yes, yes, indeed.

And both actors are great, and it doesn't matter, but it is funny.

Also, beautiful dancers.

He's a really beautiful dancer, which I did not appreciate.

The choreography in that scene is really good where they're dancing in the gazebo.

Yeah, I didn't look into him a ton.

He must have been a dancer because he was really watching it again as an adult.

I was like, my God, that Nazi can move.

Yeah.

As soon as rehearsal began, they immediately asked Christopher Plummer to record the guide tracks with Julie Andrews.

Now, if you don't know what that is, that means that they are recording the tracks that are going to be used in playback when they're on set so they can, you know, sing along, know what they're singing to, because, of course, they're not actually recording their live singing out in the meadows in a movie like this.

But Christopher Plummer was pissed because he felt he was not ready at all.

He's singing opposite Julie Andrews, who is absolutely incredible.

And they were like, oh, by the way, some of these recordings also might be used in the final film.

And he's like, no,

no, they're not.

So his agent convinced him to do it as long as he could re-record before the film was locked, but more on that later.

But when he got back to set, Richard Zanick was there.

He shook his hand and according to Plummer said, quote, in soft-spoken tones, but tinged with an unmistakable hint of somber warning, Congratulations, Chris.

Welcome back to the sound of music.

Dun dun dun.

What does that mean?

I think saying we would have fired you.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Like we were willing to let you go, basically.

Which makes sense.

He's not a big name to be, you know, throwing his weight around like this.

No.

So principal photography started at the end of March 1964 at Fox in LA.

By the end of April, they they were on location in Salzburg.

The shoot in Austria was supposed to last six weeks, but ultimately took 11.

Because, Chris, you may have noticed how lush and green all of the exterior locations are in this film.

Now, given the verdant greenery, what do you think might have been a challenge for them on set?

Was rain a problem?

Rain!

That's right.

Longtime friend of the pod.

It looks spectacular.

They make fantastic use of the dramatic mountains.

Obviously, you can see whatever that peak is from the edge of their veranda.

I'm not going to call it a porch.

It's very grand.

It's not a porch.

And the meadows.

So I would imagine quite a bit of rain would be needed to grow all of that greenery.

Yes.

Julie Andrews said, quote, someone had evidently forgotten to mention to our production crew that Salzburg has Europe's seventh highest annual rainfall.

The rains began in our first days there, and from then on, our budget and our schedule were totally governed by the weather.

The crew had found cover sets to grab a few additional interior shots if needed, but those were quickly used up.

At that point, we had no choice but to go to one of the exterior locations, which were sometimes miles away, and wait and wait for the weather to clear.

So a cover set is a backup location that's indoor or will not be affected by the rain.

So if on a given day when you're scheduled to shoot exterior or a scene in which rain will prohibit you from filming, you can retreat to your cover set.

But like Lizzie said, you only have so many of those built into the schedule as relief valves.

Right, you can't use them every day exactly because eventually you got to shoot something outdoors a lot of the movie is outside so yes they used all their backups in short order yes julie andrews went on to say many days went by when we only got a single shot too if we were lucky Fun fact, though, it takes a lot of rain to actually register on camera.

So some of the scenes in this are actually shot in the rain, though it doesn't look like it, including I have confidence.

She's confident and a little damp.

Yeah, you got to really backlight rain in order to get get it to show up on camera.

So if the sun is directly overhead, you don't really see it.

I feel like you can see it a little bit if you re-watch that now.

She just looks really sweaty, but she's not.

It's just raining.

Well, now in like the wonderful high-resolution scan, by the way, this is streaming on Disney Plus, and I think the scan looks amazing.

Oh, it looks great.

The colors are so beautiful.

They must have shot this in like Panavision 70 millimeter or something.

It looks, the widescreen looks incredible.

I'm sure it was a very technical process.

But anyway, you can see a lot more in high def than you could back in the day.

Now, for the alpine shots, there were no roads to get up there.

So they literally had to hike up and put the cameras on carts pulled by oxen.

I guess they also didn't believe in porta-potties because they were just pooping in the woods when nature called up on the mountains.

I get it.

You're not going to drag a port-a-potty up there with the ox.

Now, the opening shot of Maria on the mountaintop was particularly difficult.

As we know, there were no drones in the 60s, so this is, of course, captured via a helicopter.

The speakers and crew were disguised and hiding in the trees, so you can't see them, and the helicopter was wading over the side of the mountain from Julie Andrews.

They would yell at her to start running and spinning, but she couldn't hear them.

She just was screaming.

There's a helicopter.

She

exclaimed, notably loud.

A poor cameraman was strapped to the door opening of the helicopter to capture the shot.

The problem was that it had to get pretty close to Julie Andrews to get the shot that Bob Wise wanted.

Watching this again, it's really close to her.

Any guesses why this might have been tricky, other than the possibility of decapitating your star?

Right.

The hills are alive with the blood of Julie Andrew's decapitated arterial spray.

The wind

is going to not only whip all of the flowers around her, but her hair.

And she's wearing a very loose skirt as she's running around as well.

That is correct.

Every time she did the spin, the downdraft from the helicopter would knock her on her ass.

She got blown over on the side of the mountain.

I would love to watch just the repeat cuts of her getting flipped over by the wind.

She said, Each time the helicopter encircled me, I was flattened again.

I became more and more irritated.

Couldn't they see what was happening?

I tried to indicate for them to make a wider circle around me.

I could see the cameraman, the pilot, and our second unit director on board, but all I got was a thumbs up and a signal to do it again.

Finally, the shot was deemed acceptable, and I was grateful to return to my hotel and take a long, hot bath.

You know that they knew what she was saying, but Bob Wise was like, just keep giving her thumbs ups.

Do not acknowledge.

Just keep saying she's doing great.

Thumbs up, Julie.

Looks great.

Now, shooting the rest of this opening sequence also proved difficult thanks to more rain.

It was taking way more time than they had allotted, so much so that the farmer whose land they were on got pissed that they were disrupting his cow's milk production.

You remember that perfect little brook that she skipped over?

It is man-made, dug out by the crew, and lined with plastic.

So in the middle of the night, the angry dairy farmer showed up with a pitchfork, punctured the plastic, and drained all the water.

Get off my land.

Now, as we know, working with kids can be difficult, even when they're sweet and well-behaved, which apparently these kids were.

Debbie Turner, who played Marta, started losing baby teeth during the shoot, and they had a dentist on call to show up and glue new little teeth intooth fairy was giving her a lot of money.

I hope so too.

Poor Deb.

The kids are really wonderful, except if you watch the oldest boy in the background watching Julie Andrews, he has just this one expression that he like defaults.

It's, I mean, he's very sweet.

It works.

But especially Gretel, the youngest, is the cutest.

She's such a little cheer.

She is so cute.

We're going to get to her in a minute.

Absolutely adorable.

Well, you mentioned the oldest boy.

Nicholas Hammond, who plays Friedrich, was in the midst of a growth spurt and was growing so quickly quickly they were actually worried he would surpass Julie Andrews and possibly Christopher Plummer.

Are they just like adding like soul inserts to the adult actor?

They did.

They had to put them in Charmian Carr's shoes because he was so much taller than she was by the time they were shooting.

They actually had to get pretty crafty with certain shots to hide how tall he was.

That makes sense because I'm guessing they had cast based on this idea that the kids would get, you know, evenly shorter when they're in line, but that isn't quite the case for the first few kids.

No, because they're all growing at different rates.

But Chris, by far the most problematic scene to shoot was the scene where they capsize in the boat.

Just before they shot the first take, the assistant director waded over to Julie Andrews and whispered, quote, the little one can't swim, and then scuttles back off to shore.

Referring to, of course, five-year-old Kim Carruth, who played Gretel, who, as you said, is just the cutest.

It's not good.

It's not the way you should run your set.

That is not the way that should be communicated.

That should not be her responsibility.

That's terrifying.

And even though it's probably only a few feet of water, as any pediatrician can tell you, it takes a few inches of water for a child to potentially drown.

So that's very terrifying.

Yeah.

Julie Andrews responded with, what, understandably, to which the AD said, we'd be most grateful if you could get to her as quickly as possible once you're in the water.

Yeah, and this is where you should have divers, for example, would be standard moving forward.

Maybe don't dump a five-year-old who can't swim into the lake.

Just a thought.

Anyway, he scoots on off to shore and they call action.

The first take actually went okay.

Julie Andrews managed to get to her.

It was all right.

The second take did not.

Instead of going forward over the front of the boat when the crew members hiding underwater shook the vessel, Julie went over the back, too far for her to grab Kim right away.

She saw poor tiny Kim sputtering and struggling in the water and said she had never swum so fast in her life, but it wasn't fast enough.

Kim was going under.

Fortunately, Alan Callow, the the son of the AD, who also plays a Nazi soldier in the film, dove straight into the lake and pulled her out.

But of course, Chris, they needed just one more take.

This time, Heather Menzies, who played Louisa, was supposed to grab Kim.

She did, but not before Kim swallowed even more water and then whirled around and barfed on Heather's shoulder.

Jesus.

They decided that was enough.

Poor, poor Kim.

That's terrible.

Yeah, it's not the worst thing, you know, unfortunately, that's ever come up on this podcast, but.

It's pretty bad.

And again, it shows why you do need oversight on film productions from people whose job is not the film, but instead the protection of those involved.

Right.

I was going to say, based on the way you described it, it sounds like the second take is the take that goes in the movie.

I think it is.

Because I noticed that Julie Andrews goes over the back of the boat, and I wondered if that was intentional.

No, it was an accident.

So they actually smashed the second and third takes together, I think, are the ones that they ended up using.

Got it.

Now, Julie Andrews was just as sweet and wonderful to all the children as you would hope she would be, all while going through a tough time personally.

She had her own 17-month-old daughter to take care of, and when she wasn't able to spend time with her, she was feeling very sad.

Work had been pulling her apart from her then-husband, particularly all the travel.

She was becoming more based in LA and on location, and he in New York.

They would go on to divorce in 1968.

She sounds like the absolute best, and it seems like she at least could tell that the movie was going to be a big deal, and she was really putting her heart into it.

Apparently, at one point during shooting, she actually turned to Christopher Plummer and whispered, Do you think we might be famous one day?

Which is very sweet, especially since towards the end of the production of this, she actually would be nominated for an Oscar for Mary Poppins, which, of course, she would eventually win.

It's very cute.

It's very sweet.

The movie really rests upon their chemistry, in particular the chemistry when they're not getting along.

Which I would argue is way better than when they are getting along.

I don't think the chemistry works very well in the final act between the two of them.

I agree.

It feels very chaste, and I don't fully believe the sparks.

I still loved the movie.

Me too.

But it works extremely well when they're at odds in the beginning of the film.

I think they were both more comfortable with those performances.

And speaking of Christopher Plummer, I love him.

You love him.

He's the hottest Georg this side of the Alps, but he was quite a pain in the ass on set, which even he will admit.

His nickname for the film was S and M, and he did indeed treat it like torture, though not the pleasurable kind.

He felt that the film was beneath him, and according to Plummer himself, quote, the moment we arrived in Austria to shoot the exteriors, I was determined to present myself as a victim of circumstance, that I was doing the picture under duress, that it had been forced upon me, and that I certainly deserved better.

My behavior was unconscionable.

Apparently, Andrews didn't really see too much of him outside of the shoots because as soon as they'd rap, he would just head on over to the pub, where according to Julie Andrews, quote, he apparently spent his evenings at the bar getting quite smashed and playing Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky until the wee hours.

Turns out he was actually a trained concert pianist and was actually really good.

So he'd get super hammered and play piano.

I mean, in a way, his behavior, though, does,

I mean, I'm not excusing it.

That sounds miserable for everyone else involved, but it at least had the externality of he is playing a metaversion of von Trapp avoiding his children and the people that love him in the film.

I don't think he was that bad.

By what went wrong standards from what we've seen?

No, no, no.

And it sounds like he has the self-awareness to have eventually, obviously, given the mea culpa.

Yeah.

Now, he was frequently extremely hungover when he'd show up on set the next day.

One day with a particularly bad hangover, he woke up and didn't see a call sheet outside his door.

He figured that the crew had just left him behind, and in a rage, he went wandering around all of Salzburg until he found them.

Then he walked into the shot, pitched a hissy fit, screamed at Bob Wise, to the point where one of the ADs ADs had to calmly pull him aside and explain that this was not a personal slight.

He just wasn't in any of the shots that they needed to capture that day.

So embarrassing.

Your character is with the baroness in Fienna right now.

Literally planned to tell him.

Yeah.

He's like, I skipped those pages when I didn't see my name.

Probably right.

But I mean, listen, he was a theater actor at this point.

He did not have a lot of experience on film.

He didn't really understand the ins and outs of making a movie, especially one at this scale.

He was also going through a tough time personally himself.

His own marriage would end in 1970.

But despite all of his drunken, hungover, screaming, running around Salzburg antics, he said, quote, the one person who seemed to understand my motives completely and acted as if there was nothing untoward was Julie, the busiest of us all.

I was so grateful to her for that, but I never told her.

It was as if she'd been hired not just to act, sing, and carry the entire film, but to keep everyone's spirits up as well.

She did.

She held us together and made us a team.

But Julie Andrews, the classiest actual dame around, credits Plummer with pushing them all to keep some edge and not get too sappy.

She described him as disciplined and knowledgeable while also being gentle and constructive in terms of criticism around their acting.

Seems like despite everything, these two really did like each other.

I believe it.

You might be wondering why that scene in the gazebo when they first fall in love is shot completely in the dark, Chris.

There were only two moments because I think the lighting in this movie is

incredible.

And they do remarkable work with very high contrast, high key lighting, which can feel very over the top and dramatic, but it feels very natural to me.

The gazebo scene, and then I was going to mention when the mother superior is singing to her right before she goes back to the abbey.

Yep, climb every mountain.

Yeah, she's just in darkness.

I didn't, it must have been a creative choice, but I couldn't see her face the whole time.

So that one was, I believe, a creative choice.

choice this one not so much so in the gazebo they are supposed to be nose to nose almost touching as they are in the film and they could not keep their together they kept laughing so hard and then two of the big lamps they were using started to make what andrews described as quote loud raspberry like sounds at the most intimate moments in the scene or as plummer says a sound as if someone was prodigiously and continuously farting.

Yeah, maybe like the Fresnel on the lamp vibrating against the metal enclosure or whatever.

That would make sense.

So they were just absolutely falling apart, so much so that Plummer says Andrews actually took a Valium to try and chill out, but it didn't work.

Oh, no.

So Bob Wise just said, fuck it, we'll shoot this in the dark.

Yeah, it's silhouette.

It's very pretty.

Plummer also accidentally gained too much weight during a few weeks off, and they had to contour the hell out of him so he wouldn't look like Orson Welles.

I think there is a point at which he is straight up strapped into a girdle.

He looks a little stuffed Vienna Schnitzel in a few of these scenes in the movie.

We don't want to body shame anybody.

Christopher Fulmer looks amazing at all weights, but there's a continuity.

There is a change.

There's a change.

There's a maybe problem as a result.

That perhaps Georg von Trapp spent a little too much time in the pubs.

Yeah.

And fun fact, the real Maria von Trapp does appear in the film.

She's in the background behind Julie Andrews when she's skipping through that arch at the beginning on her way to the von Trapps.

Apparently, Maria decided movies were not for her after this experience because of how long it took to get one shot.

She did not enjoy it.

When I started in film, I remember there were a lot of people that I went to film school with or when I PA'd for the first time who they would PA for like a day and then they'd realize it was like 12 seconds of footage that had been captured and they'd say, nope, I'm out.

I'm good.

Like just not for me.

That was Maria.

Now, Chris, as we said, this was shooting on location in Salzburg, Austria in 1964.

a mere 26 years after, as you mentioned, the Anschluss or the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany had actually happened.

And of course, the Anschluss is depicted in the second half of the film.

So when the time came to film the scene where a bunch of Nazis marched through the town square, the production team informed the town fathers that they would need to hang swastikas in the square.

And the town fathers were like, no, no, no, absolutely not.

They said the people of Salzburg were not sympathizers.

We're not going to let you do that.

So the production crew is like, okay, fine.

We'll just use the actual newsreels.

And they're like,

wait a minute now.

Hold on, hold on.

Roll that back.

You guys can go ahead and actually film in here.

Now, I wondered about this.

I was like, hmm, what's in the actual newsreels?

I watched some of them, and I think they would have been a whole lot more damning than what you see in the movie.

The unfortunate reality is that many Austrians did not oppose the Anschluss when it really happened.

I think what they have in the movie is very effective.

It's very quiet.

You'll notice that there are no crowds cheering, which that was the stipulation from the town fathers, was you can do it.

You can show them marching in.

Don't show anybody cheering for them even though i will tell you the newsreels did

now one of the big challenges in editing the film was achieving continuity and a seamless look because it had been shot out of order obviously and in so many different locations A lot of the post-production was also spent looping and dubbing dialogue because of the rain and outdoor noises from shooting in Salzburg.

I think they probably had to dub almost all of this movie from the exterior scenes.

But as Charmian Carr points out, that dubbing did not include the kids' singing voices.

I don't know if you'd ever heard this.

There were always sort of rumors that the voices were dubbed for the soundtrack.

That's not true.

All of the kids are singing in the movie.

The only thing is I think they added three or four additional kids to give the group body.

The choral effect, right?

You would need just a few more voices.

But it's funny.

The voices seem to match up.

Yeah.

There's one voice in this movie that I wondered about, and I can tell you who I think it is.

Something you've already told me has made me wonder more, which is I've wondered about Christopher Plummer.

Yes.

Because I didn't know if he was a singer or not, but everybody else I assumed was.

Well, Plummer is dubbed.

Okay, interesting.

It's not that he can't sing.

I think he can.

No, he was a concert pianist, which you mentioned, but whoever dubbed him, and by the way, also a really good match for Plummer.

Really good.

It didn't bump me at all.

I only wondered it because I hadn't seen Plummer sing in any other context, but an amazing voice.

Yeah.

Ultimately, he and Wise agreed that especially because he had to sing opposite Julie Andrews, his voice was not quite good enough for the movie.

I do wonder about this a little bit, though, because if you look at the soundtrack, there's like maybe one track where he is listed as a singer, and the other ones he is dubbed over by a man named Bill Lee, who, as you said, has an absolutely beautiful voice.

Though I believe actually you can go on YouTube and hear Christopher Plummer's original vocals on Edelweiss.

It's not bad at all.

Do you want to hear it, Chris?

If you haven't, let's listen.

He has a very nice voice, and I actually think by modern standards, so for example, if you think of Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born, this feels on that level, if not even maybe a little better.

And I thought Bradley Cooper did a great job, but I do think when you're going up against somebody like Julie Andrews,

you and even those children, there's a purity in tone and a confidence in delivery.

And that's actually the bigger thing I I noticed.

It's that even though he's very good, he doesn't have that singer's confidence I didn't feel when I was listening to it.

He can sing.

I don't think he would consider himself a singer.

Exactly.

But yeah.

And also, like, there's a certain theatricality to the singing of the kids and Julie Andrews that I think you need to pull this off.

And he has a much more natural, albeit, I think, very beautiful singing voice.

Now, this premiered, as we said, March 2nd.

That was the New York premiere in 1965, and it released wide April 1st, 1965.

And again, Chris, reviews were quite mixed with the New York Times coming down particularly hard on Christopher Plummer.

The damn New York Times.

The damn New York Times getting it wrong every time.

But you know what?

It didn't matter because the audiences absolutely loved it.

The movie grossed roughly $286 million on a budget of about $8 million or $20 million after marketing.

It became known as the sound of money because of how much money it had made.

The sound of cha-chi

in 1965.

286 million.

That is worth $2.9 billion.

Oh my God.

Today's money.

Oh my God.

That's crazy.

That's amazing.

The initial release actually lasted a record-breaking four years, too.

It was so popular.

That's crazy.

It was nominated for 10 Oscars and it won five Best Picture and Director for Robert Wise, Best Sound for James Corcoran and Fred Hines, Hines.

Best Film Editing for William Reynolds.

Best Music Scoring of Music Adaptation or Treatment by Erwin Costel.

It absolutely crushed, and of course, it has become a classic for many, many years.

Lizzie Adjusted for Inflation, it's number six all time.

Yeah.

What's number one?

It's Gone with the Wind.

We're never going to beat that.

It will always be Gone with the Wind.

Yeah.

It's Gone with the Wind, Avatar, Titanic, Star Wars, the 1977, A New Hope, Avengers Endgame, and The Sound of Music, E.T., the Extraterrestrial, The Ten Commandments, Dr.

Zhivago, and then Star Wars, The Force Awakens.

Interesting.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think the only one on there I've never seen all the way through is Dr.

Zhivago.

So I should get on that.

So that wraps up our coverage of the sound of music, Chris.

Thank you so much.

And thank you to our audience for voting for this movie.

Yeah.

Because it's not a movie I probably would have sought out.

Although, you know, with Nora, with my daughter, I definitely would throw this on at some point.

She's a little too young.

We're still doing baby steps into fascism with her but better pick that up chris make sure she's with the times exactly i always fear that i always like to think i would be staunchly a man of my integrity like captain von trapp and fear i would be loosey-goosey with my morals like max richard hayden's character but anyway i will give my what went right

um

I'm going to give it to Ernie Lehman.

Nice.

I'm going to give it to the screenwriter.

We often neglect the screenwriter as they are often neglected on these movies.

But it sounds like he really, in a weird way, was the glue more so than in a lot of other films with the way that, for example, Plummer talks about how he kind of helped his character out.

And obviously, he worked tirelessly to sand off some of the less attractive edges of the, or lack of edges off of the stage play.

I think he did a wonderful job adapting this.

I think the script is very smart.

Yeah.

And so.

Mind what went right goes to Ernie Lehman.

And also a testament to him that so many people saw the play and thought that it was just really not going to work, way too ooey gooey, way too for kids.

And he managed to turn it into something that has lasted decades and will continue to last for decades to come and enjoyable for adults and children, I think.

It is still those things.

It is.

But it is also more.

And I think that's a testament to its success.

Yeah.

Well, I have to give my what went right to Dame Julie Andrews because I truly don't think this movie works without her.

She is so genuine and

she works both in the scenes with the kids where she's being very sweet, she's being very fun, she works in the abbey as this, you know, pain in the butt nun running around, whistling.

She's funny, she's got so much physical comedy, but she also really works in the scenes opposite Christopher Plummer where they're sort of angry at each other.

I think one of the best scenes in the movie is when the boat capsizes and he's kind of chewing her out for, you know, taking his kids out to play.

And she kind of goes on a laundry list of like these are all the things you're doing wrong and you need to step your game up and actually take care of your kids and that's a really hard scene to pull it off she does it beautifully I think she's a fantastic actress obviously she has one of the best voices ever she's just so much fun to watch and it was so nice to learn about this and hear that she was exactly as wonderful in person as she was on screen so i have to give it to julie andrews please keep those helicopters away from her we need to make sure she stays intact

But I really enjoyed this.

To that point, Liz, what I was going to say is I completely agree with you.

And I think what you're referencing, there's a steeliness to her.

She does not seem like she'll wilt despite being fun.

And her relentless positivity does not come across as naive.

No, nor does it come across as annoying, which is really hard to pull off.

I agree.

I would also just briefly like to shout out, we didn't talk about her at all, but Eleanor Parker, who plays The Baroness.

The Baroness is great.

She was a very great actress.

So I came across her a little bit more when I was researching Ben-Hur.

She was in the detective story, which William Wyler directed, and she's wonderful in it.

I think she had an Oscar nomination.

And she's aged, she was older, I think, than Plummer in this movie.

And she's really good.

And she's really good in that scene where he breaks up with her, and then she breaks up with him.

She's so good.

She's really, really, really wonderful.

And I think that would be an easy character to turn into a cartoonish caricature.

That's kind of what I worried she would be in that first scene where she's talking to Max.

Sort of a wicked stepmother.

Exactly.

But they don't do that.

They let her be a person, and she does it very, very well.

Yeah, she ends up being very gracious and just extremely glamorous all the way through.

A good contrast between her and Julie Andrews.

Yes.

Throughout the film.

All right.

All right.

Well, what do we have coming up next, Chris?

Next week, we are finally going around the world to go back in time, Defying the Laws of Physics with 1978's Superman, directed by Richard Donner, starring Christopher Reeve.

This movie, not only is it four movies in one, as we'll discuss, but this production went through nearly every hellish obstacle that we've discussed on this podcast.

I'm so excited to talk about it with you guys.

So that is 1978's Superman, just the first one, not Superman 2.

Watch it.

We are so excited to talk to you guys about it.

Chris, would you like to let the audience know how they can support us?

I'd love to, Lizzie.

David, you want to play me in?

If you are enjoying this podcast and you'd like to help us out,

there are four easy ways to help this show.

Rate subscribe, review, or join our Patreon.

Patreon.

Patreon.

You don't have to pay, you can join for free.

Join for free.

Join for free.

But if if you join our full stop tier,

you'll get a little shout out like this:

Lay the knife in L'Anre Lod, K-Hub on a half-greyhound,

Tom, Christon, Zach Gather, Tun, Scary, Carry, stick around,

Len, a soma, China, knee,

brooke, genma, stromarino,

And the Provost family

Where the O's all sound like O'spea and shine told men Leah Bowman's David's mom

Adrienne Pancore

Lamb Stater Kate Alrington

JJ Rabbito So fast

Jason Frankl, you're my boy

Blaze Ambrose, you're never last

Hello Slipknots 9 and James McAvoy Cameron Smith, film it yourself,

Galen MXOD

Brittany Morris and Chris Neal Scott Kerwin Suzanne Johnson

Mike McGrath Richards and Chess

Chris Saka and Chris Elder

Sadie, that's all that there is.

Ramon Villain, Weva Junior, Steve, my dad, Winter Bower,

Rosemary, she's my in-law,

Lydia House, Kathleen Olson,

also Jewish, Risa Mont

Ellen Singleton, and Don

Shybo, Brian, Donna Hugh,

Hello, Jerome Wilkinson,

Adam Moffat.

We did not forget you.

Dale and Darren Conkleen

and David Frisco Lantee

Grace butter apologies

for the grinning way I sing.

Jake, you know you're killing it,

as is Matthew Jacobson.

brace yourselves cause this is it.

We are grateful, full stop, this song is done.

Thank you again to everybody that supported this podcast, be it through Patreon, through spreading the word, or just through listening.

We really appreciate it and we couldn't do it without you.

We're so excited to talk all things Superman next week.

Until then.

What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Chris W and Lizzie Bassett.

Edits in music took David many hours.

So did research by Jesse Winterbauer.

Carrin

Cropsong

helped make thee and it's just right

so long

farewell

out figures saying goodbyes

goodbye

goodbyes

night,

good

wife.