After they were famous- the sound of music children

[Music] the world will always think of me as being prefect von trapp whether I want them to or not Christopher Plummer apparently complained that I wait so I'm so happy to carry when playboy came to me and asked me if I wanted to be in their magazine I was like me none of us felt that Sound of Music would still be as popular and continue being popular year after year after year I had a friend once who told me that you're never gonna be able to live this down I mean why would I ever want to very good to stop when you read you begin with when you see you Raymie the seven children from The Sound of Music won the hearts of the world when they ran around Salzburg playing the Von Trapp children 35 years ago the seven screen siblings have made the trip back to Salzburg together for the first time since they made the movie there in 1965 last time of course they were accompanied by teachers Voice coaches chaperones and doting motherly and shot reels and reels of home movie footage [Music] yep this is your new governess Fraulein Maria as I sound your signals you will step out and give your name you Fraulein will listen carefully well then that signals so that you can call them and you want them I'm Nina I'm 16 years old and I don't need a governess I'm charming and car and I played Liesl I'm Friedrich I'm 14 I'm impossible I'm Nicholas Hammond I played Friedrich I'm Geeta whoever didn't tell me how old you are Louisa I'm Hannah Minzy and I played really stop she's Louisa she's 13 years old and you are smart I'm Angela Cartwright I played Brigitta I'm good I'm 11 I'm incorrigible I'm Dwayne Chase and I played Kurt I'm mad and I'm going to be seven I'm Tuesday and I'd like a pink parasol and Debbie Turner and I played Marta yes your breakfast and you're five years old I'm Kim Corral and I played Gretel I believe that the film is so successful and has been so successful for so long because it's based on a true story I think that Rodgers and Hammerstein's music is so wonderful that the audience leaves the theater not just remembering one song but two songs or three songs our foursome the film's been seen by more than a billion people worldwide making it the most popular movie ever [Music] the film won five Oscars including Best Director for Robert Wise who in true glitzy Hollywood fashion jetting around the globe in the search for his soon-to-be superstars in terms of casting the movie Robert Wise went to New York he went to England he went to Germany even to to try and cast this movie he went all over the place and I think that he had a picture in his mind of the kind of children that he was looking for and he just kept searching until he found them he was searching for children that that didn't look like they were sort of polished professionals you know he wanted very real kids but but also kids that could pull it off I remember turning up and there were 400 children this was just in New York they actually saw four thousand and all but there were four hundred that day in the room and you know this huge group of Gretel's and a huge group of Brigade errs and all these Friedreich's and they all look perfect everyone Bob Weiss came by when we were sitting there on the soundstage and simply asked me if I would like to go to Austria no screen-test no nothing and of course I was so excited at the time I said oh sure you don't even have to pay me the script pretty much nailed it on the head he was pretty incorrigible there perhaps was a bit of typecasting there seemed to have been incorrigible just as as a kid outside of the character my hair was this car when I was cast but the night before we started filming Robert Wise took a look at me and said I want him to be blond and so I went straight into the 20th Century Fox hairdressers in those days they didn't have the kind of products they do now so it was literally a case of just pouring straight bleach on it and blistering the scalp and getting at the color and then they had to do that every week for the whole shoot in a lot of the door ami sequence for instance I've got this funny little straw hat on and the reason for that was is my hair would turn kind of straw yellow if it got exposed to the sunlight while I was a bit shy I'm going to be seven and Tuesday and I'd like a pink parasol she was a sweet kid wasn't she I guess I was a sweet kid there was a rumor that I passed away that was among the most shocking rumors I personally heard when an English friend of mine said oh my goodness but I heard that you died and there's not much to say to that extreme next step for well obviously it was not an accurate rumor being able to come with the people that I had originally been here with has really sparked a lot of a lot of the things that went on and a lot of the you know things that we talked about and how much fun it was now doreen epoch though and so on only the tools we use to build a song once you have these notes in your head you can sing a million different tunes by mixing them up like this SoDo laughs on ido ray you see that's the gift shop was here but I think the bench was like right here because it was right through here yeah this was one of the prettiest prettiest views we ever had the nine months they spent together making the film forged a unique friendship that lasts to this day although being scattered all over the world means that they rarely have the chance to meet [Music] it brings back so many memories memories that I had you know forgotten about and it brings back all the trouble that they used to get into and I'm looking at these kids today and they're all bigger than I am and I'm thinking I used to kind of tell them what to do and be there be their big sister and it feels funny [Music] hi on the hill with a lovely note her name Julie Andrews arrived on set hot foot from her success in Mary Poppins and she hadn't lost her magic touch with children I remember Julianna's used to sing to us especially during the times that maybe we were getting a little bit antsy and in between shots she would pull up a guitar sit down and and sing to us and get us to sing with her just like she did in the movie except that it was off-camera and I just have so much wonderful memories about that [Music] email dear a drop of gold [Music] me and I call myself my relationship with Julie Andrews was a nice relationship she and I were the closest in age of anyone a drink with Julie Andrews when we were finished filming had said that she wanted to to give me some advice about what to do with my money and she said I think you should buy a mink coat she said you will have it forever and it's the best investment you can ever make and so I did I I took her advice and I went and I bought the beautiful mink coat and I wore it and wore and wore it she was really she was really right Christopher Plummer wasn't quite so children-friendly he calls the movies the sound of mucus I've heard that Chris wasn't big on kids but he and I actually managed to get along I've got a couple of pictures of him and me sitting together sharing a joke which are some of my favorite pictures from the movie and he signed it on the back to those two laughing boys Chris well there was a story about the piggyback being over the Alps we did have to do that a number of times and I think by the time we did that scene my weight had increased Christopher Plummer apparently complained that I wadesdah Carrie and then apparently later on he he was quoted as saying that he wouldn't mind carrying me now [Music] so it took us nine months to film The Sound of Music and the only person that didn't grow with me I was taller than everyone when we started filming I grew six inches in the six months so I mean it was the classic growth spurt I went from five foot three to five foot nine so I literally grew an inch a month while we were filming and it just created havoc I mean obviously the idea was we were supposed to line up with Charmin is the tallest and us going down and I kept having to either be on lifts have the lifts taken out everyone else put on lifts everything to keep that line even after the lift stopped working and he kept still growing they started putting me up on little boxes in scenes that you wouldn't see our feet as well as gross burns playing havoc with filming there were dental dilemmas when the cast milk teeth started falling out I was seven and I hadn't lost my teeth yet and during the filming and when we were here in Austria my teeth were getting very loose and so I had to eat on the side of my mouth I lived on french fries and a little bit of Vienna schnitzel that I could get past my teeth without knocking them out by the time we return to LA my teeth were just hanging by strings and I figured we weren't gonna make it through the rest of the movie if I had dentures so people used to think I had a lisp but it was really truly I was trying to speak with all this stuff in my it wasn't all raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens behind every cute puppet in the spotlight is a pushy mama Debbie and Kim were always pushing each other and so Kim's mother didn't like Debbie's mother and then Debbie's mother didn't like mothers that would urge us to make sure that we were in front of the camera or we who got the best shot so we might nudge each other a little bit and kind of you know fight for position I would often times have to scold one or the other of them and they the mothers of course would get mad at me how dare you scold my daughter it was starting to become you know I mean where the mothers were kind of constantly trying to push their little darling into the front of each shot to the point where you know would rehearse something and then come back to shoot it and suddenly somebody standing nowhere near where they'd been standing in the rehearsal and it was because they've been a little whispering going on with Mama we were lining up for a shot over at the riding school and we were up on the stage and sharmee and refreshed my memory on this one she said that Kim was trying to get ahead of me and I was trying to get ahead of Kim and we were doing this and then I think my last nudge kind of like pushed her off and then she bounced cause look upon Trapp Family Singers here your names Liesl Friedrich Louisa Brigitta Kurt Marta and Gretl why are you always wrong because you are the most important [Music] the dance in 16 going on 17 was very difficult dance luckily I had studied dance since I was 4 but I look back on it today and it impresses me more today than it did then [Music] when we started our dance scene I had had one set of shoes for rehearsal and then a brand new set for the filming and the wardrobe department forgot to put the rubber on the soles of those shoes and so when I jumped on the first bench I've kept going and I went through the plate-glass windows broke the glass landed on my ankle outside the gazebo and of course everyone was absolutely panicked 16 going on 17 was the last scene filmed on sound of music we were way over schedule way over budget and Robert wise I knew was having just almost a heart attack but I didn't cut myself the only thing that I did would sprain my ankle and so they got an ace bandage and they bandaged my ankle they put makeup on the bandage makeup on my legs and I danced on my ankles all day long the end of that day when I walked out those doors and said we the crew stood up and applauded for me and that was the most wonderful feeling that besides the birth of my daughters and my granddaughter has been one of the most thrilling moments of my life [Music] No snow being up there no I was just saying do you remember charming help we had to have the boat was actually on a cable that they pulled at the coast wait and I couldn't possibly grow it that fast to get all the way from there to there so we so the guys have pulled it on the cable and then we came and kept it right right there and swam from there to there probably the only thing that was traumatic on the chute of sound of music was my near-death experience maybe that's where the rumor started when I fell out of the boat in the boat scene first of all the lake had leeches which was kind of icky the problem with the boat scene was that little Kimmi didn't know how to swim these days movie makers would never get away with it but back in 1965 kids did their own stunts Julie Andrews was supposed to catch me when the boat capsized but and she did the first time around and but of course that was not the print that they wanted they didn't want that one Robert Wise wanted to do it again and the next time around the boat shook in such a way so that Julie Andrews was thrown off the opposite side of the boat from me and I went down this exuberant scene almost ended in tragedy she would just sink to the bottom of the lake and someone would have to go in and save her which was really kind of frightening her poor mother was standing there by the shore just you know as I would she was having a fit and it ingests it she ingested so much water that there was one part of the scene where I was supposed to carry her out of the lake and Robert wises said Heather look at your shoulder you better write that off and she had just thrown up all over me then remember the shot they shot out after we had fallen in but they have to Wed us again and they use the watering cans break down yeah we stayed wearing I'm a or two just to get Melville's shot I remember being really excited when we shot that because I had my first drink of brandy because the prop man came and gave everybody a little cup of brandy after the shot I thought this was so cool I thought this is really being like a grown-up now this is Baroness schraeder and these my children how do you do the children were much younger than I was Nicholas was 13 he turned 14 when we were working on Sound of Music but I was 21 and during that time that's a big big age gap and so I didn't stay at the same hotel with them I got to stay at another hotel with Christopher Plummer and some of the other crew members and cast and I felt very adult I actually looked up to char Mian so much I wanted to be just like char Mian and and I thought she was so ladylike and she was so poised and so elegant sharmee and made a big fuss over me too and I spent a lot of time hugging her and kissing her I was a very affectionate little little child so there was a lot of that at the time I felt sad that I was the youngest because I didn't get to be involved in as many of the tricks and high jinks as the older kids did plus I had to go to bed earlier that bugged me rollicking car stop curtains is one thing but how did Nicholas a 5 foot 9 teenager in the middle of the swinging 60s feel about swapping his bell-bottoms for later who's I felt a little bit silly I suppose silly is the right word being dressed him later hos and being dressed in cute clothing it was just I was an adolescent and I was I suppose his self-conscious and as awkward as most adolescents were and I was aware that mine wasn't going to be undergone you know in the privacy of my own home and school mine was going to be displayed for all time [Music] they hired four other children to sing along with the children to give a fuller sound because some of the children didn't really sing that well and my sister Darlene has an unbelievable voice she did this with the sound of music notes and so every time I hear this I think of Darlene I was able to sing everything on my own except that one high note and it was charmese sister Darlene that did the high note for me I just couldn't get it and so that was it she did that one high note but all the rest of it was was on my own Angela and I became very fast friends so we were kind of the same age and and we got along very well she introduced me to the Beatles and we became Beatle maniacs together we both loved the Beatles we were both totally beetle crazy we have this like Club that we created which was the half Elaine Club we had a slogan and a motto and we had a poem and a song Heather Paul and Angela unlike most beetle maniac though they got to meet the Fab Four in person and eventually [Music] [Music] what's it called merengue all our different personalities fit in sort of different ways but it makes kind of a whole it makes one thing when it's all together which is surprising I've certainly never had any experience that's similar to that I've had to families all my life and I'm constantly reminded of that by everyone else around the world who is always wanting to know not only what I'm doing but also what they're doing and so it does give you a great sense of ownership and again a sense of pride of having been a part of something that has meant so much to so many people okay your tickets for the sound of music to her please good morning how do you do seventy-five thousand people a year make the pilgrimage from all over the world to Salzburg to take the sound of music coach tour today the tourists have seven very special fellow travelers onboard [Music] curiously Austria is one of the few countries in the world where the sound of music is definitely not one of their favorite things it ran for just three days in Salzburg cinemas with the locals objecting to Hollywood's version of Austrian history [Music] been here in Salzburg and walking around the places where I was when I was 14 and they haven't changed and suddenly you come back at 50 and you walk up the same stairs and you walk down the same garden path and you realize to the world you'll always be 14 but you aren't they capsized and fell in the water you know they almost lost Gretel in that scene she couldn't swim I've always wanted to come back and what a better way to come back and with the seven people that I shared you know this experience with it's a dream to me to be able to do this with with my Sound of Music siblings it'll never happen again [Music] mimicks we need run something no the gates went the other way I thought the gates bent but don't those steps look small view they were this shooting image just like climbing Mount Everest this is like being revisited with your worst nightmare the one from what you absolutely could not do this was the hardest of all of them we come right back that's the first thing we do it took ten weeks to film the famous doremi sequence despite months of rehearsal before leaving the state though they did have to fit in four hours of school every day as well 35 years later they're back in the Mirabell Gardens for the first time what chance of mastering the steps now in the Mirabell Gardens I thought this is unbelievable I mean the same ones who sit there and listen when the directors talking were the same ones who listen then the ones who keep chatting and pay no attention and the director has to repeat things four times driving the rest of us completely mad are the same ones doing it now good this is unbelievable it is precisely the same I think oh this is all gonna work just so fluidly [Music] yeah a billion people pay money to come see that [Music] you [Music] you think whoa of course I mean what studio wouldn't make the sound of music you know is this great director great actress great story all of that but 20th Century Fox was the bankrupt the sheriff's have locked the front gates and the studio was in receivership because of the money they'd lost on Cleopatra Darryl zanuck you know went to the courts and said give me six months he had enough money to either make three very cheap little movies or one big one and he decided to roll the dice once and gamble everything and the one he decided to make was this and every single pundit in the film industry thought he'd lost his mind I mean this was a time when the successful films were alfie psycho was about to be made look back in anger you know this was gritty kitchen-sink realism and he decided to make a film about apple strudel and singing nuns and children and this picture went on to bankroll 20th Century Fox for the next 20 years the film made more money than Gone with the Wind when it was first released and has made many people rich since but very little found its way to its child stars I think like any family you have follow-ups and I think we definitely have over the years and I think that you know the anger about not really being compensated for Sound of Music and all the things that came afterwards the video and the compact disc and now the DVD and and all the money that's been made and Sound of Music there was a lot of you know problems and then happiness about that we were making very small salaries I mean we couldn't afford to eat in the hotel we would go out you know with our mothers and find some cheap little cafe in Salzburg to Eden we got paid I think it was like a 20-year contract payable in the first ten so we got residuals for the first ten years that it played on television after that nothing so now I mean by today's standards children's stars that make a lot of money they make a ton nowadays then it was quite minimal no one held guns at any of our heads and forced us to sign the seven-year contracts we signed which were all for such low amounts of money but and we were you know have been thrilled to do it at the time yeah of course I suppose there's a little part of you that thinks inside well you know when the studio has made literally billions of dollars and some people have gotten enormous ly rich off of this film that perhaps it would have been a nice gesture you know if they had come back and said look never in our wildest dreams did we think it would make this much so here's a little something but nobody made Fox you know it's not in anyone's contract and they're perfectly within their rights not to so it doesn't really matter because it also wasn't experience that I wouldn't have traded for anything in the world what do you like [Music] [Applause] things like that seen in the thunderstorm saying well we're all in the bed together that to me was always kind of like my image of the perfect family that I don't know whether to this day it's a good thing or a bad thing to have in your mind as something that's possible you know a perfect wedding a perfect relationship a perfect family and I'd loved having those things kind of quietly in the back of my mind but sometimes I think maybe their expectations that don't necessarily serve you well my life has not turned out the way I thought it would I thought I would be married forever I thought I would never get a divorce I thought I would be always happy The Sound of Music family was this wonderful loving family and I was sure that I would have this wonderful loving family and I went through bad times I'm divorced and you know at times it's it's upsetting you know to know that there isn't really that ideal family it doesn't exist I wish I would have been more prepared for the bad times we all think when we have the good times but it's going to be forever but as you get older you realize you know it isn't [Music] there's one person that I've been closest to since the beginning and that's Nicholas Hammond he is truly truly my friend he's been with me through the most difficult periods and he's been terrific not only was she incredibly beautiful I'm probably like every male who ever saw the film you know I found it really attractive but I just also found her such a wonderful person she was kind of like this sort of woman that you thought well you know that's that's the kind of person you want to be with [Music] yeah absolutely you bet he was young Baroness with older no no she was now the norm bitter and twisted genuine and unspoiled and natural she seemed in many strange characters character a challenge to soften and a really nice backyard [Music] I don't think it looks ridiculous I think it's a highly romantic not realistic story but that's what it is on a really profound level it does seem to strike you know a very genuine and truthful chord in people you know on an emotional level I don't think it's on an intellectual level or even on a reality level and that's no small thing the seven of them have lived with a legacy of this film for thirty five years and the sound of music continues to play a significant part in their lives [Music] world will always think of me as being Friedrich von trapp whether I want to or not in some ways it is clearly open doors for me in other ways it is probably caused preconceptions about me that maybe the film if I hadn't done the film it wouldn't have and it does kind of you know impact on you and you start thinking oh well they better not all read in the newspaper that you know I was caught in a drug bust or I was this or I was that so in that respect I suppose you know in a subtle way it does you know slightly channel your behavior and as I say I think maybe make you less brave there was a period of time in my life I think I think with all of us when we were in our sort of late teens and early twenties when you want to just be an adult already you know you want to move on and be an adult and and I think that I had this sort of image in in sort of the public's mind and also in casting directors Minds that I was this Louisa von trapp and you know when you're 18 you don't look like that anymore I didn't feel pretty or sexy and when playboy came to me and asked me if I wanted to be in their magazine I was like me it's new or magazine you know so it's very tempting to do it and in a way I'm glad I did it I still have the pictures in my file so you know and maybe I can show them to my grand children someday and say yo grandma [Music] so what happened to our magnificent much-loved seven after the sound of music faded there now 40 something going on 50 something in between them they planned more than a few mountains the thing that bothers me about being an actress was you had so little control over your life you had to sit home and wait for the phone to ring for some agent or some director or some producer to hire you for his part and that drove me crazy I was too too energetic to do that I wanted to work and I wanted to work every day I didn't want to sit home and wait for work to come along and that's one of the reasons why I was happy that my design business became successful I was working for a very famous singer Michael Jackson I worked for him for seven years he had told me that the sound of music was his favorite film that whenever he was depressed he had a copy of The Sound of Music and he would run it in his theater for whatever reason it was impossible for me to get work after I did the sound of music I loved acting I'd been that's the only thing I knew how to do very well as a child and I couldn't get parts after having been in the sound of music as I got a little older I'd get a commercial or a you know modeling jobs and various things but I just I couldn't get back into the the big loop that I was in well currently I'm a mother of four children but I also have been running a business I'm actually an artist I run a floral design business where I do very beautiful weddings and I do permanent pieces for people's homes hether married actor Robert Urich and became a happy Hollywood wife I really do believe in love stories I'm living one myself I met my husband 27 years ago we're just about to have our 25th anniversary and it's it's been a it's been a true love story you know for 25 years you know you don't hear about the happy ones in Hollywood there are quite a few of them my life actually since the movie is is quite normal I don't generally tell people that I was in the movie and it's not because I'm not proud of being in it and I don't have good memories it's just not something that I've ever waved a flag about when people have asked me oh you know what have you done or what do you like to do I'll mention other things my career as a geologist or as a software engineer sailing climbing whatever something else I was on a series that was like number one and so I was known all over and there are tons of Lawson space fans I guess it's really it is different to kind of be in the showbiz kind of atmosphere and still think you're kind of normal you know I don't think I had a lot of pre-determined ideas about what was gonna happen career-wise I had a business that I I had when I was raising my kids it was kind of a funky gift store because it allowed me the freedom to be there for my kids and I just I let that go about two years ago and took it on the internet so that I would have more freedom to be able to pursue photography which has always been my love which is what I would probably have been had I not been into acting at five Kim had already done three films when she got to the set of The Sound of Music I definitely think that Fame as a child sets you apart from many many people and it's a it's a very odd phenomenon I I don't know what it would have been like to have not been famous as a child I decided to devote myself to to my little boy after he was born I had waited a long time to have a child and I just was surprised by how I mean I don't suppose it should have surprised me but I was surprised by how much I was needed by him and and he needed me around and now that he's a little bit older he's nine now I feel like I can go back to my own pursuits none of us will forget Nicholas as spider-man but he went on to become a highly successful international actor and writer now based in Sydney of the seven I am the one who has well let's say put food on the table and the roof over my head as an actor for all the years since the film's made and it's the only job I've ever had and I III I'm not somebody who's become a businessman or this or that or whatever I've just stayed in this business I'm I'm I still wake up in the morning and look for my name on a call sheet so my life hasn't changed my profession hasn't changed I think once you're will you turn 40 I think a lot of things don't matter as much that didn't matter before I think you start to listen to yourself a lot more when you raise a family I think it all kind of falls into perspective what you care about what you believe in what makes you happy Heather and Robert have both battled with cancer over the last few years and she's now the driving force behind their foundation for sarcoma research I think that when when one is faced with an illness such as cancer a very serious illness no matter what it is you really do face immortality or mortality or whatever you know it's the most horrifying thing to ever have to go through to really face the loss of a loved one and and have it be possible reality I'm much more relaxed now than I ever was because I've been staring it down the face of the dreaded beast nothing could scare me ever again [Music] yeah I've been wanting to see this ever since we came over [Music] right there right there and said let's start at the very beginning right there we've had a lot of fun because we have bad weather when we were up here before and had a lot of free time and we just ran around and had a head of laughs [Music] happy to me this is probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen I personally have ever seen in my entire life and it instills such emotion in me and not quite sure why maybe it's because I can just see this the ghosts of little Heather dancing around you know jumping over a guitar and and singing and having a wonderful time [Music] I think I'm I'm say goodbye to my childhood [Music] I don't think the barn has changed as much as we change no [Music] you happy [Music] loss of osnome a [Music] I find it interesting that when we shot the film it was early spring and now it's late autumn and you know I was need all those dead leaves on the ground and and I was thinking well it's funny because in a way I mean I've come back now and and looked at all look at my own childhood but from the perspective of a 50 year old and and it was a wonderful thing to have done but you know you know funny sort of way I find myself saying goodbye to this film now so well ain't no night I hate they'll probably say a year you you and you and you so long there oh wow Peter Zane I buy and taste my first job a yes and he Messiaen say goodbye [Music] coming up next the conclusion of a two-part story the hunt [Music]

Channel: Stephanie Cole

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Id: h83z2EXljgA

Length: 49min 30sec (2970 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019