So the “von Trapp home” was Frohnburg, and the grounds, as seen from the “villa,” were Bertelsmann. (Moviegoers never actually see the estate at Bertelsmann at all, only the lake and the garden Leven designed.) Of course, any of the scenes in which the camera would shoot toward the back of the von Trapp villa, where part of the villa would be shown on film, had to be shot at the back of Frohnburg, so the back of the house would match the front. Therefore, any of the scenes shot at the back of the house in which actors react to each other had to be shot in two different locations on two different days.
For instance, after Maria goes to the abbey and talks to the Reverend Mother about her feelings for the Captain, she returns to the von Trapp home. She comes back through the garden at Bertelsmann and meets the Captain, who is coming down the stairs (on another day) at Frohnburg. The Captain, standing on the steps at Frohnburg, gazes down at Maria (he is actually gazing down at Andrews, who is standing behind the camera, probably in street clothes, feeding him his lines).
He says:
CAPTAIN: You left without saying goodbye, even to the children.
Maria’s reaction, at Bertelsmann is to look up at the Captain (this time it is Plummer’s turn to be off camera) and say:
MARIA: It was wrong of me. Forgive me.
Back at Frohnburg, he replies, again to an off-camera Andrews:
CAPTAIN: Why did you?
At Bertelsmann, Andrews answers.
MARIA: Please don’t ask me. Anyway, the reason no longer exists….
This scene looks so fluid that one would never guess how it was filmed. In fact, at the end of the scene just described, Maria even walks up the steps and passes the Captain; because the banister at Frohnburg was built to match the one at Bertelsmann, no one can tell that the scenes were shot on two different sets. (It is interesting to note that many directors don’t require their stars to sit off camera and feed the other actors their lines. Often the actors on camera react to a stand-in giving them their cues. But that was a technique Wise would never permit.)
Of course, shooting out of sequence is very common in films. Still, it can be an odd experience for the actors. Portia Nelson (Sister Berthe) recalled, “I’ll never forget running through the abbey in California to open a door in Salzburg!”
Another location that caused a bit of a stir was the Nonnberg Abbey. Pia Arnold, despite her stories to others about Wise, et al., being architects, had to tell the Reverend Mother at Nonnberg the truth because Wise was fairly certain that he wanted to film there. But there was no way the Reverend Mother was going to let a film crew shoot inside her cloistered walls! Remember, these nuns hadn’t even looked out of a window in fifty years. They certainly weren’t about to mingle with movie folk.
This is a partial breakdown list showing a few of the scenes that were to be shot in back of Frohnburg. The scene described is scene #55.
Wise did, however, talk the mother into letting them shoot in the abbey courtyard and right outside the building. So the scene where the children go to the abbey to look for Maria is actually filmed at Nonnberg, and the shots outside the nunnery, when Maria leaves the abbey for the first time to travel to the von Trapp home, were filmed there. But the sequence in the abbey cloisters where the nuns sing “Maria” was filmed entirely at the Fox studio. Boris Leven was also allowed to install a rope outside the abbey gates so the children could ring the bell when they came looking for Maria. The Mother Abbess liked this idea so well she had the company leave the rope when they were through.
Location scouting for films is not usually a dangerous assignment. It’s certainly not the kind of job where one expects to end up in jail. But that’s exactly where Maurice Zuberano found himself one day while looking for the locations to be shot over the title sequences. Zuberano was not only the sketch artist on the film; he was also the second unit supervisor. The second unit is the film crew that is sent out without the director to shoot scenes in which none of the principals appear. The filming of the opening titles for The Sound of Music (which were actually shot after the rest of the company had completed filming in Salzburg and had flown back to Los Angeles) didn’t require anyone but the supervisor, a cameraman, and one helicopter pilot.
“Our helicopter pilot was the greatest ace, a real daredevil,” recalled Pia Arnold. “But he was too reckless. I heard that he was killed in 1968 working on some film.”
“He was known as the ‘cowboy’ pilot, and he scared the hell out of me,” said Zuberano. “I was choosing a spot to be filmed, and I would say, ‘Oh, over there in the distance is a good shot.’ Well then, he’d swoop down on it like an eagle. It was pretty frightening.”
Sketch artist Maurice “Zuby” Zuberano.
“He was told, ‘Whatever you do, do not touch down!’” recalled Arnold. “But they had to land the helicopter because they were running out of gas!”
“We didn’t have a special permit to land in Germany,” Zuberano continued. “Well, from up in the sky we didn’t see any borders, so we landed. Along comes this officer out of nowhere who’d had nothing to do since World War II, and he jumped out and yelled, ‘You are all interned! You are all interned!’ So we went to jail!”
“I think they were hiding and just waiting for something like this,” said Arnold. “So I went to the finance office and got through to the finance minister. It took hours, but I finally got them out!”
Maria von Trapp was not only concerned that the movie family had climbed the mountain into Switzerland and not Italy (where her own family had actually escaped). She was also alarmed when she realized that the mountain the film company chose for their escape actually led right into one of Hitler’s camps! What she didn’t realize, however, is that it was because of Hitler that they managed to shoot that scene at all.
While he was on the recce trip, Wise and his colleagues simply could not find the ideal mountain to use in the closing scene. The mountain had to look relatively untouched but also had to have roads leading up to the top to provide easy access for all the equipment, sets, cast, and crew. Frustrated with being unable to find the right place to shoot this important scene, Wise decided to leave this decision until they came back to shoot the picture. Even then, it proved to be an impossible location to find.
Left and following page: Wise made scene-by-scene production notes on all technical aspects of the picture—lighting, props, costumes, even the children’s table manners. All these details added to the authenticity of the film.
“I looked for that mountain day after day,” remembered Zuberano, “but I couldn’t find one that had a road to bring up all the cars and trucks. I was very discouraged. And then, finally, the last day before we were scheduled to shoot the scene, we were getting some gas in a gas station, and I saw some old guys sitting in the station swapping stories. We were very close to where Hitler had built the guest house he called Eagles Nest, so I got someone to translate for me, and I started asking them about the camp. They mentioned that Hitler was going to build another residence in this area, but then abandoned it in favor of the higher mountain, which eventually became Eagles Nest. I asked if there were any roads leading up to the abandoned camp, and they said, ‘Yes. There’s a wide paved road that goes straight up there.’
“So we took this beautiful road going up. It was a four or five-lane highway. We got to the top of the mountain, but there was nothing there. I don’t remember if it was snowing or what, but I couldn’t see a thing. So I said, ‘I think we should shoot here, but Bob has to see it first.’ Saul Wurtzel told me there wasn’t time for Bob to check it out. I thought, My God, I didn’t even get a good view of it!”
The mountain was named Obersalzberg and was located in Bavaria, Germany, near the small village of Rossfeld. The next day, on Zuberano’s and Wurtzel’s recommendations, the company drove all of its equipment and trailers up the mountain. “We got to the top of the mountain the next morning,” Zuberano went on, “and it was raining. So I still didn’t know what the damn thing looked
like! And then, like magic, Julie came out of her trailer and the whole sky cleared up. You could see the rainstorm in the distance. The mountain was gorgeous.”
“Sometimes you do things like that,” said Wise when asked about taking a chance on a location that they hadn’t even seen. “It’s just a roll of the dice.”
Another mountain, where the children had their picnic and began singing “Do-Re-Mi,” was a place called Werfen, in the Salzach River valley of Austria. Zuberano recalled, “The glaciers on the side were beautiful, but when it came time to shoot, we couldn’t get them in the picture. Bob solved that by having the kids throw up a ball. That way the camera pans up, and you could see the glaciers.”
The mountaintop used in the famous opening scene was dubbed Maria’s Mountain by the company. It proved almost as difficult to find as the Obersalzberg location, again because of the logistics of finding a site that had wide roads leading to the top. They found what they thought would be their ideal spot at Mellweg, a mountain near the Bavarian village of Schellenberg, about ten kilometers outside Salzburg. They found out later that Mellweg, of all the locations used in the film, would be the most difficult to shoot.
The other sites were not as challenging to locate. The massive rock wall at Felsenreitschule (or Rocky Riding School) provided the perfect spot for the music festival scenes. Its imposing presence gave the impression of centuries of Austrian tradition; in fact, ancient Romans had dug the edifice into a mountain face so they would have a place to hold tournaments. The complexity of the structure, with its ornate niches and passageways, made it a very complicated spot to shoot, but it was so visually exciting that the crew could not pass it up.
Maria and the Captain’s wedding was shot at the Church of Mondsee Cathedral. Although it is usually difficult to get permission to film in a place of worship, this site had been used many times by other film companies, and church officials were very cooperative.
The marketplace where Maria took the children during the “Do-Re-Mi” montage would be a set Leven and his German crew would create. A real marketplace was too hard to control, so they would build their own.
From its Mirabell Gardens, seen in “Do-Re-Mi,” to stately Unterberg Mountain towering regally in the background, Salzburg proved to be very photogenic. Finally, with a very long list of location possibilities, Wise and company flew back to Los Angeles. Then began the arduous task of choosing which locations to use and acquiring the permission to use them. Saul Wurtzel stayed on in Salzburg for a few weeks to make the arrangements. Other tasks lay ahead for the rest of the group.
When Wise and his associates returned to the studio, Boris Leven began designing the sets he would be building both on location and at Fox. Leven, a Russian immigrant, had come to the United States when his brother declined a scholarship to USC. The brother had fallen in love and did not want to leave Russia, so Leven came in his place. It was a fortuitous move. Upon graduating from USC, Leven began working at Paramount Pictures, starting a film career that would last for decades. Leven had collaborated with Robert Wise before, designing the sets for his films West Side Story (which won Leven an Oscar) and Two for the Seesaw. He also worked on three of Wise’s later films, The Sand Pebbles, Star!, and The Andromeda Strain.
“I have a high regard for Boris’s work,” said Wise. “I feel the art director’s work is as important as the cinematographer’s. And Boris and Ted, our director of cinematography, had a tremendous rapport. That doesn’t usually happen in films. More often there is a rivalry between the two. But when Boris would put his own lighting ideas into his scene sketches, Ted was thankful for his input and incorporated them into his own lighting design.”
You never know when inspiration will strike. Boris Leven, doodling, sketched the von Trapp staircase onto a Christmas card he’d received from his mailman.
Below: Set design paintings: graveyard and Mother Abbess’s reception corridor. Artist: Ed Granes
The entire interior of the von Trapp villa, including the ornate von Trapp ballroom, was built and shot at the studio. The ballroom was such a beautiful piece of film art that after the picture was completed Fox donated the set to the Hollywood Museum. Leven also designed a reproduction of the abbey courtyard so faithful to the original, down to its cobblestones and stained-glass windows, that on The Sound of Music tour in Salzburg the guides actually believe that the cloister scenes were shot at Nonnberg Abbey.
Another scene the tour guides erroneously describe as being filmed in their city is the graveyard scene, in which the von Trapps hide from the Nazis. Though filmed on a set on the Fox lot, the scene is so realistic that guides claim the scene was shot at St. Peter’s Graveyard in Salzburg.
While Leven was busy with the sets, Dorothy Jeakins was immersed in readying the costumes for a cast that included not only seven growing children but also hundreds of extras. Jeakins was used to costuming large casts. She began her film career working with Cecil B. DeMille on The Ten Commandments (the 1956 version) and The Greatest Show on Earth. Over the years she became one of the most highly regarded costume designers in Hollywood and on Broadway. Perhaps her most famous Broadway design was Mary Martin’s costume for Peter Pan. In Hollywood her films ranged from the musicals South Pacific and The Music Man to the dramas The Way We Were and John Huston’s The Dead, her last film.
In keeping with Wise’s desire for clear visual lines in the film, Jeakins was told to make sure her designs appeared as simple as possible. She had to check constantly to make sure that none of the dresses appeared too cloying. Jeakins’ designs, in all her pictures, were completely authentic. If a period piece did not use zippers, her costumes wouldn’t use zippers. This not only added authenticity to the film but also helped the actors feel their parts. For her research into Tyrolean costumes Jeakins had Pia Arnold assist her from Germany. Arnold looked into everything from Austrian naval buttons to the carpetbag that Maria would carry to the von Trapp home. She even received some help from the film company that had produced the original German films. Nonnberg Abbey, once again, was not at all cooperative in giving any details about its order’s habit. So Jeakins met with a Mother Abbess in a Los Angeles convent and was given guidelines for the veils and headdresses of the order.
Dorothy Jeakins discusses her costume sketches with Christopher Plummer and Robert Wise.
After she sketched a few costumes for the film’s leads, Jeakins and Wise met with the stars, who offered their own suggestions. Andrews and Dorothy Jeakins were good friends, and Andrews had enormous respect for the designer’s abilities.
“I’ve never felt as beautiful as when I wore that wedding gown,” said Andrews. “I’ve never felt prettier before or since. That dress was a miracle.”
Rehearsals began in mid-February. The children started rehearsing on February 10, Julie Andrews was set for February 20, Christopher Plummer began on March 2, and the nuns started on March 19. There were no scene rehearsals per se; the rehearsal period consisted of learning the dance sequences, doing wardrobe and photographic tests, and prerecording the music. The choreographers, Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, were hired on February 3, 1964. They were the husband-and-wife team that had worked with Julie Andrews on Mary Poppins. Breaux and Wood had one week of preparation with Wise and Chaplin before rehearsals began. The four of them would meet and discuss the characters, then Breaux and Wood would go into the rehearsal room with a couple of assistants and start playing around with the music. Saul Chaplin would usually play the piano while they worked out the timing of the movements.
“We couldn’t change the arrangements at all under Rodgers and Hammerstein’s contract,” said Breaux. “So we had to work within the confines of what music was already there.” Breaux and Wood didn’t use the choreography that was in the play; the stage choreography was too restrictive.
As Wise wrote later in his Los Angeles Times article, “On stage, the choreography is necessarily confined to the limits of the proscenium arch. We have no such strictures [with film] and
can permit the dancing to flow out of the bounds of the other areas. It not only serves to broaden the scope of the number itself, it helps to serve as a bridge to the ensuing scene.”
In “Do-Re-Mi,” for example, Saul Chaplin wanted a strong finish for what would turn out to be one of the most popular sequences in the film. The song was already much less static than it had been in the stage version, since it was filmed with the snow-covered Alps and the city of Salzburg as backdrops and included footage of Maria and the children running, bicycling, and shopping. At one point in the song, Maria and the children are riding along in a horse-drawn carriage, and the children each sing a note of the scale when Maria points to them with the buggy whip; using their voices as an instrument, she creates a new melody. Chaplin and the choreographers, upon seeing the steps at Mirabell Gardens, decided to take the metaphor even further and had the children jump up or down the steps—depending on whether their notes were higher or lower than the last note sung—as they sang the finale, so that their bodies, as well as their voices, echo the song’s conceit.
Breaux and Wood did try to make the Laendler, the Austrian folk dance the children teach Maria in the garden the night of the ball, as authentic as possible. They researched the number and then integrated the authentic dance into their own choreography. The rest of the film’s choreography was strictly their own, with Breaux and Wood taking their lead from the characters and the music.
The couple even choreographed the puppets’ dance sequences in “The Lonely Goatherd” number. Bill and Cora Baird, America’s foremost puppeteers at the time, designed a new series of marionette characters just for the film. Breaux and Wood created the dance sequences and then showed them to the Bairds. They, in turn, would work the marionettes to copy the choreographer’s steps. It then took three weeks of rehearsals with Andrews and the children to make it seem as if the actors were working the puppets.
The Sound of Music Page 9