Of the now famous opening scene, in which Maria, brimming with life, escapes the abbey for a walk in the mountains and sings about the outdoors, Lehman said, “I was sitting at my desk with my eyes closed, and I just visualized the whole opening number. I’d never been above the Alps because I wouldn’t go up in the plane with Wyler, but I just kept playing the cast album, and I imagined it.”
Lehman turned in the first draft on September 10, 1963, in about half the time it would normally have taken him to write a screenplay had he not been so anxious for Wyler’s reaction. Amazingly, the quality of his work did not suffer. In fact Lehman did more than just open up the play of The Sound of Music. He added much more humor to the story. Characters became more distinct, lively, interesting. Lehman added more sparring, more interplay between Maria and the Captain at their first meeting so that you could see their emerging chemistry. The dialogue became much more witty and inventive. Lehman managed to capture Maria’s spirit and to focus viewers’ emotions in a story that included an overabundance of dramatic elements.
Lehman also departed from his original outline. Elsa and Max became less political, and both parts were cut considerably. He added scenes that were not in the play or the outline, such as the berry-picking scene and the scene in which the children go to the abbey to look for Maria. As mentioned, he also took out the car chase at the end. The family still hides in the abbey garden, but this time Rolf does turn them in.
The first two pages of the script, with handwritten notes from Robert Wise. The first paragraph shows how Lehman described the now-famous aerial opening. The second page illustrates how Wise intended to break up the opening song into a series of sections. He then planned to shoot the number in pieces.
Robert Wise came on board the picture in October 1963. A few days later he wrote a letter to playwright Robert Anderson, who was working on the screenplay of The Sand Pebbles, which said in part:
I do feel a definite sense of embarrassment for having laughed at one point about Ernie doing Music and now finding myself on it too, but he had done a damned good job and has improved the original so very much that I do think that, if given the proper treatment and cast, we can get a helluva good film and a popular one. I’m not kidding myself—it’s no West Side Story. But if we can fight off too much sentimentality and the syrup that is inherent in the basic material and give it an exciting cinematic treatment, perhaps we can make it a much better picture than it was a play. What am I talking about—the picture should only be as successful!
Once Wise was hired, Dick Zanuck asked Lehman to take a four-week vacation so that the director could catch up. So Lehman went off to relax in Palm Springs while Wise traveled to Salzburg to scout locations with his crew (see chapter 4). When he returned, he started working on the script. Wise, of course, had his own vision of how this film should look and play, but unlike Wyler, Wise was in complete agreement with his colleagues. He wasn’t about to use tanks and guns, but he did want to get rid of as much “sugar” as possible.
“We were all agreed that the more realistic medium of film demanded that the material be treated differently than it was on stage,” he wrote in his Los Angeles Times article. “The sentimentality and ‘gemutlichkeit’ that worked fine on stage could easily become heavy-handed on the screen.” The changes Wise made in the script itself were subtle. He did, however, have some big disagreements with Lehman. “I read the script and liked it very much,” recalled Wise, “but I had problems with the aerial opening. I thought we were just copying ourselves because we’d used the same type of opening for West Side Story.”
When Wise informed Lehman of his reservations, Lehman replied that he was perfectly happy to go in another direction if Wise could come up with something better. Wise and Saul Chaplin, who had agreed to act as associate producer on the film, worked with the opening for a few days and then finally decided that Lehman was right. “I realized that we just had to go along with what was right for that film. And now I think people mention the aerial opening of Music more than the opening of West Side!”
They had another disagreement, but this time Wise scored a victory. Wise and Chaplin wanted to eliminate the song “An Ordinary Couple,” which, in the stage version, Maria and the Captain sing after they confess their love for each other. It’s a song about how they will be an ordinary couple and live a long life with their children at their side.
“It was a song two old people might sing to each other,” Wise argued, “not a young, vibrant couple.”
Lehman wanted to keep it in, although he admits now that Wise was right. Even Richard Rodgers acknowledged disliking the number. He confided to Irwin Kostal over lunch one day, “I never liked that song. It’s about two people telling each other how ordinary they are. She was a nun who left the convent, and he was an honored naval captain. They were far from ordinary!”
Wise, Lehman, and Chaplin agreed to replace “An Ordinary Couple” with a more romantic song, which they would ask Rodgers to write. They also liked the idea for a completely new song to be used when Maria leaves the abbey and is on her way to the von Trapp home. Their working title for this was “Walking Soliloquy.”
All of these musical changes presented a challenge. Contractually, Richard Rodgers had to approve any alterations in the score and was to have the choice of composing any agreed-on new songs himself if he so desired. Since Hammerstein had died, Rodgers would probably want to do the lyrics himself. This was obviously a very sensitive and important issue, one that had to be discussed face-to-face with Richard Rodgers, so Wise and Chaplin flew to New York to meet with the composer in his Madison Avenue office. Chaplin was a friend of Rodgers’s, but this was the first time Wise had met him. After a brief introductory chat, they all went off to lunch at the Four Seasons, Rodgers’s favorite restaurant. It was here that Wise and Chaplin broached the subject of changes and additions to the score. Rodgers had no problem with dropping the two songs for the secondary characters. He understood the reasoning behind the elimination and agreed at once. Then Chaplin brought up the idea of a new song to replace “An Ordinary Couple.” Chaplin explained what was needed, and after listening to an elaboration of why a new song could benefit the film, Rodgers started nodding his head. “You’re right,” he said. “It is kind of an ordinary song. In fact, if Oscar had not been so ill when we were trying out the stage version of the show, we would have written a replacement song back then.”
Rodgers, Wise, and Chaplin meet in New York to discuss the new songs for the movie.
Then Wise and Chaplin told Rodgers about the idea for the “Walking Soliloquy.” Chaplin envisioned the song breaking down into three parts, with each verse mirroring Maria’s emotional growth until the song climaxes in the phrase “I have confidence in me.”
When Maria first leaves her secure world at the abbey for the unknown life at the von Trapp home, she is uneasy about the assignment; she doesn’t want to leave the abbey and isn’t sure she can handle the job of governess to seven children, yet she knows it is God’s will.
As she walks toward the bus that will take her to the villa, her faith takes over and she begins to realize she doesn’t have to be afraid.
Finally, she talks herself into this new adventure, and by the time she arrives at the Captain’s home she is anxious to begin her new post.
Once again, Rodgers responded enthusiastically to the idea of a new song. The luncheon ended with Rodgers agreeing to write both the music and the lyrics for the two new numbers. One month later, with most of the adult casting done, Wise and Chaplin were in New York interviewing child actors. They met Rodgers in his office and listened to the two new songs Rodgers had just completed. Rodgers first played them the ballad “Something Good,” and Chaplin and Wise were thrilled with the new song. It was everything they had hoped for. Then Rodgers played “I Have Confidence.” Chaplin was very disappointed. It was a rather slow, laborious number, not at all as upbeat as he had expected it to be. Chaplin told Rodgers that he wanted to take
the song back to California with him and work out exactly what he was aiming for.
Rodgers agreed. Chaplin returned to Los Angeles, and soon he wrote a letter to Rodgers reiterating all his objectives. Maria’s character was to go through an emotional metamorphosis: she begins by being lost, fearful, and unsure, and by the end of the song she is brimming with confidence and spirit. The song should show the progression of her change in attitude.
After reading Chaplin’s letter, Rodgers created what was essentially a different song for the “Walking Soliloquy.” This one was more upbeat and lively, yet Chaplin felt that Rodgers still had not captured the growth that Maria was supposed to undergo between the beginning and end of the song. Through letters and phone calls Rodgers and Chaplin finally agreed that Chaplin should rewrite the song himself and that they would then decide which version to use. As uneasy as Chaplin was with writing for the legendary composer, he had gotten the impression that Rodgers felt he couldn’t or wouldn’t write it himself. Chaplin called in Ernest Lehman and, using both some of Rodgers’s melody from his try at “Confidence,” parts of the introduction to the song “The Sound of Music” (which had been discarded for the film), plus Chaplin and Lehman’s own lyrics and music they rewrote the beginning of the number.
When they were finished, they played the song for Wise. After Wise gave his OK, Chaplin secretly hired Marni Nixon to come into the studio and record the number to send to Rodgers. Nixon, a well-known “ghost” singer, had dubbed Deborah Kerr’s singing voice in The King and I, Audrey Hepburn’s in My Fair Lady, and Natalie Wood’s in West Side Story. She would also make her onscreen film debut in another well-known musical, The Sound of Music. Chaplin wanted Nixon’s recording kept quiet because he didn’t want Julie Andrews, who by now had been signed to play Maria, to know that she would be recording a song that had not been written entirely by Richard Rodgers. As it was, she kept asking when her new song would be ready, and Chaplin kept stalling.
Finally Chaplin sent Rodgers the Marni Nixon version of his song, and Rodgers sent back a telegram stating that he liked his own version better, but he gave Chaplin permission to use the new version if he so desired. And Julie Andrews? She didn’t find out until after filming was completed that the song she sang in the movie wasn’t written entirely by the old master himself. (It must not have had a big impact on her; when reminded of the incident years later, she recalled only that she’d heard rumors to the effect that Rodgers hadn’t written the song, not that he actually hadn’t written it.)
Lehman completed the second draft of the screenplay on December 20, 1963. But the script was far from being final. There would still be many revisions to make and many people to give suggestions. Lehman welcomed them all. One day Robert Wise came into his office and told him that Boris Leven, the production designer on the picture, had suggested that the location of the climax scene be changed from the abbey garden to a graveyard. Lehman thought the idea was terrific and made the change.
Maria von Trapp had been one of the first to suggest changes, before one word of the screenplay had been written. Just after Lehman was hired to write the script, Maria called Lehman to tell him she had been very unhappy with the way her husband was characterized in the play. She wanted to sit down with the writer and set the record straight. So, on January 24, 1962, Lehman met Maria for lunch in New York at the King Cole Grill in the St. Regis Hotel.
“It was interesting meeting her, but I knew that she was going to be sort of a force,” Lehman reminisced. “My impression was that she was a powerful woman, great at promoting herself. Maria von Trapp had a good thing going for her. She took advantage of it. She became the Trapp Family Singers.”
As it turned out, Lehman soon realized, Maria was quite helpful. She told Lehman about her life at the abbey, and he was able to use some of the information she gave him in his script. For instance, Maria told Lehman that it was against the rules at the abbey for a nun to look out the window. Why, the director of the school hadn’t looked out the window in fifty years! If a postulant disobeyed this rule, she had to kiss the floor. So, Maria said, she used to kiss the floor first, then disobey.
Lehman turned this bit of information into these lines of Maria’s:
Oh, it’s terrible, Reverend Mother. You know how Sister Berthe always makes me kiss the floor after we’ve had a disagreement? Well, lately I’ve taken to kissing the floor when I see her coming, just to save time.
Maria went on to tell Lehman how much trouble she had been at the abbey, which Lehman used in his lead-in to the song “Maria” (“How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”).
Maria clearly had strong feelings about the way the Captain was to be portrayed. She felt that his character was much too dull and strict. She told Robert Wise the same story nine months later, after he signed on to direct the film. She called Wise a couple of times from her home in Vermont and wrote him a few letters. But Wise got the feeling that she was not only asking that the character of her husband be changed; he felt that she wanted to be employed as an adviser on the film.
“When you’re doing a film based on a true character,” explained Wise, “the last thing you want is the actual person on the set. His or her memories of what happened and your fictional account don’t always mesh. Plus, I’d heard stories about Maria when they were doing the play. I’d heard that she’d wanted to get into the act there, too. From what I was told, she was a pretty strong character.”
In a memo to Dick Zanuck on March 19, Wise explained how he was going to handle “the old gal”:
I’m going to write her to this effect—diplomatically but firmly—that our movie is a musical based loosely on the Trapp family. It is not a documentary or realistic movie about the family and, therefore, we feel we must approach the script and all aspects of the movie with complete dramatic freedom. Our goal is to make a really fine and moving film, one that all of us, from Maria von Trapp on, can be proud of.
Christopher Plummer was another champion in the fight to refashion the character of the Captain. “I wanted to give him a little edge,” said Plummer, “a little humor. The character didn’t have much substance. He came off as a fearful square. I wanted him to be equal to Maria von Trapp.”
Wise agreed. “We needed somebody with a little bit of a dark side now and then. Someone stronger, more forceful and definitive than the Captain appeared to be in the stage show. That’s why I had chosen Chris.”
Plummer wrote Wise a letter explaining his own ideas to change the character, and Wise sent the letter to Lehman. Plummer’s basic objective was to make the Captain more worldly and complex, which would make the character and Plummer’s acting much more interesting. He suggested a few ways to accomplish this.
Some of Lehman’s notes from his meeting with Maria von Trapp.
First, he wanted to give the Captain a wry kind of humor that the character would use to cover up his own inadequacies; second, he wanted to show the contrast between his relationships with Elsa and Maria through his dialogue with his two leading ladies—his conversations with Elsa would have a more sophisticated, playful quality, while his scenes with Maria, as he is falling in love with her, would be more down-to-earth, human. Third, he wanted Rodgers to write a solo for him to sing, showing his inner struggle as his love for Maria grows.
Plummer also made a suggestion for action in a scene that originally had been used in the play. This was the scene in which the Captain, hearing the children singing “The Sound of Music” for the first time, is surprised to feel himself compelled to sing along; Lehman incorporated this action into the script.
Plummer and Lehman locked themselves in a room together for days and worked on the character.
“I’ve never worked with an actor who was so intelligent about how his scenes should work,” said Lehman. “This guy insisted that I be a good writer.”
Lehman used many of Plummer’s suggestions, and Plummer seemed satisfied enough. Still, he confessed later, he never actually liked the character
of Captain von Trapp. “I’ve played the greatest parts that were ever written,” said Plummer twenty-seven years later, “and yet Captain von Trapp was the hardest part I have ever played. He was so dull! I had to reach to give him any kind of sense of humor. I once met a poor relation to the von Trapps. A cousin. He lived outside of Salzburg. He was a sculptor. I asked him what his uncle was really like, and he said he was the dullest man who ever lived!”
Lehman completed the final revision of the script on March 20, 1964, and his job was done. But his next assignment was just as exciting—writing and producing the film version of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. He said good-bye to Wise and Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and he packed up his office and left. It was hard to separate himself from a project that had meant so much to him, but he knew his screenplay was in capable hands.
Biographies
ROBERT WISE
Robert Wise was born on September 10, 1914, in Winchester, Indiana, the son of a meat packer. As a youngster, he became a movie fan, going to the dime matinees as many as three times a week. From this early interest grew his desire to become a part of the magic he saw on the screen. Another of Wise’s interests was journalism, which he pursued at Franklin College; but when the depression hit the country, Earl Wise’s meat packing business was seriously affected, and his son was unable to continue his studies beyond his freshman year.
1933 Robert Wise’s brother David, who worked as an accountant at RKO Studios, found his younger brother a job as a messenger in the film editing department. For $25 a week Wise shuffled film around the lot; occasionally he was allowed to inspect or patch it. He was fascinated by the way movies were cut, and before long he was given the opportunity to try his hand at the art. After nine months he was made an apprentice sound effects editor and later, a music editor. Wise recalls one period when he sat hunched over a moviola (a film-viewing machine used in editing) for a seventy-two-hour stretch, with only two hours’ sleep, to help get George Stevens’s Alice Adams ready for a sneak preview. Another time he pulled thousands of feet of film from an abandoned movie and, with sound effects cutter T. K. Woods, spent hours putting together a ten-minute short subject. It brought Wise’s first film credit and a $500 bonus from the studio.
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