Entertainment

13 Things You Didn't Know About 'Sound of Music'

by Anna Klassen

Come one, come all, to the television event of the season! That is, if you don't count ABC's 25 Days of Christmas, or the fact that Netflix now has Love Actually available on Watch Instant. Thursday evening will bring a whole new twist on the 1965 classic musical, The Sound of Music, this time starring Carrie Underwood in the true story of one stern man and his seven children changed forever by a nun-turned-governess. While we're looking forward to seeing how the American Idol alum meshes with our new Captain von T (played by True Blood's Stephen Moyer), it got us remembering all the fun scenes from the original. To celebrate the birth of a reboot, take a look at 13 hilarious and insane facts you might not have known about the Julie Andrews classic.

1. Christopher Plummer, who played Captain von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, confessed that working with Julie Andrews was like "getting hit over the head with a Valentine card."

2. He also referred to the musical as "The Sound of Mucus" and "S&M".

3. Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) had to wear heel lifts so he could appear taller than the actress who played Louisa, but by the end of filming, he had grown several inches and she had to stand on a box in certain scenes to keep their heights consistent.

4. On the DVD extras, it was revealed that in the last scene, where the family climbs over the hills to safety, that wasn't actually Gretl on Christopher Plummer's shoulders, but a stunt child. The reason being that little Kym Karath had gained a bit too much weight during filming, so Plummer requested an easier-to-carry alternative.

5. Julie Andrew admits that the opening sequence from the film, where she's running through the hills, was particularly tricky to film, because she was constantly getting knocked over from the down draft of the helicopter that was shooting the scene.

6. According to IMDB, Andrews and the child actors had to be continually hosed down while filming the scene where they fall out of the boat, in order to remain realistically soaking wet.

7. Mother Abbess (played by Peggy Woods) singing "Climb Every Mountain" was dubbed by Margery McKay.

8. Apparently singing and dancing during the "16 Going on 17" number is just as tricky as it looks. Charmian Carr (who plays Liesl) injured her ankle while filming the scene, and a bandage can be seen wrapped around her foot in earlier versions of the film. But when the film was remastered for DVD, the bandage was removed. In 2005, Carr said on the DVD commentary that because of the removal of the bandage, people don't believe her when she says she danced on a hurt foot.

9. In one of Maria von Trapp's memoirs, Maria, she wrote that she wasn't invited to the premiere of the film. And when she asked the producer if she could come, he said he was sorry, but there were no seats left.

10. Christopher Plummer was drunk while shooting the music festival scene, something he admitted during the DVD commentary extras.

11. Debbie Turner, who played second-youngest child Martha, lost many teeth during filming. So each time she lost a tooth, it would be replaced with a fake one.

12. Richard Dreyfuss auditioned to play one of the von Trapp kids, but apparently, he couldn't dance.

13. Kym Krath (Gretl) had a hard time with the scene where they fell out of the rowboat. For one, she couldn't swim, and Julie Andrews was supposed to catch her (but they ended up falling off in different directions), and secondly, she swallowed so much water that she vomited on Heather Menzies-Urich (Louisa).

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