The Sound of Music/Trivia


 * All-Star Cast: Averted, at least at the time of filming, for the film version; Peggy Wood, who had starred in I Remember Mama, was probably the best-known actor of the main cast. Eleanor Parker and Richard Hadyn were also names recognizable to die-hard Hollywood fans, but were far from the mainstream. Julie Andrews was known by Broadway fans but practically nobody else (Mary Poppins had yet to be released), and Christopher Plummer was primarily a theatre actor at the time.
 * Bowdlerize: The French dub removed the renditions of "Maria" and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" sung by the nuns as they thought it was sinful for nuns to be singing non-religious songs. As such only the reprisals of them were heard. And the subtitles don't show the lyrics to them.
 * Only on TV broadcasts. The Home Video releases (at least the VHS ones) have these two songs dubbed.
 * Dawson Casting:
 * Liesl sings a whole song about how she's "sixteen, going on seventeen," but Charmian Carr was 21 at the time. When Liesl states that she's too old for a governess, she certainly looks it.
 * Maria is supposed to be 22, but she's played by the 30-year-old Julie Andrews.
 * Enforced Method Acting: Christopher Plummer disliked working on the film and isolated himself from the child actors, playing into the stern relationship the Captain has with his children. However, he has mellowed significantly; he and Charmian Carr got on wonderfully well, Julie Andrews counts him among her closest friends and he has come out and said that the first time he sat down to watch the film, he realized it was the greatest cinematic adaptation of a stage musical ever produced.
 * The scene where the Captain embraces music again and sings with his children was the last to be shot. Since the actors were sad about parting, their tears are real.
 * I Am Not Spock: Julie Andrews went to great lengths to avoid this. Charmian Carr, on the other hand, has embraced it, writing a memoir of the film/autobiography called Forever Liesl that's a great favorite among film fans. Nicholas Hammond did avoid it, mostly by going to Australia and becoming quite a popular actor there. (He also played Spider-Man.)
 * One Steve Limit: In real life, one of Captain von Trapp's daughters was also named Maria; in the musical, she becomes a Louisa instead.
 * Playing Gertrude: Christopher Plummer was 35 at the time of filming (more than two decades younger than his character was in Real Life at the time the story is set), with his oldest daughter played by a 21-year-old actress (playing 16...going on 17).
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: The Captain was in the Austrian Navy. But wait, isn't Austria landlocked? It was in 1939 but not in 1914, when Austria owned Croatia and had a potent navy dominating the Adriatic Sea.
 * The Captain was one of Austria-Hungary's most illustrious World War I heroes at sea. He commanded two submarines, the U-5 and U-14, and conducted 19 war patrols during which he sank 11 enemy merchantmen, captured a French armored cruiser and an Italian submarine, and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa.
 * The Maria Theresa order, by the way, is a partial example of this trope. According to legend you get that medal by succeeding in defiance of orders. That is amusing but only partly true. It is for "initiative" not disobedience. It dates back to when the good Empress thought her officers needed a lot of prodding and introduced the medal by her name.
 * It is, however, true that the medal can be awarded for unusually daring and successful initiative, even in defiance of orders that could lead to a court martial if unsuccessful, or even if only slightly successful.
 * Reality Subtext: Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) had the world's biggest crush on Julie Andrews, as he had seen her three years prior in her last night onstage in London as Eliza Doolittle. This is rather obvious in the film.
 * Charmian Carr (Liesl) had "a huge crush" on Christopher Plummer, and the feeling was apparently mutual, though things never progressed beyond flirtation.
 * Although she has admitted on the Oprah Winfrey Show's Sound of Music Reunion that he did indeed teach her how to drink.
 * Revenge by Proxy: Sort of. In Real Life, one of the von Trapp children served as a soldier in the US Tenth Mountain Division, fighting Those Wacky Nazis.
 * Actually, that's more like You Killed My Father except it's "you exiled my father."
 * Star-Making Role: This role, alongside Mary Poppins, made Julie Andrews a household name.
 * Throw It In: Julie Andrews tripping at the end of "I Have Confidence" wasn't scripted, but was so perfectly in line with her character, it was left in.