My Favorite Things: Julie Andrews Remembers (2005) - Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Robert Wise

raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens bright  copper kettles and warm woolen mittens brown paper   packages tied up with strings these are a few of  my favorite things it feels like a fresh breeze   every time you see it it's about joy i think  ultimately and i think everybody senses it   it is those beautiful cumulus clouds it is the  ravishing beauty of the mountains it is the   gorgeous sound of the music it  is um the delight of the children as i understand it the sound of music has  become the most watched musical film in history   even today it just thrills audiences around  the world and in many different languages mom does it really work i don't think any  of us who were involved in its creation   could have ever anticipated its remarkable success   whenever i browse through this script it brings  back so many wonderful memories and funny ones   i guess you could say that nearly everything  in here is one of my favorite things   raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens  bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens   brown paper packages tied up with strings  these are a few of my favorite things one of the more remarkable things that happened  on the movie was meeting the real maria von trapp   there was julie maria and it was really  maria that it was about not julie   she you know came onto the set and like everybody  was wondering who this woman is in this babushka   lo and behold she suddenly was there in  salzburg in austria i hadn't expected it   and i was really nervous would she think i was  appropriate what would she really be like and   she was obviously a very strong woman i guess  you'd have to be to endure what she endured   she had accomplished a great deal in her life and  um i had heard that she really wanted to direct   the film too but it just didn't work out that way  my mother never quite accepted that she had sold   the rights and that that meant they could  do whatever they wanted with the story   and it had to be a strange experience for  her to be observing filming of her own story   and my mother was used to controlling things  so she tried to influence the progress of   the film and the way characters were being  developed and she tried very hard to see that   my father was portrayed in a more gentle kinder  fashion than he had been on the broadway stage   she was a real bundle of great fun  and great humor she said oh you are   even more handsome than my husband oh yes oh  yes so that's about the the most devastating   note i got from her so we got on like a house on  fire in fact she was getting almost too much i   said please get this the gushing baroness off the  set that you possibly can she was kind of bossy   i run things you know and i'm the director  of the things so i didn't like that about her   my mother was a very complex person  she had had an unhappy childhood the   scars of that childhood were always there  and insecurities plagued her all her life   she was a postulant in the abbey in  nunberg and was not fitting in very well   she was absolutely totally unsuited for a  contemplative religious life in a convent   and i suspect that the nuns were very happy  when the opening at my father's house came up   and and she went uh she must have been a very  disruptive person in the tranquil life of the convent i tried to create my own energy for  the character and i know that it   it occurred to me that any woman  no matter how splendid or how um   vital would be simply daunted by seven children  and so i tried to convey that at times just you   know a little bit it could be exhausting or it  could be extremely daunting to say the least a captain with seven children  what's so fearsome about that oh i must stop these doubts all these worries we  were actually filming i have confidence that and   a part of that song was in the residence plaz in  salzburg and maria von trapp walks across in the   background my mother my sister rosemarie and my  niece barbara walk across the back of the screen   in a street scene of salzburg in the film she's  in a shot way in the background i only i would   as the director would was recognize her she  going across the background of a shot i have   confidence in confidence alone i really liked the  film tremendously we had a perfectly comfortable   villa there were a lot of rooms and it was a big  house with a lot of servants and a big garden   in the film of course we're in a palace not just  a comfortable mansion so that was a little over   the top there are some details in the film that  are true to life for example the bosun's whistle my father did use it and it was  very effective but they didn't show   up marching formally the way in the film  they they just responded to their signal the time period was greatly condensed my  father and mother were actually married in 1927   and we left austria in 1938. there were three things that happened at the  same time in 1938 first my father was offered   a commission in the german navy he had been  a submarine commander in the first world war   and the thought of having a modern submarine under  his command was very attractive to him and and   he he really really was interested in this but he  just felt he couldn't do it secondly the family   which had been singing for about two years  professionally was invited to sing at hitler's   birthday celebration and the family chose to  say no and then lastly my brother rupert who   had just finished medical school was offered  a fairly advanced position in a hospital   but he didn't like what he heard was going  on due to so many jewish physicians having   disappeared and after saying no to all three of  these there was no choice but to leave austria we did not walk over the mountain into  switzerland we lived in salzburg and if   you walk over the mountain from salzburg  you're in bertisgarden in germany   which is where hitler's mountain retreat was  not where we wanted to go when we left the house   the key was dropped off with a local religious  order which occupied it for a few weeks and then   heinrich himmler who was one of the the  worst of the top guys in the nazi regime   took it over as his headquarters his office  uh on the second floor which he had completely   soundproofed and in the garden he had bomb  shelters built and there were plans for a   special subway from the house to the railroad  station so that when hitler visited he could do   it underground without being seen and he visited  heinrich himmler many times at our old house the sound of music the film is  based of course upon the wonderful   broadway musical by rogers and hammerstein but  what a lot of people don't know is that that   musical was based on a german movie about  the von trapp family and that german movie   was taken from maria von trapp's actual biography  that she wrote so it's got quite a history   rogers and hammerstein were attracted to stories  that both had human aspects to them but also   had some grit and i think the fact that the  true life story of the von trapps involved   escaping from salzburg and all kinds of  political underscoring really fascinated   them they were never afraid of a story that had  some real problems and some real guts to them   obviously one of the things that attracted me to  this wonderful movie was rogers and hammerstein   themselves they're not only beloved by me they're  they're loved throughout the world for their   wonderful music i think the first meeting that  i recall with rodgers and hammerstein was when i   auditioned for a show that they wrote called pipe  dream and it was very very early on in my career   and i remember the audition was just me  it wasn't with a mass of other people   and uh it was held in the theater on broadway   some sort of late morning early afternoon and i  knew he was sitting out in the dark dark audience   and i belted out some semi-operatic song i think  it was the waltz song from tom jones or something   like that and gave it my all rogers came up on  stage afterwards and he looked at me and he said   that was absolutely adequate and i went oh no he  said no no i'm just teasing you it was lovely and   he said have you been auditioning for anything  else and i said well yes as a matter of fact i   have i've been um singing for alan j lerner and  frederick lowe who are thinking of making this   musical about george bernard shaw's pygmalion and  he looked at me for a very long time and then he   said oh he said i tell you what if they ask you  to do that show i think you should but if you   don't do that show i wish you would let us know  because we would very much like to use you and   i think it was the most generous piece of advice  i could have been given and of course i did do my   fair lady but subsequently i worked for rogers and  hammerstein because they created cinderella for me julie andrews of course made the right  choice in taking my fair lady over pipe dream   it was lucky for cinderella and for rogers  and hammerstein that she made that choice   cinderella was a major major television event  90-minute live original production for television   and as you know any story of  cinderella goes many many places so the   various locales they had to squeeze into one  studio makes it even more remarkable have a   good time and in a way cinderella proved to be the  greatest screen test for the sound of music ever   who knew whether it ever occurred to anybody  at the time but certainly when you look at   her doing cinderella you realize oh i can see the  beginnings of maria von trapp in that performance is that production of cinderella passed rather like  a dream for me because everything was coming at me   so fast and so furiously but the actual production  was seen by i think 107 million people that night   and i think that was the largest audience to  date that had ever tuned in for a television show   and my love for oscar was heightened  when one day i was standing in the wings   and for some reason i i whistle when i get nervous  and i was whistling a song the the the refrain of   the last time i saw paris and i never thought  anything about it i i thought i was all alone   i was just sort of standing in the wings waiting  to go on and a voice behind me said i meant every   word of that you know when i wrote it and i turned  around and there was oscar hammerstein and i said   oh mr hammerstein i said i'm so sorry i had no  idea that you had written that song and he said   yes it was uh my memory was of just before  the war and when i went back after the war   i was so devastated what i saw had happened to  paris and i felt compelled to write the song to   write those lyrics it's always been one of my  favorite songs and uh it was so lovely that he   shared that with me he was grave and quiet had  a wonderful sort of pockmarked face um very tall   a terribly nice man and i think it's  obvious from all his beautiful lyrics we think of julie andrews and the sound of music  almost at the same time but it was mary martin   and howard lindsey and russell krauss who brought  the idea of the story of maria von trapp to them   howard lindsay and russell krauss had been  working together for years in the theater and they   saw this german film about the trap family and  thought it was a great story loved it and thought   it would make a great musical but they expected  it would use the music that the bond traps sang   rogers and hammerstein thought the idea of maria  von trapp was a good enough idea for an entire   musical and they begged lindsey and krause  and mary martin to wait while they finished   flower drum song so they could then dive in and  write what we now know as the sound of music   when the musical was being developed  with mary martin in the starring role   mary martin actually came  up and spent two weeks here   getting to know my mother they were very much  kindred spirits and got along extremely well   the interesting thing was that mary martin had  asked me to play captain von trapp i think mary   was getting on in those days and i think she was  losing her marble slightly she didn't realize   how young i was i was only 25 years old but  she thought because i played character parts   i could disguise myself and be older than  i really want but that was stretching it a   bit i met her and i met rogers and i already had  known oscar hammerstein whom i was very fond of   i went up to the apartment and i could see  them all kind of just being very polite   and dealing with mary in the gentlest possible way  in almost all the rogers and hammerstein musicals   oscar hammerstein wrote the libretto um in  the case of the sound of music since the   project was brought to them by lindsay and  krauss hammerstein stepped back he also was   not a well man at that point so i think he figured  writing the lyrics would occupy enough of his time people think of dick rogers and oscar hammerstein   whenever they think of the sound of music and  it stops there as a matter of fact the story   of a musical is very important and that was  written by howard lindsay and russell krauss i knew howard lindsay because he played the king  in cinderella the prince's father and he and his   wife dorothy stickney were terribly kind to  me they were the most adorable couple howard   and dorothy i knew very very well the stage play  began in 1959 and was a huge success on broadway   of course it was ripe for being spoofed  we are the happy swiss family prep we bring you a happy song that i used to sing  when i was a happy nun back home in switzerland   i had no idea then that i would be in the movie of   the sound of music and of course we did  this tremendous spoof of the pratt family and we had such fun we thought we were being so  clever and of course it's come back to haunt me   since many many times but we did have fun doing it the sound of music was oscar  hammerstein's last show   interestingly the very last  song he ever wrote was edelweiss   edelweiss is not remotely an authentic austrian  folk song in the great tradition of musical   theater it is a song written by rodgers and  hammerstein for the sound of music and in fact   was the last song that rogers and hammerstein ever  wrote it was perfect for the moment in the show   and therefore it comes across as an austrian folk  song that's what certainly it was meant to be   but when the reagan white house played it as the  entree to the austrian ambassador it really showed   you that a lot of people in the world do confuse  it with the real thing every morning you greet me i think probably one of my favorite songs of  all time is edelweiss i've said before how um   songs like oh what a beautiful morning by rogers  and hammerstein or edelweiss are simply classic   little phrases of music they they turn about on  themselves and come back to the original theme   but they're so simple and the words match the  notes so beautifully that in fact they become timeless the sound of music was the last musical  that rogers and hammerstein wrote i think hammerstein knew that he was dying  when he was writing the sound of music and   songs like edelweiss were really the legacy that  he left us they were his benediction if you will   that particular song probably  meant more to him than most i suddenly realized that the  song is not just traditional to   austria it's really a song about anyone's  homeland that you can translate that lyric   and apply it to any country that you're  passionate about that you feel passionate about   any homeland that you care for i wish in  fact that it had been my song to sing i   have subsequently sung it but i've always had a  great fondness for it bless my homeland forever what i think makes rogers a complete genius is  that he wrote in a very very constricted number   of notes he often would almost be within an octave  but if you take something like deray me it's   basically all within an octave and the simplicity  of the thing is deceiving because i mean all i mean so far so good but now it's the way  he changes it i mean that's the clever thing   and it's all within that or basically with  an octave actually it isn't because it   no it is it's all within an octave   even though oscar hammerstein died shortly after  the show opened on broadway the movie needed two   new songs and the producers of the movie went  to richard rogers to write both the music and   the lyrics for something good and the wonderful  traveling song i have confidence what is perhaps   unique in this situation was in saul chaplin the  movie had an associate producer who was himself   a composer he really guided richard rodgers into  exactly the kind of song that the filmmakers knew   would help get maria from the abbey to the  von trapp mansion everything will turn out   fine i have confidence the world can all be mine  they'll have to agree i have confidence in me   in the case of i have confidence there was  one extra um i wouldn't call it a hazard it   became something very interesting for me to  work on i have confidence in sunshine to be   really honest with you i think it's one of the  few lyrics that i've had a lot of trouble with   i rarely do and lyrics matter so much to me i have  confidence in me things like strength doesn't lie   in numbers strength doesn't lie in wealth strength  lies in nights of peaceful slumbers strength lies   in nights of peaceful slumbers when you wake up  and i kept thinking what is a night of peaceful   slumber got to do with strength other than that  you might feel better in the morning from having   had a peaceful slumber but to convey all that  in a very short spell of time was difficult   so i finally decided that the best way to sing  the song so that the lyric just rattled itself   off my tongue and into the into the film was um to  pretend that i was so nervous about going to the   von trapp villa for my new job that the best way  to sing it would be to go quite dotty for a while   that's why i do all the swinging of the guitar  and that's why i trip at the end i do anything i   can to sort of distract from having to think about  the lyric too much and all i tried to do was make   myself seem so nervous that i was babbling really  and uh in a way it really seemed to help the song   many of the rogers and hammerstein  musicals had been translated to film carousel was a lovely movie and also south pacific i gather you  regard this as a good omen yes king   and i was gorgeous and and superb and i loved  it everything going well with us but i think   actually that the sound of music was the  most successful adaptation to film frost age all the changes that were made of which there are  hundreds hundreds of changes in the dialogue and   the positioning and all kinds of things all made  a brilliant stage show into a brilliant movie   and what is extraordinary is that they each  exist in a way completely separately with a   lot of familiar territory covered but they are  different things and they're both successful   with songs they have sung for i think it actually  transcended the original production to some extent   and one of the reasons for it i think  was to suddenly have like a 70-piece   symphony orchestra playing behind you and  to have those glorious mountains and to have   all the lovely themes of nature my heart wants to  beat like the wings of the birds that rise from   the lake to the trees somehow it all suddenly  came together and i do know that singing those   songs you couldn't help but be lifted a little  bit even in the recording booth you couldn't   help but imagine simply because the sound was  so thrilling and so uplifting and enormous with   a huge orchestra behind you there's there's  very little else that is as exciting as that when my heart is lonely i know i will hear what i've heard before my heart will be blessed with the sound of music  one of the people most responsible for the success   uh other than the music of the sound of music is  ernest lehmann our wonderful writer lindsey and   krauss were so great at what they did and ernie  lehmann had a lot to work with to begin with what   he did brilliantly was take the stage libretto  the book and use many many of the lines if you   compare them almost all the lines of the stage  show are there but he changed the humor a lot the stage play did have this tremendous reputation  for being saccharine and i know chris plummer and   i were both worried that it would be so sugary  we would be you know swimming through treacle   to some extent and he and i and ernest layman  i believe all tried to kind of tamp that down i   was a terrible boar in the very beginning of this  movie because i'd grown up playing extraordinary   great roles and suddenly to be handed the captain  fun trap was not exactly the greatest part ever   written and i was rather snobbish and rather badly  behaved but i did make my point that i wanted the   character improved and ernie layman who already  was one of the most distinguished screenwriters   in hollywood listened to my suggestion and he gave  me some humor some edge some darkness some irony   that which the part had didn't have before he did  tackled it he was enormous help i just loved ernie look one of the outstanding things that ernest  lehman contributed was switching the lonely goat   herd with my favorite things the lonely goat  heard used to be in the actual theater musical   in the place where maria cheers the children up in  the thunderstorm you boys weren't scared and ernie   thought that it would be so much better from the  point of view of the lyrics and everything else   to use my favorite things what better way to  cheer children up than to take their mind off   uh the storm outside and to talk about all the  things that you love and that make you feel cozy   and comfy i think it was an inspired decision when  anything bothers me and i'm feeling unhappy i just   try and think of nice things what kind of things  they haven't sung doraemit yet which is the song   where maria sings with the children in  essence teaches the children how to sing   so the children can't sing my favorite  things because they haven't sung yet   so in fact even though it appears to be a  song by maria and the kids she's doing all   the singing and they interject lines about what  their favorite things are again a very very clever   change from the broadway song position into a  cinematic position equally strong very different   because lyrics mean so much to me i like to  transition if i can from dialogue into song   without really um a great introduction or or  here comes the big number you almost talk your   way into a song and ernest lehman made it part of  the dialogue part of the whole story rather than   breaking for a particular piece of music and  favorite things is a good example of that green   meadows skies full of stars raindrops on roses  and whiskers on kittens bright copper kettles and   warm woolen mittens brown paper packages tied up  with strings these are a few of my favorite things ernest lehman who did the screenplay  for the film sound of music   was so hands-on came to our rehearsals  watched everything and he loved everything   except he had a little bit of question mark  about my favorite things which was in the bedroom   everything was staged and it evolved into a pillow  fight this pillow went to that person that person   threw it to that person that person threw it  to that person and we thought it looked fine   layman our screenwriter said it's a little bit  too planned he said it doesn't look spontaneous   so we lessened a little bit of the exactness  and made it freer no school he's a fighter   and it worked ernest lehman using stage time and stage economy during me  is the moment of maria warming up to the kids   in the movie you don't need that at that point so  ernest lehman conceived this notion that it would   be later on and in fact would be outdoors after my  favorite things that they've sung together and it   becomes this extraordinary travelogue that was so  carefully scripted and storyboarded in the movie and it's one of the most incredible uses of  location that i think has ever been used in any   film that will bring us the other contribution  that he made in doreemi was that he used it to   signify a passage of time now children during  the tools we use to build a song and by the end   of the song summer has passed and it's a lovely  way of saying what fun we had during the summer   so do la fermi what was really interesting is  that long before we began filming of course songs   like do remy were planned meticulously by our  wonderful choreographers mark bro and dede woods   mark rowe and dede wood were already great  friends we'd done mary poppins together   mark and saul chaplin co-producer went to  salzburg ahead to time the length of the   streets the length of going here to there and  they were in the middle of salzburg austria   and mark was dancing in and out of traffic i don't  know and sully had his little tape recorder of   music can you believe that's how we did films and  mark is dancing in and out and a policeman came   up and spoke to them in german i guess asking what  they were doing and they tried to explain and then   finally i guess the policeman said well  where are you from you know what and they   saw said america and the policemen  said oh and left you know   the advanced manager came back he had taken  pictures of all these beautiful locations   then ernest lehman mark myself and our director  bob wise sat down and designed the number   this section will go here this section will go  here this section will go here then we rehearse   everything on the lot at 20th when we got to  salzburg we knew everything because we had two   months of rehearsals before we started filming  which is a lot i mean nowadays i don't think   that happens even the bicycle scenes in do remy  we went outside the stage and rode bicycles up   and down the little streets at 20th century fox  lot to time that just right the bicycles had to   be rehearsed because if you notice they're  coming at the camera straight on and they're   all they had to pace themselves so that they would  stay in this formation on certain notes where   two would sing their bikes would come forward the  other bikes would go back and forward you know the   kids i don't know how they did it but we rehearsed  that and rehearsed that and it turned out great   we were all over salzburg we were in the  country out of it up in the mountains down   in the village uh running around fountains  running down great beautiful arbors and and   every single day we shot there were many  many different takes in many different places   filming that montage was probably for  me the quintessential moment of the film that's what you can do in films you can do so  much of the lyrics here you cut over here to   another location over here is another location  that's the advantage of film unless you can do   that so when we had a chance to do that with  del rey me it just worked wonderfully well we evolved the children learning this song which  is completely different from doing a stage play   where you have the proscenium and that's  it you do the song this song was lengthened   because we had these wonderful  locations to shoot chunks of it i knew that at the end of the song that  i would be climbing all those steps   saul found these steps and we said okay  there are seven steps do re mi fa so la   ti oh and then back to dough again  which is eight and i thought how   fun it might be to to go higher as i'm i just  steadily climb the steps it would be fun to   go higher and higher and then higher and so i  asked if i could do the huge octave leap and   everybody said go for it and and  that's sort of how it came about the one that was my rock was directed  bob wise to see somebody that   tremendous at work to see the mind saying this  will be the montage and this is how we'll break   it down to see him do his homework was sensational  you realize why he became the great director he is   and i have to thank him for so much my daughter  if you love this man it doesn't mean you love   god less on the stage climb every mountain was  sung just straight out to the audience it was   the big number but in this case it was more  you must go back the mother abbess's advice   to maria and how important that was because maria  was going to have to go back and face her destiny   with the von trapp family and bob used it so well  you have to live the life you were born to live peggy wood starts that song with her back to  camera climb every mountain search high and low   for everybody and that's rather unusual in  film if you think about it every stream follow every rainbow till  you find your dream a dream that will need i must say when i first started filming that scene  with peggy with bob i got terribly teary and i got   you know a lot of sparkle in the eyes  because the song again is pretty that   lovely orchestra behind it and it was a  very moving moment for my character as maria   robert wise the last of the real gentleman   directors in hollywood i mean he really  he had a marvelous bedside manner for   actress and for everybody and he knew how  to deal with that subject photographically he kept it from being saccharine  he drove it forward he it was   such a dangerous thing to do i mean it  could have been laughed off the screen   bob wise taught me so many things about being  still for film if you're in close-up with somebody   and you're looking into their eyes actually it's  very hard to look into their plural eyes you can   really only look in one eye or the other eye  or somewhere in the bridge of the nose because   your eyes constantly dart backwards and forwards  but when you're in a huge screen close-up that   can look very distracting and bob said just fix  on one spot and try not to blink too much and it   helped enormously i'd had a private history with  julian but i'd seen her of course in my fair lady   in which she was stunning and by the time she  hit the sound of music all the sort of villian   kind of training that she'd had as a dancer  and singer had had vanished and uh she was now   a an a very vulnerable straight personality  and a straight actress she hadn't really acted   in the sense of being an actress before  she was always in reviews or musical comedy   but now she was an actress and the sound of music  was the actual naked julie andrews on the screen her own heart if you know her as i do she's  just he's just exactly like that and that's   a trick on the screen if you can do that  on the screen you're going to be a star it was real there was nothing  musical comedy about it   i don't think she's probably ever done quite again  what she did in that film she seduced the world having chris plummer play von trapp was  sensational we've been very good friends ever   since they love you too much really showed his  marvelous strength and acting ability and it made   me try to rise to him and he was very generous  with me when there's no one else you both enjoyed   the making of that scene it was finally we could  really get our teeth around something other than   the songs and other than the sort of sweetness  and light of some of it and really get into some   some heavy emoting oh please captain love  them love them i don't care to hear anything   further from you about my children i'm  finished yet oh yes you are captain freud the unsung stars of the film  i think uh was the weather uh nobody   told us when we went to salzburg that it had  the world's seventh highest annual rainfall that particular summer the rain was  so ever present that quite often   it would begin to rain and bob would say  it's not showing yet it's not showing yet   it has to rain extremely hard for rain to show  on film and there's a moment on film when maria   peers through the gates of the front of the  house when she's coming to meet the children   and the captain for the very first time and  in fact it was raining quite hard oh help the rain the rain rain and i started  getting calls the studio saying hey you know   you're way over scheduling budgets you better  you better get out of there and get on hold   and i promise i said if i don't get the necessary  shot here by the end of this week i'll fold up and   come on home but bye guys just towards the end of  the week the weather cleared it was nice i got in   and shot in a hurry and got out of there that's  always difficult in location shooting weather   probably the most famous shot in the movie is  when i sing the opening number in the hills near   the underberg's mountain ironically it was of  course the last thing we filmed in salzburg my   coming across the fields at the beginning of the  film is really the quintessential postcard picture   it looks and was absolutely lovely what nobody  knows is that it was a very difficult shot to get   i would start at one end of the field and a huge  helicopter with a very brave cameraman hanging out   the side of it would start at the other end of the  field and he would swoop down through the trees   and this helicopter would come at me sort of  sideways rather crab-like and i would walk towards   it we'd get closer and closer to each other then  i would make that big turn just before singing   the only thing is that the downdraft from the  helicopter engine uh was so strong that every time   he went around me to go back to the end of the  field he absolutely flattened me into the ground   and i tried so hard to sort of stand up and not be  just leveled every time i got angrier and angrier   and um it was so stupid to keep biting the dust  and spitting hay and grass and mud and things   like that so i finally tried to signal to the  helicopter pilot could he please make a wider   turn around me and all i got was this thumbs  up and you know doing great just keep it up   the hills are alive with the sound of music so  when you see that shot in the film i think you   better just try to remember that it turned out to  be very serendipitous because instead of having   simple cloudless skies and a pretty  picture postcard backdrop we've got these   huge cumulus clouds that are lending  such tension and drama to the scene   working with children i i don't do very much of  i try to get into my contract that no children   are allowed not even on screen or on the  set if possible because they can either   steal the scene just by standing there  which is so outrageous or they can be a   damn nuisance and i mean i totally agree with  wc fields and his whole attitude towards them   what does that great remarkey make children  are fine as as long as they're cooked   the best thing is the children knew he  didn't like them and they didn't have to act   they didn't have to pretend that he didn't  like them because he didn't like them   when he walked in that living room and started  singing the sound of music with all the other   children i mean some of them really started crying  and i don't think they were pretending i think   that it genuinely was felt oh he likes us and it  was i think those tears coming from the you knew   i wasn't crying i was just pretending  i was sad because i knew he liked me but i think that the children  really were genuinely   you know overwhelmed with with this emotion actually i ended up liking this group very much  they were adorable in the in the last analysis julie andrews was wonderful with the children she  would tell them jokes and stories and she taught   them how to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious  backwards and forwards and she kept   their energy up on the set and i thought it  was remarkable the pressure was on her because   you know there were seven other people in most  every scene that had to do well and i think she   felt that pressure knowing that she had to be  good each time in case one of them messed up it wasn't at the end of the montage of doraemi  that we shot the scene of the children coming home   in the boat when the captain spots them having  this wonderful time and then it came the moment   that i had to fall in the water and the children  had to fall in the water suddenly the assistant   director came up to me and said could i just ask  you something he said the little one can't swim   and would you be kind enough to make sure  that you grab her as quickly as possible   so be sure that you fall out of the front of the  boat because that's where she's going to be and i   said oh okay i'll do my best now this poor child  could be drowning you know somebody said there   were leeches in the water but they didn't tell us  that until afterwards so it wasn't pretty water we stopped filming and the boat started really  rocking because we all got very enthusiastic   about it and all of a sudden it went one two three  and i went right over the back and the last thing   you saw were my legs and my feet and all i could  think of is i simply have to get too little gretel and then heather who plays louisa finally got  gretel and she picked up gretel and gretel   threw up on heather she must have gone under  a couple of times per child but i was very   nervous about that and of course it wasn't the  most pleasant thing to be swallowing water and   going over the back of the boat  i think we did it twice in all   um and that that was the take that worked the best  i believe and that's the one that's in the movie   much of the pre-production the  rehearsals of the songs and the dances   took place on the fox lot under the guidance of  our wonderful choreographers mark bro and dede   wood we worked with julie andrews on mary  poppins before we did the sound of music   she is a perfectionist she knew her music  she didn't even have to have anyone put a   note on the piano she had perfect pitch she could  tell the pianist what note she was going to see   so working with her was so wonderful because she  was a perfectionist let's do it again you got it   let's do it again you got it something wonderful  about working with children that's kind of magical   of course it takes a little bit more time than  working with naturally professional musicians   and musical people but suddenly they will bring  something new to your staging in your choreography   so that was wonderful to work with and charmian  was just also a joy to work with because you know   she says she's not a professional singer  she says she's not a professional dancer a   professional actress but she was all three  i was 21 and the next oldest child was 13.   julie was 28. it was difficult pretending that i  was 16. but i knew how to dance and i could sing   when we were filming 16 going on 17 the  day of filming i had brand new shoes   and the wardrobe department forgot to put the  special rubber coating on the bottom and when   we were doing the dance for the first take and i  jumped up on the bench i kept going through the   plate glass and robert wise i thought he was going  to have a heart attack his face just went white   but luckily i only sprained my ankle and i was  not cut and they came and they taped up my ankle   and in the older videos if you look closely you  can see the bandage but when they put the dvd   out they erase the bandage so now nobody  believes me when i tell them the story when you have six children  from ages five to thirteen   and you film for nine months a lot happens to  children in in nine months nicholas hammond   who played friedrich started out shorter than  me when we finished he was six inches taller   i kept being raised with heels in my shoes then i  was on apple boxes and everywhere they could raise   me they did but in scenes where they couldn't  where they were showing our whole body i had to   make sure that i was far enough away from him that  they didn't see how tall he was and then two of   the little girls lost their teeth i think everyone  knows that the danger of working with children   is um is well it's a pretty accurate uh concern  on most people's parts because they can walk away   with a film but in this case i have to say that  the kids on the sound of music were a delight and   it is a testimony to how sweet and lovely they are  that we have allstate friends and i remember each   one of them for a different reason i remember  charmian's grace and her beauty i remember her   climbing over the windowsill and tiptoeing through  the bedroom when i was maria saying her prayers that image stays in my head nicholas who played  the eldest son he was kind of shy and a little   stiff and awkward but somehow it became endearing  and you knew he was a boy just about to become a   man heather had a wonderful sort of freckle face  beauty almost sandy hair and she too was rather   shy dwayne of course i adored because he was just  such a great face you just wanted to push his chin   and or pinch his cheeks and that scene where he  does come up from behind the bed and give me that   grin i'll always remember that angela cartwright  is such a beauty you knew even then that she was   special and she had a tremendous um gentle  composure little debbie was losing her teeth   and she had a sweet lisp and uh i always see her  little face slightly upturned and she was always   uh there was something about her  i just wanted to sort of hug her and then of course there was kim who was gretel  and she would come running onto the set um   she would be so heavy on the back of my bicycle  and i remember leaning in to the strain of trying   to catch up with the others in the great bicycle  moment in in doremi because of gretel on the back   um but her sweetness and she was always somehow  at my side hanging on to my thigh because she   was that high at that time um each one of them  i just have some special memory about the family   fun trap again to bid you farewell there's a  song in the film that i have not yet mentioned   and i think it provides a fitting finale for our  program uh let's see if i can remember the lyric   there's a sad sort of clanging from  the clock in the hall and the bells in   the steeple too and up in the nursery an  absurd little bird is popping out to say regretfully they tell us but firmly  they compel us to say goodbye to you is we fly goodbye goodbye goodbye   so you

Channel: The Julie Andrews Archive

Views: 104,685

Rating: 4.8887415 out of 5

Keywords: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Robert Wise, Charmian Carr, Johannes von Trapp, julie andrews interview, the sound of music, my favorite things julie andrews, the sound of music documentary, julie andrews christopher plummer

Id: 0o7n2xVdEJk

Length: 59min 59sec (3599 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020