Introduction to "The Sound of Music"
An evening with Robert Wise, Heather Menzies, Debbie Turner, Kym Karath and Duane Chase, March 20, 2003

"Dear Bob. It is with great regret that I cannot be with you and our Sound of Music family on this special evening as everyone honors you for a body of work that clearly defines the best of Hollywood. The Sound of Music was an incredible experience for all of us, one that may never be duplicated anywhere again. The joy that it has brought, and the impact it has had on millions around the world is phenomenal, not to mention how fortunate I feel to have been a part of it, and to have witnessed your brilliance and artistry. It was a defining moment in my career, nothing short of a pure joy to film. I am sending my fondest love and thoughts to you and the children. We all have so many happy memories. A big, big hug to you, Julie Andrews."

Moderator: Bob, my first question is for you: Had you seen the stage musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein before making the film and thought about adapting it?

Robert Wise: No, I hadn't. I hadn't seen it. As a matter of fact, curiously enough, I was at the studio and I was preparing pre-production on a picture called "The Sand Pebbles" that I did, and it became apparent that it was going to take a long time to work out the logistical problems on the "The Sand Pebbles", shooting over in Taiwan and all that. So, I said to the studio "This is going to take me a long time to get all the answers to shooting "The Sand Pebbles" in time. Do you have anything else around I could do while we're waiting on all the problems [getting] sorted out"? And they said "Well, what about "The Sound of Music"?" That's how I came on it. I think it was William Wyler or somebody else who had been scheduled to direct it, and he got in a tiff with the studio and pulled out of it. So that's how it all came to me, while I was waiting to do "The Sand Pebbles". Of course, it turned out to be my most popular and successful film.
 

Danish premiere of "The Sound of Music" in Todd-AO "and color" at the Imperial Bio, Copenhagen

Moderator: And had you immediately thought of working with Ernest Lehman to adapt it for the screen?

Wise: Well, he had already done the screenplay - first draft, at least when I came on it. And of course, I had worked with Ernie on other things and he's a fine writer, one of the best screenwriters I know. That's how it all came together. He had done the first draft.

Moderator: [to the kids] I wonder if each of you could just give us a little bit of your background before you were cast in "The Sound of Music", and thoughts when you were brought in to read for the roles of each of the children that you eventually played in the film.

Heather Menzies: Well, I'll go first. I had never heard of the Broadway show and had never seen it and had never done anything except, you know, sort of local theater. I was told that it had something to do with ... I thought it was Julie Harris and filming in Austrialia something, and had some musical instruments. I had no idea, so I was green. I was totally green. But I had been training for a few years so was able to rise to the occasion fortunately. So, Debbie?

Debbie Turner: OK, well, I started doing television commercials at the age of six months. Did my first deodorant commercial. I was the baby they lifted up so you could see the ... [laughing]. So my mother tells me. But I had done several television commercials prior to "The Sound of Music", and when I was invited to try out for "The Sound of Music", I remember singing Do-Re-Mi, which was the only song I knew, and I was thrilled to do it for the casting director, and then he brought me over to see Bob and Saul [Chaplin] and sing for them, and the rest is history.

Kym Karath: "The Sound of Music" was actually my 4th movie. I started when I was three with the movie called "Spencer's Mountain" and then a movie called "The Thrill of it All". And then "Good Neighbor Sam" and then I did "The Sound of Music", but actually ... I'm sure Bob remembers a little bit better than I do what happened, but it's sort of... it apparently was while I was five and too young to work enough hours. So they sort of put me on the back burner for a while, looking for a 6 year old, or a 7 year old, that could play the part instead, but [pause] ... I got the part.

Duane Chase: Well, I was the real novice among this crowd. I had only been trying to do commercials for about two years. I'd done a few and then Bob called me in and it looked like I might get the part, because he asked me to sit outside in the hallway. I thought, oh, you know, "I got it", and then somebody came out and said "Thank you very much, that will be all". I was devastated, but about a week later they called me back in. Apparently "Saulie" [Saul Chaplin] had not been in on the interview. So he was there for the second one, and they asked me to come back the next day. Well, I figured, it was for a screen test. Everybody had been doing screen tests and that's when I met most of the kids here. Bob walked up to us. We were all just kind of sitting in the corner, hanging around. He looked at me and he said, "Duane, how would you like to go to Austria?" And I knew at the moment that obviously I had gotten the part, and I was so flabbergasted, so I said, "You don't even have to pay me" [big audience laugh] so...

Moderator: Were Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews already on board the project at the point you became involved?

Robert Wise: No, no. I think Julie was, but Chris not. I had seen him on the stage in New York at a couple of plays. I thought he was a marvellous actor and would give it a kind of an interesting performance, playing a Captain. That's how it came about. As a matter of fact, in thinking back on it ... it seems to me that at first we sent him a script and he was in England and he didn't want to do it. And his agent here in L.A., Kurt Frings, I think his name was, thought it would be a fine thing for Chris's career, if he would do it. He urged me to fly to London, where it was Christmas at the time ... Tell him how I thought he would fit into the role, and how he'd be right for it. So I did. I flew to London. The sole purpose of it was to explain to Chris how I was going to approach the film, and how I thought he was just right for giving a kind of an interesting color to the character.

And we had a little question about his age, and whether he would be old enough to have been the father of 16-17 year old girl. He refused to make any makeup test, but we got him up in his apartment and put a little gray in his hair and, I don't know, a couple of other things, and took some stills, and took them back to the studio here [in Los Angeles] to convince everybody that he could look old enough, to play this father of this girl. And that was it.

Moderator: And had you always planned to shoot so much of the film on location in Austria? Because for example, "West Side Story", a great deal of that was actually shot in the studio, and yet so much of "The Sound of Music" was shot actually on this beautiful location.

Robert Wise: Yeah, but "West Side Story", a lot of the whole opening and daytime stuff was ... it's also shot in New York. What you do ... you go on location ... you go outside and get your location stuff done as much as you can. Because when you're inside in the studio, on the stage, you have everything under control, but when you are at the locations, you're at the subject of the weather, you see. I don't know any director who isn't happy when he's got his exterior locations done and in the bag. Because once you get inside the studio, then you have real control over it.

Moderator: I wonder if each of you could talk a little bit about the vocal and the dialogue training that you had to do for your roles in the film as the Von Trapp Austrian children.

Speaker ?: We rehearsed for, I don't know, something like six weeks before we started filming, and so we studied voice with Bobby Tucker and we studied the dialect. They wanted what they call a Mid-Atlantic dialect from Pamela de Nova. It's somewhere "in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean", you know. It's not British, but not American. So we were very well rehearsed. And you know, we had these records that ... after we recorded the music, we had to take home the records, so that we could  ... we could get it so ingrained in our souls - in our minds - so we could just sort of do it in our sleep. I've never been more rehearsed in my entire life.

Speaker ?: And then when we got to Austria. They played the soundtracks that we had previously recorded in the states. So when we were doing our acting outside and singing the Do-Re-Mi sequence, it was blasting really loud. So all we had to do was dance to it and lip sync to ourselves.