Post by Patrick on Oct 29, 2010 9:25:33 GMT
....with the sound of reunions....
The moment was heralded with a single blast of a whistle with which Christopher Plummer used to call the children, just as he did in the film 45 years ago. And with it Plummer, Julie Andrews, and the seven von Trapp children were reunited for the first time since the premier of the world's most successful big screen musical, The Sound of Music.
The nine actors had never come together since, in large part because of the grouchiness of Plummer. As he explained to Oprah Winfrey, who orchestrated the reunion for her television show, he had harboured serious doubts about appearing in the film from the beginning.
Then aged 34, and an accomplished actor on stage and screen, Plummer had been underwhelmed by the part of Captain von Trapp, the Austrian single-parent who employs an outspoken former nun called Maria as governess to his seven children.
"The part was not exactly Hamlet," Plummer explained to Winfrey. "There wasn't enough humour in it."
He was very sensitive to the danger that unless they were careful the film could become very mawkish and sentimental, "and there were a lot of nuns present all the time, which always makes you feel a little bit irreverent. It does me." Plummer even came up with his own nickname for the musical: "The Sound of Mucus."
Andrews agreed that "if we weren't careful, the film could've been dreadfully saccharine."
The film, made in 1965 and based on the Broadway Rodgers and Hammerstein show, won five Oscars and sealed the career of Julie Andrews who had shot to prominence a year previously as Mary Poppins. She told Winfrey that she had been initially nervous to meet Plummer, five years her elder and with much more acting experience behind him.
"Well, I was in awe of this gentleman. I mean, a very, very famous dramatic actor, and here I was just a musical songstress, and honest to god, that's the way I felt."
He repaid the compliment: "I'd fallen in love with her in My Fair Lady on Broadway, so I'd had a crush for forever, but when we did meet she had just had a child, so I had to stay at arm's length. Arm's? What am I talking about? It was full-length away from her, but it was sort of like an awful tease."
When the seven actors who played the Von Trapp children emerged on the set of the Oprah Winfrey show, Andrews exclaimed: "Don't the kids look great?"
"Good genes," quipped Nicholas Hammond who played Friedrich.
Charmian Carr, who played the eldest child Liesl, revealed that far from having been 16 going on 17 as billed in the film, she had in fact been 21 going on 17. Which is just as well because Plummer, who spent much of the nine months it took to make the movie in a selection of Austrian bars, taught her the dark secrets of alcohol.
"Did you learn anything from [Plummer]," Winfrey asked her. "Yes, I learned how to drink," she replied.
The moment was heralded with a single blast of a whistle with which Christopher Plummer used to call the children, just as he did in the film 45 years ago. And with it Plummer, Julie Andrews, and the seven von Trapp children were reunited for the first time since the premier of the world's most successful big screen musical, The Sound of Music.
The nine actors had never come together since, in large part because of the grouchiness of Plummer. As he explained to Oprah Winfrey, who orchestrated the reunion for her television show, he had harboured serious doubts about appearing in the film from the beginning.
Then aged 34, and an accomplished actor on stage and screen, Plummer had been underwhelmed by the part of Captain von Trapp, the Austrian single-parent who employs an outspoken former nun called Maria as governess to his seven children.
"The part was not exactly Hamlet," Plummer explained to Winfrey. "There wasn't enough humour in it."
He was very sensitive to the danger that unless they were careful the film could become very mawkish and sentimental, "and there were a lot of nuns present all the time, which always makes you feel a little bit irreverent. It does me." Plummer even came up with his own nickname for the musical: "The Sound of Mucus."
Andrews agreed that "if we weren't careful, the film could've been dreadfully saccharine."
The film, made in 1965 and based on the Broadway Rodgers and Hammerstein show, won five Oscars and sealed the career of Julie Andrews who had shot to prominence a year previously as Mary Poppins. She told Winfrey that she had been initially nervous to meet Plummer, five years her elder and with much more acting experience behind him.
"Well, I was in awe of this gentleman. I mean, a very, very famous dramatic actor, and here I was just a musical songstress, and honest to god, that's the way I felt."
He repaid the compliment: "I'd fallen in love with her in My Fair Lady on Broadway, so I'd had a crush for forever, but when we did meet she had just had a child, so I had to stay at arm's length. Arm's? What am I talking about? It was full-length away from her, but it was sort of like an awful tease."
When the seven actors who played the Von Trapp children emerged on the set of the Oprah Winfrey show, Andrews exclaimed: "Don't the kids look great?"
"Good genes," quipped Nicholas Hammond who played Friedrich.
Charmian Carr, who played the eldest child Liesl, revealed that far from having been 16 going on 17 as billed in the film, she had in fact been 21 going on 17. Which is just as well because Plummer, who spent much of the nine months it took to make the movie in a selection of Austrian bars, taught her the dark secrets of alcohol.
"Did you learn anything from [Plummer]," Winfrey asked her. "Yes, I learned how to drink," she replied.
