Wise sent a copy of the screenplay to Plummer and, even though Plummer was open to the suggestion of doing a film musical, he found he had strong reservations about playing the role of the Captain because of the way the character was written. So Plummer’s first response to Wise was an adamant “No thanks!”
Wise had other names on his list:
Sean Connery
Stephen Boyd
Richard Burton
David Niven
Peter Finch
He saw all of these men, as well as Walter Matthau, Patrick O’Neal, and others, but none were right for the part. Peter Finch was Wise’s second choice, but he was unavailable. Yul Brynner fought very hard for the role, but Wise felt there were two problems with Brynner as the Captain. First, it would have been typecasting for Brynner to play another hard-nosed patriarch after his similar role in The King and I. Second, Brynner had an accent.
All the characters in the movie were Austrian, so naturally they had to sound the same. “One of the strikes against Yul Brynner and some of the other foreign actors,” explained Wise, “is that they would have a different accent than everyone else. All the other actors in the cast were either English or American. I was determined to have this pure. Starting with Julie, I decided early on to have this done in mid-Atlantic English. I wanted the language to be a common thread throughout the film.” To accomplish this, he hired a special dialogue coach, Pamela Danova, to stay with the American cast during the entire shoot and teach them an English dialect.
Even though Plummer repeatedly turned down the role of the Captain, Wise did not give up. Plummer’s agent, Kurt Frings, was also very much in favor of his doing the movie; he thought it would be a good career move for the actor. So he suggested that Wise go to London to meet with Plummer and try to persuade him to sign.
Wise did just that. He flew to London specifically to meet with Plummer and try to talk him into taking on the role. The two of them met at the Connaught Hotel, and after a few drinks Wise explained his concept for the film. Plummer thought Wise’s ideas were very good and, after the meeting was over, decided to commit to the picture. But Plummer was still apprehensive about the part of the Captain. So Wise told him that he could work with Ernest Lehman to try to improve the character.
Wise wrote this out on paper to see how it looked. Apparently, he didn’t like it.
Casting sheet for secondary characters.
Wise listed his other choices for the baroness.
Dick Zanuck approved of Wise’s choice of Plummer for the role, but Wise still had to convince the studio chief that Plummer looked the part. Even though this was a few years after Plummer’s fiasco in Mary Martin’s penthouse, Plummer was still too young to play the Captain. Wise wanted to age the actor a bit—add a little gray to the hair and a few lines around the temples and then do a makeup test on him. Plummer refused to do the test. But he did allow Wise to bring a still photographer and some lights and makeup to his London apartment to take some pictures. Wise then took those stills back to Los Angeles and showed them to Dick Zanuck. Zanuck was convinced that Plummer could handle the age, and in January 1964 he was signed for the role.
As in all his pictures, Wise put as much thought into casting the secondary roles as he did the leading parts. He knew that each character had to make his or her own distinct impression on the audience and keep the viewers interested in the story even when the stars weren’t in the picture.
Eleanor Parker and Richard Haydn.
One character actor who certainly lit up a screen was Richard Haydn. Maybe this was because Haydn’s own life played like a movie script. Haydn started out dancing in a professional chorus in Scotland at age nineteen. But when he tired of leaping about he turned to the classics. He was on tour with Journey’s End when he unexpectedly inherited £100 from his aunt. Feeling independently wealthy, he retired from show biz to lead a life of sophisticated leisure in Paris. His wild romp lasted all of two months.
Totally broke, he joined a singing group called the Sterling Players, but after they bombed out at the London Palladium he quit acting a second time and moved to a banana plantation in Jamaica. His life on the beautiful island was anything but idyllic. He grew bananas and eggplant and, when a hurricane demolished his house, lived in a corrugated iron shed in a neighbor’s backyard. When a Canadian film company came to the island to make a picture its makeup man became ill, and Haydn took over.
Once again, he was back in show business. From there he joined a repertory company and came to the United States where he performed in radio, film, and television productions, creating such characters as Mr. Edwin Carp, who, among his other talents, could imitate the love call of the red-bellied gudgeon. A few of his films were Charley’s Aunt, Ball of Fire, and The Late George Apley.
Wise knew of Haydn’s work and thought he would be perfect for the role of impresario Max Detweiler. Wise had already met with Victor Borge and was considering him for the part, but Borge felt that the character of Max, as written, was not particularly strong; Borge had not been in a movie before and felt he needed a really stellar role his first time out. He wanted the character to have more of what he termed “a handle.” Wise could not see his way clear to having Lehman redo the screenplay with the idea of expanding Max’s character. Not only would it divert attention from the two main characters—and thus the emotional thrust of the film—but there was also some concern about adding new scenes to the script, which was on the long side to begin with. As it turned out, Borge couldn’t change his own personal appearance schedule, so he was ruled out.
Wise also considered Noel Coward, whose stinging wit would have played well in the part. Other names included on Wise’s list were Cesar Romero and Hal Holbrook. But Haydn was ideal. Not only did he have great comedic timing, but word was out that he was a delightful person to work with. And, most important, he loved children. In fact, while the cast was working in Salzburg, they ended up calling Haydn “Herr Dad.”
The cool, sophisticated Baroness Elsa Schraeder was played to perfection by Hollywood veteran Eleanor Parker. Still in her teens when she was discovered in a production at the acclaimed Pasadena Playhouse, Parker signed a contract with Warner Brothers Studios on her nineteenth birthday. Her first movie was 1941’s They Died with Their Boots On, where her walk-on part met its fate on the cutting-room floor. That inauspicious debut did not hinder her career, however, and she went on to do numerous B pictures until her first major role, in the film Mission to Moscow.
Her career reached its peak in the 1950s, when she received three Academy Award nominations, for Caged (1950), Detective Story (1951), and Interrupted Melody (1955). Parker never became a superstar like her contemporaries Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. Her family was too important for her to devote all her energies to acting. Thus, by the 1960s, her career had slowed down and she had begun to take on more supporting roles. Wise had worked with Parker in 1950 on Three Secrets, so he knew of her talent, but more important, Wise cast her because she had “name” value. At the time, Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer were just beginning their careers and weren’t yet known to the public. Parker, on the other hand, had been a film actress for twenty years. Supporting parts or not, Parker was still a star, and Wise felt he needed a star to sell his picture.
Ben Wright was Wise’s first choice for the role of Zeller, the Nazi leader who tried to force Captain von Trapp to join the German navy. Wright, a native of London, had studied acting at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and, in 1934, made his professional debut in the West End theaters. He came to Hollywood in 1946, becoming a well-known character actor in films such as Judgment at Nuremberg, Witness for the Prosecution, and Until They Sail, the last directed by Robert Wise.
Ben Wright as Zeller.
Gil Stuart, who won the role of the von Trapps’ butler, Franz, was another London native. He too studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, then he came to Hollywood under contract to Metro. He has been seen in such films a
s Mutiny on the Bounty and Doctor Dolittle and did hundreds of television shows, including sixteen years as a regular on The Red Skelton Show.
Norma Varden, who played the von Trapps’ housekeeper, Frau Schmidt, studied piano in Paris before deciding to give up her music career for the theater. She made her theatrical debut as Mrs. Darling in a London production of Peter Pan. From there she did numerous stage shows in Europe and then decided to try Hollywood, where she worked in more than one hundred films and television shows.
The actresses who portrayed the nuns represented years of talent and experience. Classical actress, opera singer, USO entertainer, author—Peggy Wood, who played the Reverend Mother, did it all. Her career took off in 1910 when she starred in Naughty Marietta on Broadway. From there she did more than seventy Broadway plays and numerous films and was one of the first actresses to have her own hit television series when TV was in its infancy. She played Mama, the mother of a Norwegian family in the series of the same name, which aired from 1949 to 1956. Irene Dunne and Jeanette MacDonald were two actress/singers on Wise’s list to play the Mother Abbess, and they both would have been excellent in the role. But Peggy Wood was special. Wise knew her as a warm and generous person, and these qualities certainly translated to the screen. She gave the Mother Abbess a commanding yet serene presence, but above all, sprinkled her characterization with humor and understanding. Wood was thrilled with the part even though she knew her voice was going to be dubbed. Wood had begun her career as a singer, but she was in her seventies when Music was filmed, and by then her voice was gone.
Norma Varden as Frau Schmidt.
Peggy Wood, Portia Nelson, and Anna Lee.
It’s impossible to stick Portia Nelson into one category. She was an actress, composer, lyricist, painter, and photographer. “I always do about ninety things at once,” said Portia, who played Sister Berthe or, as she calls her, “the mean nun.” Portia began her career as a cabaret singer during the 1950s Golden Age of New York. She performed at the Blue Angel, the Bon Soir, and La Ruban Bleu. She was the toast of cafe society and performed with some of the funniest names in show business, including Mike Nichols and Elaine May and political satirist Mort Sahl. She even arranged Carol Burnett’s first audition in town. Music was Portia’s first film. At her initial audition she sang an old standard that she had actually introduced into the clubs—“Fly Me to the Moon.” The next day she came back and read a scene. After the reading Wise looked at Lee Wolf, one of the casting directors, and said, “Have you been coaching her?” An hour later she was hired.
Anna Lee, Sister Margaretta, had known Robert Wise when he was a film editor at RKO. When her agent sent her down to see Wise for the Music auditions, she thought she would be reading for the role of Elsa. But Wise asked her to audition a part as one of the nuns. “I wasn’t sure if I would be right for the role because I sing slightly off-key,” said Lee, “but he said that’s exactly what he wanted. He wanted someone who wasn’t a professional singer.” Lee was a leading lady in England and had starred in nine pictures overseas before she came to Hollywood with her husband, Robert Stevenson, who went on to direct Mary Poppins. She had planned to stay in the United States for only two or three weeks. But it was 1939, and while she was away war broke out in England. It was impossible for her, a British mother with a nine-month-old baby girl, to go back home to her war-torn country, so she stayed on in the United States. She wanted to get back home so badly that she joined the USO, thinking she would be sent home to entertain the troops. Instead she was sent to the Persian Gulf! From there she went to Africa and then Sicily. It seemed that every time she got to the airfield to go to England she would get bumped by a major or a captain and put back at the bottom of the list. So, Lee started working in Hollywood, but she was given only secondary parts and never regained the stature she’d had in England. Lee did get back home eventually, but by that time her star had faded.
Marni Nixon, who played Sister Sophia, made her screen debut in Music, but she was far from a novice at filmmaking. As previously described, Nixon was the queen “ghost” singer in Hollywood. Nixon’s first stage experience was as a child prodigy violinist playing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s children’s orchestra. Studio casting directors often frequented the Philharmonic’s concerts, searching for child extras. Thus was Nixon “discovered,” and she began her career as a child bit player and extra. She got her first job as a ghost singer at seventeen, when she dubbed Margaret O’Brien’s voice in The Secret Garden (1949). Nixon’s voice has been on fifty soundtracks; she’s acted in numerous Broadway shows, was nominated for two Grammy Awards, and wrote an autobiography, I Could Have Sung All Night, published in 2006.
For the only other two adult speaking parts in the film, Wise cast Evadne Baker (Sister Bernice) and Doris Lloyd (Baroness Elberfeld, who is a guest at the Captain’s ball). Extras were later cast in Los Angeles and Salzburg.
Sharon Tate, Mia Farrow, Lesley Ann Warren, Patty Duke, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss … Those are just a few of the “youngsters” who interviewed or tested for some of the children’s roles in the movie.
The casting search for The Sound of Music may not have been as infamous as the highly publicized search for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, but it was almost as extensive. Wise interviewed children from all over the country and in England and auditioned more than two hundred youngsters.
Marni Nixon as Sister Sophia.
On November 18, 1963, Wise traveled to London to audition children. He hired Michael Schwitleff, Inc., as his casting consultants, and they drew up a list of youngsters for Wise to meet. He saw Victoria Tennant who was thirteen at the time; Cathryn Harrison, Rex Harrison’s five-year-old granddaughter; and Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’s daughter. Wise seriously considered Geraldine for the role of Liesl, but they all thought that her father would be too difficult in the negotiations.
When Wise returned to New York, he began interviewing children who had traveled from all over the country to try out for roles. Ironically, after all his traveling, Wise cast all but one part in Los Angeles. Besides analyzing how the children played the scenes and delivered their lines, Wise was looking for certain subjective qualities. He wanted to see how they handled themselves, how “real” they were, whether or not they had that screen “magic.” Wise, Saul Chaplin, and casting supervisor Owen McLean would first interview each child, next the child would read from the script, and then, if Wise and his associates liked what they saw, they would give him or her a screen test.
For the first audition each child played a straight scene, and if they read well they might be asked to do a bit of singing and dancing. The only girls who were required to sing and dance from the first were the ones auditioning for the role of the sixteen-year-old daughter, Liesl. The singing, however, wasn’t a major requirement in any of the roles, because a voice double could always be used.
A partial list of child actors auditioning in New York, the song they intend to sing, and the key they want to sing it in.
Mia Farrow read three times for the part of Liesl, first on January 15, 1964, then on January 24, and again on February 17. The casting director’s notes read that she was nineteen years old and was five foot six. Wise wrote on his own casting notes that Mia had a “good reading—quality very nice, but soft … lack of energy.” He also thought her dancing wasn’t good enough, and that was a primary consideration for the role of Liesl. Lesley Ann Warren, age seventeen and five foot five, tested on January 21. Wise wrote that she was “excellent.” Teri Garr; nineteen and five foot four, read on February 12.
Wise directing Mia Farrow in her screen test for the role of Liesl.
She was “too old but fun girl.” Shelley Fabares read and gave a “good reading—good enough dancing. Like.” Sharon Tate—“no dance.”
The Osmond brothers read for many of the boys’ roles. Wise wrote, “very nice and very talented.” Richard Dreyfuss had “no dancing.” Paul Petersen read and so did Ann Jillian, who
was fifteen years old at the time.
There is one child who still stands out in both Wise’s and Chaplin’s mind. They remember sitting in McLean’s office waiting for the next candidate to arrive when in walked a little five-year-old pistol. She carried in an enormous book of photographs under her arm, marched directly up to them, and announced, “I’m here to interview for the part of the youngest child. I can sing and dance and have lots of acting experience I’m perfect for the part!”
Wise remembers Chaplin turning to him and saying, “Get her out of here before she starts climbing the wall!”
Wise scribbled in his notes—“Talks!!”
Self-assurance was one of the attributes Wise was looking for, however, and Kym Karath won the role of Gretl. Karath, who had already appeared in three movies, had memorized the entire score from the stage recording before the audition. She came from a family of performers: her mother had gone to opera and drama school in New York, where she had met Karath’s father, a stage actor. Karath’s brother and sister had also worked in television. In fact, her sister Francie, who was twenty years old at the time, auditioned on February 5 for the role of Liesl.
Debbie Turner tested on February 7. She was only seven years old but had already appeared in a few television shows and commercials before winning the role of Marta. She and her sister, Michele, both auditioned for Music at the same time. They even dressed alike in matching sailor suits and pig tails. Michele auditioned for Brigitta, Debbie for Marta. Debbie was called back for a screen test, in which she acted with Shelly Fabares (who was auditioning for the role of Liesl), and found out a month later that she had earned the part.
Angela Cartwright was much more well known, having spent the preceding seven years as Danny Thomas’s TV daughter on Make Room for Daddy. Born in Cheshire, England, Cartwright had moved to Canada and then Los Angeles with her parents. She landed her first role at four, appearing as Paul Newman’s daughter in Robert Wise’s movie Somebody Up There Likes Me. From there she worked as a model and acted in commercials until Daddy. In the seven years she worked on that show, she missed only one episode—the final show of the series. She had a good excuse; the filming of that important show overlapped with her first day of rehearsal on Music, where she played Brigitta.
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