Versatile Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who starred in several memorable films as The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King and All the Money in the World, died at the age of 91 on Friday. Plummer ruled the silver screen for nearly seven decades, but one of the most defining roles of his career came in 1965 through Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music.
Here are some facts about the movie that has lived through ages enthralling the audiences:
— Plummer almost did not get the role of Captain Baron Von Trapp. The makers considered taking actors Walter Matthau, Yul Brynner and Bing Crosby for the coveted role. However, in the end, Plummer did get the role, thanks to his persona of playing with danger.
— Plummer’s singing voice was dubbed in the movie. It was singer Bill Lee who did the singing voice for Captain von Trapp. Besides Plummer, the singing was also dubbed for the character of Mother Abbess, played by Peggy Woods.
— There is a reason why Julie Andrews and Plummer were shot in silhouette during the song Something Good and that was to cover up the fit of giggles the two actors were breaking into. This was the last scene of the movie that was shot in Hollywood, however, the arc lights that hung over the gazebo kept producing fart noise according to The Take that disrupted the romantic scene. To hide the actors’ laughing fits, cinematographer Ted McCord cast them in shadow.
— Unlike the movie, the original Von Trapp family did not make much money. The Sound of Music is based on a 1949 memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp. In 1955, the von Trapp family was facing financial difficulties because of which Maria sold the rights to German movie producer Wolfgang Reinhardt for a flat USD 9,000. The original family never received any royalties from the two subsequent German films based on the von Trapp family’s life, and from the Broadway production of The Sound of Music, which ran for more than three years, and even from the film version, which grossed around $300 million.
— According to a Vanity Fair report, the original choice for directing the movie was William Wyler, a Swiss-German Jew. The Academy Award-winning director had envisioned a lot more Nazis, swastikas, however, it was later given to Robert Wise, who ultimately made the movie.