HOW DID THEY SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA?
June 4, 1964: Julie Andrews was freezing. With the sun rarely bothering to appear in the Alps, weather continued to run rough-shod over location shooting on The Sound Of Music. The unceasing rain had left one small, unpaved road as the only way anyone could reach Mehlweg in southern Bavaria for the filming of the movie’s title song. Which was precisely why the cold but ever-cooperative Andrews found herself arriving at the scenic meadow location by means of a decidedly unglamorous Jeep.
Problems with reaching the location, however, paled in comparison to the logistics of renting the helicopter that would sweep down and film Andrews as she launched into the title song.
Helicopter rentals were very expensive, and with 20th Century Fox firing off memos to director/ producer Robert Wise to rein in the over-budget, much-delayed filming, even the perpetually calm director felt the strain. With only the first half of the number requiring the use of the helicopter, as soon as the shot was captured, the pilot would instantly fly to Obersalzberg for the filming of the movie’s finale: the von Trapp family’s escape over the Alps into Switzerland. There was no money for even one more day’s helicopter rental.
Andrews, a seasoned showbiz veteran at 28, prepared herself for the carefully staged rendering of the song. The shot was lined up and framed. There couldn’t be the hint of another human being in sight: postulant Maria Rainer, momentarily freed from the stifling abbey, was meant to be singing precisely because she was basking in glorious solitude amid nature.
Andrews’ slight figure would land smack in the middle of the frame, a speck against the wide open spaces until the helicopter zoomed in closer, still closer, and then…
From his perch halfway up a tree, Wise called out: ‘Ready? Roll camera.’
Camera operator, soundman, and loader replied: ‘Roll camera.’ Wise commanded: ‘Action!’ Andrews strode purposefully across the meadow, throwing herself into a full-bodied twirl, arms outstretched, and launched into the film’s opening words: ‘The hills are alive...’
She lip-synched to her prerecorded vocal with pinpoint accuracy. But there was a problem. Each time the helicopter circled back to its starting position for another take, its downdraft proved so strong that Andrews found herself knocked over, sprawled in the grass while trying to avoid the mud.
Pulling grass out of her hair and off her costume, make-up adjusted yet again, she would stride, twirl, sing, and once more find herself on the ground. Having been knocked down on half of the ten takes, even the placid actress ‘finally got so angry I yelled, “That’s enough!”’ But she couldn’t be heard over the sound of the helicopter, and the pilot interpreted his star’s hand signals as a thumbs-up gesture of, ‘You’re doing great – let’s go for one more.’
Was this any way to begin a multimillion-dollar musical? As it turned out, yes. And then some.
The Sound Of Music opened 50 years ago and quickly became the most popular film on the planet. The story – based on fact – of Maria von Trapp, an Austrian nun turned governess who married into a musical family and defied the Nazis, inspired devotion and ardent fervour. On every continent where it played it set one box office record after another. It ranks as the fifth highest-grossing film of all time (when gross is adjusted for inflation) and is, arguably, the most beloved film ever.
It began life as a Broadway musical based on Maria’s autobiography and with songs by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Opening in November 1959, the show struck many critics as hopelessly old-fashioned and saccharine, but grew into a box office smash – and in 1960, film rights were sold to 20th Century Fox for $1.25 million. Yet by 1963 The Sound Of Music seemed headed for oblivion, gathering dust in the bottom of the studio’s drawer. The reason?
Cleopatra. The vastly expensive, hugely over-budget epic belly-flopped at the box office, leaving the studio in serious financial trouble. Executives were reluctant to greenlight another costly film. And it had already been panned by the critics. However, a new studio chief saw its potential, and eventually gave it the go-ahead, with the Oscar-winning director of West Side Story, Robert Wise, at the helm.
In retrospect, the selection of
Andrews to play the role of Maria seems the only possible choice that ever could have been made. But in the summer of 1963 as casting discussions got under way, nothing could have been further from the truth. The actress was a completely unknown quantity on film.
Mary Poppins had yet to be released. Andrews may have scored three consecutive Broadway hits with The Boy Friend, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, but that didn’t mean she’d register on film as well. The powers that be wanted a real movie star with box-office clout to carry their multimillion-dollar production. The problem lay in the fact that every single star-powered name floated as a possibility presented problems, and large ones at that.
Grace Kelly? Retired from the screen and living her own fairytale life in the Palais de Monaco. Her glacial beauty hidden in a nun’s outfit? In a musical?
Anne Bancroft? A gifted actress, but who’d believe the woman born Anna Italiano as a singing Austrian nun?
Angie Dickinson? As a nun? Singing about her favourite things to children? And then there was Doris Day. She could sing and she could act, and she also happened to be the biggest movie star in the world at the time casting was first discussed. But Day knew she was wrong for the role, stating in typically forthright fashion: ‘I’m too American to play a nun from Austria.’
It was Andrews who composer Richard Rodgers wanted. In the mid-Fifties she had auditioned for a part in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. She was brilliant. But on learning that she’d also auditioned for a role in what
would become My Fair Lady, Rodgers advised her to take that part instead.
When My Fair Lady opened in 1956, Andrews became the toast of Broadway. But the studio balked at the thought of Andrews as Maria – she wasn’t a name. She might not even photograph well. Yes, they realised that she radiated warmth and understanding, and yes, she had a pretty face with a cute, upturned nose.
She even seemed to possess a great figure if you could ever see it underneath all of those Eliza Doolittle and Queen Guinevere robes. By any standards, Julie Andrews was in fact a very attractive young woman. But she wasn’t a classic Hollywood beauty in the mould of Lana Turner or Grace Kelly, and $8million was on the line.
But Wise considered it a plus that Andrews was not cut from the standard glamour-girl cloth. Her fresh-scrubbed beauty seemed ideal for the role. Some might possess doubts as to Andrews’s appearance or acting range, but to Wise, no one with a scintilla of common sense could have the slightest doubt about her voice – a Godgiven miracle spanning four octaves, characterised by a crystalline soprano sound, and enhanced by perfect diction.
Did she possess sex appeal? Yes. On the Broadway stage she radiated an appeal light years removed from the overt eroticism transmitted by Hollywood glamour girls, but a sex appeal it remained nonetheless.
In Wise’s eyes, Andrews had it all. But did Jack Warner know something when he refused to cast her in the film version of My Fair Lady? Just what would Julie Andrews look like on screen and in living colour? There was only one way to find out: on October 30, 1963, Wise arranged a trip to Disney studios with associate producer Saul Chaplin to view footage from Mary
Poppins. After five minutes Wise turned to Chaplin and said: ‘Let’s go sign her right now, before anyone else beats us to it.’
Andrews was signed to play Maria for a fee of $225,000 (£150,000), without any share of the profits. The casting of Maria had been solved, but another problem acquired increasing urgency. Who was going to play Captain Georg von Trapp, the Austrian war hero and father of seven children, who Maria marries? What star was going to stand around as nothing more than a handsome foil for the leading lady? Wise briefly considered a number of actors for the role of the captain. Rex Harrison? Too old. David Niven? Too British. Richard Burton? Preoccupied with Elizabeth Taylor. Yul Brynner? Wanted it, but the last thing he seemed like was an Austrian naval captain.
Walter Matthau screen-tested but wasn’t right. Wise’s preferred choice was Canadian stage actor Christopher Plummer. The director said: ‘I just knew he would give it an edge, a bit of darkness.’ But Plummer had no interest in the role. Play a man who resembled nothing so much as a stick figure in an operetta? Forget it. Undaunted, Wise travelled to England and talked to Plummer in person, promising changes would be made to the screenplay to give the character more depth. Plummer respected his Oscar-winning track record and realised the film could raise his profile. ‘I love the stage but movies are good to spread one’s name around a bit.’ He accepted.
The 60-person Sound Of Music company flew to Austria in April 1964 for filming in Salzburg, expecting a six-week shoot. But as Andrews recalled: ‘ Nobody told us when we went to Salzburg that it had the world’s seventh-highest rainfall.’ Shooting lasted 11 weeks and didn’t end until June. And when it got under way, it wasn’t just the inclement weather that presented challenges.
The film required a sequence showing Nazi troops marching across a plaza. But Austrian officials informed the production manager the people of Salzburg had never been Nazi sympathisers so no swastikas could be shown in the film. When the filmmakers said they would simply use actual newsreels of Hitler arriving to cheering Austrian crowds, permission for a shot of troops crossing the Residenzplatz in front of swastikas was swiftly granted.
A far greater problem than the Austrian authorities was presented by the film’s leading man. Plummer was worried about what the film might do to his reputation. He made sure that everyone knew that playing the captain ranked miles below his usual standards, behaving, in his own words, like a ‘pampered, arrogant, young b*****d spoiled by too many great theatre roles’.
He reminded people that he was playing the role ‘under duress, that it had been forced upon me and that I certainly deserved better’. He took to calling the film ‘S and M’ and ‘The Sound of Mucus’. Writing about the experience decades later he bluntly admitted: ‘My behaviour was unconscionable.’
In addition, Plummer had grown fond of schnapps and pastries during his stay in Salzburg, happily consuming them to the point where his costumes had to be let out. And, years later, he has finally come round to the film. Watching it in 2007 at a children’s Easter party in his home state of Connecticut, he acknowledged: ‘Here was I, cynical old sod that I am, being totally seduced by the damn thing – and what’s more, I felt a sudden surge of pride that I’d been a part of it.’
At the time of its release, Wise believed preview screenings were a good guide to box-office potential and so one was organised for at a Minneapolis cinema. The audience laughed in all the right spots but as intermission approached utter silence descended. Had Wise miscalculated? He braced himself as the lights went up – and then the audience stood, and applauded.
Yet many critics loathed the film. The New York Times dismissed the material as operetta kitsch unworthy of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and another title deemed the songs ‘sickening’, Andrews ‘the most revolting refreshing actress in films’ and dismissed the whole film as an ‘atrocity’. Yet the public adored it and it set box-office records. It was wildly popular in Russia, and was one of only five films that Chinese dictator Mao Zedong permitted to be shown. With the exception of Germany and Austria where it flopped outright, it was loved everywhere.
The Sound Of Music also won five Oscars in 1966, including Best Picture and Best Director, although Andrews lost out to Julie Christie in the Best Actress award for her role in Darling.
Years later, Andrews was walking the hills near her home in Switzerland. Given the solitude, she thought she’d sing. In fact, she thought, why not start with ‘The hills are alive…’ Casting a quick glance to make sure she was alone, Andrews began a lusty version of her signature song – only to stumble upon a group of Japanese tourists cresting a rise. A startled Andrews looked at the happy tourists. ‘They must have thought I did that sort of thing all the time,’ she said.
On its 50th anniversary, the film continues to enchant. Andrews feels that the continuing success of the film is a result of its ‘joy and decency and goodness. There was integrity running through the film’. The story of the von Trapps touches a universal chord.
The Sound of Music Story by Tom Santopietro is published by Bantam Press on February 26, priced £16.99.