The Von Trapp Children Remember Christopher Plummer | This Morning

[Music] now then last week the world lost one of the most legendary actors to grace to silva's screen as christopher plummer sadly passed away at the age of 91. the canadian actor had a hugely successful career spanning seven decades but to many he will always be remembered for his iconic role in timeless classic the sound of music well today we're reuniting some of the actors who played the von trapp children in the movie over 50 years ago as they say so long farewell to captain von trapp well first we've got marta who was played by debbie turner when she was just seven years old and this was her then and here she is now good morning good morning lovely to see you we all remember bookworm brigitta played by angela cartwright this was her back then when she was just 13 years old and here she is now good morning to you good morning good morning and lastly we've got the eldest von trapp boy friedrich who was played by nicholas hammond he was 14 years old when the movie was made and here he is now good morning to you as well hello phil hello holly oh i cannot tell you how excited i am about this i've been looking forward to it all morning um debbie let's start with you first of all i'm slightly mesmerized by what's going on behind you because i've spotted the cushions already is that the same fabric as the dresses that were made in the from the curtains in the movie it is well it's similar it's i don't know if it's exactly the same but it's similar and when you you use those as part of a business now masks that is music i want one of those it's the best look at that i want one of those so debbie what was life like for you after the movie did you carry on acting what did you do um not really i i i didn't do a whole lot after that so um i think i just lived the life of a regular kid for the most part yeah and um and angela brigita um we know that you were you the photographer now and that's where your your life went um what um what let's talk about christopher plummer because um i mean he famously has quite clearly said that he hated the film he called it the sound of mucus um which is unfortunate uh but um but nevertheless what was he like to work with well first of all i think that that actually changed as he got older and he realized how this kind of made his career uh kind of spring forward a lot quicker than it might have you know he was a canadian actor and he was just uh kind of doing plays and and stuff like that this really catapulted his career and i think he kind of regretted saying that but i i think that actually he he brought a real edge to the part which was something that that made it not as kind of sickly sweet and um i i just i loved working with chris very talented guy very sorry to to lose him at 91 though what a great long run yeah absolutely and nicholas i mean the movie for you was just the the start of things really to come and you know you caught the acting bug there and i imagine having somebody like him around and watching how he was as an actor was quite inspiring for you absolutely i mean he showed me what really what it is to be an actor with his concentration and his commitment and it is true that he was more serious on the set certainly than julie who was delightful and fun and just full of light and joy for all of us but christopher you know came there to work and to do a job and also knew that for us children we shouldn't be as quite as comfortable around him as our father as we were meant to be around maria so it was actually a very calculated move i think that she was hugely friendly and warm and you know told jokes and taught us songs and christopher kept his distance from us and i think that was absolutely the right call and i no i had huge admiration for him and i think we all did right to the end and debbie did he ever break character occasionally not not real often but um there was one time and i don't know andrew and nikki if you remember this but we were doing the scene after we had come back from um berry picking and um i think he he was facing me and he was saying marta you know where were you really and um the camera was on his back but on my face and i just remember him making faces at me making me laugh and that we were busting up and my dad actually caught a picture of him doing this um i don't know if you guys have ever seen this but um he had an old he had one of those original polaroid cameras that was black and white and he took a picture and then he had to take some solution and put it over the picture but um anyway it was just kind of fun to remember that he really did have a soft side to him well nicholas was talking about um about julie um andrews in there and i mean she just come off the back of mary poppins i mean she was very young and there was a lot on her shoulders this had to work didn't it it absolutely did and mary poppins hadn't come out yet so no one in america knew who she was i had seen her in in my fair lady in london but no one on the crew knew who she was most of the people in la didn't know who she was and she was 27 and the studio was facing bankruptcy and if this film had failed there would be no more 20th century fox and all that was on the shoulders of a 27 year old girl and really when you think of what she did in that film it's the most astonishing accomplishment and to this day i think all of us love her very very much that we did she was nominated for mary poppins while we were in salzburg do you remember that um that's right nominated for it yeah i remember reading the variety with heather and she was there and she's very excited that must have been great for her you know kind of breaking in but also for you kids i mean angela is suddenly having this lady that was just incredible to work with and then suddenly the movie coming out and realizing you were now working with mary poppins you must have been wanting her to sing those songs as well did she ever do that oh did she teach us the mary pop songs from mary poppins absolutely i can still say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards yes yoshi sally ex ballistic fragiocalarupus [Laughter] she'd be very proud of you yeah she was lovely to be around and a great energy and um we had such a great time on the whole film you were it was just it was a joy from beginning to end yeah i think we we together for a year weren't you was it a year filming pretty much you know publicity in the opening it was a good 12 months and we were so lucky debbie um i mean you think about i don't know how the audition went to to get that role but if you think about the amount of child actors at the time that were that had heard about that role that had wanted that position and and it landed on your shoulders and you were so young i guess it's only with hindsight that you realize what a huge gig that was at the time i was seven i had no idea i i really didn't i just thought oh cool i've got a movie it was my first movie and prior to that i had only done tv commercials and so it was just i didn't really understand i think guess you know the levity of what it was but um boy did that ever turn into a wonderful thing well what's um what's really lovely is that you have all stayed together as this family that you are all friends and sadly uh lost a couple of members um liesel uh who was uh played by charmaine carr died in 2016. um heather menzies urich who played luisa sadly died back in 2017 so a great shame that you've lost two two of those um of those that family but nevertheless you do nicholas you you still talk you still are together all the time i mean we communicate either by email or talking like this or or when we get together and you know it's a bond that we have and it for us it's one of the extra advantages of having been in this extraordinary film is they've been friendships for life and i've known these women and you know dwayne uh and kim you know longer than i've known virtually anybody except my own family and i think that's true for all of us and so we shared an experience that no one else knows what it's like to be in a film that has that extraordinary fame global fame to this day and um that's something that bonds us that you know we will never lose and that i cherish very much and i cherish them you know very much we have the non-traps well thank you thank you for the memories as well because it's a big part of lots did you did you take any mementos or just quickly go through debbie did you ever take anything from the from the set nope not a thing i wish now not a thing just uh just the cushions um and angela angelo what about you no we you know we didn't steal things we didn't take things that weren't ours but uh we have some wonderful memories we've taken with us that's for sure and nicholas nothing yeah yeah what about you what did you did you did you ever did were there any mementos nicholas uh no i couldn't get rid of that straw hat fast enough um that i had to work because they blew my hair and i had to wear a straw hat for every exterior shot or else the hair would turn white bleach wasn't great in those days and um so i didn't like that actually no i wish i had now i wish i'd kept the lederhosen yeah they would have been fun though we have like our tickets our airplane tickets and and lots of pictures our parents and those members yeah good memories to have um that book with all of that stuff in it because we did keep all those mementos which are wonderful brilliant well it's so lovely to talk good to talk to you thank you thank you so much thank you thank you holly thank you bye you

Channel: This Morning

Views: 291,145

Keywords: this morning, holly willoughby, phillip schofield, this morning funniest, Holly & Phillip funny

Id: lbbCyIjl18s

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021