Corrected entry: After the boat overturns on the lake, and Maria is on the terrace in debate with the Captain, she ends with "I'm not finished" He responds with "Oh yes you are, Captain" then pauses and says "fraulein" [correcting his quite obviously misspoken dialogue with an embarrassed expression on his face; and then the camera captures Julie Andrews' surprised expression when he mistakenly calls her 'Captain'].
Corrected entry: When the children introduce themselves to Maria when the Captain isn't present, Gretl tells Maria that she is 5 years old. However, when the Mother Abbess informs Maria about the governess post, she says that the children's mother has been dead for 7 years.
Correction: The Reverend Mother says several years, not seven years.
Corrected entry: Liesl was 22 at the time of filming "I am sixteen going on seventeen."
Correction: Many actresses portray characters who are younger than they are. It's not really trivia worthy just because her age is mentioned in a song.
Corrected entry: Once the children and Maria have been in the boat turning incident, the children are dripping wet with water once they return to their father. He then tells the children to go inside and change, though when the children have returned their hair is nothing but damp from the water. It appears to have dried rapidly within the minute they went to get changed.
Correction: A couple minutes with a towel is all they would need to change their from dripping wet to merely damp.
Corrected entry: The Von Trapp mansion - -the outside, the lake out back and many (perhaps all) the interior scenes (including that amazing gold-encrusted room that Maria walks into) is a real castle just outside Salzburg. It's called the Schloss Leopoldskron (Prince Leopold's Castle). A truly cool place; I lived there for a month when I was 8. (If you swing aside a particular shelf in the mammoth library, you find a secret spiraling stairway).
Correction: All SOM interiors were shot at Fox in Los Angeles. Some sets were based on Austraian locations.
Correction: The great hall of the VonTrapp house set was also used in 1956's Giant, starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the main hall of Benedict ranch house.
Corrected entry: Many years ago, Maria von Trapp was asked if the movie was pretty close to real life, and she replied, "Yes, except for one thing." She amusingly explained that when the family was crossing through the mountains, they were definately NOT singing, unlike the film.
Correction: Either she was joking, or this is an error. The movie differs drastically from the truth. The family escaped by train to Italy, not on foot to Switzerland. Also, Captain von Trapp was an Italian citizen and therefore not subject to German conscription, Georg and Maria were married ten years before the Anschluss and had two children together before they fled Austria, the family sang to pay their bills from an Austrian bank collapse, and the children's names were changed.
Corrected entry: In the final scene of the The Sound of Music, Maria, Captain Von Trapp, and the children are walking on a mountain. If you look at the grass by where they are walking, the grass looks like heavy wind is blowing on it. This wind probably isn't natural because the mountain does not look that high. I believe it is cause by the helicopter they used to shoot the scene on a real mountain.
Corrected entry: The Reverend Mother welcomes a new postulant, who is wearing a bright turquoise belted dress. Soon after, when Maria returns to the Von Trapp children through the garden, she is quite obviously wearing the same dress. Do the women at the abbey share their "worldly clothes"? (01:52:20 - 02:00:55)
Correction: They can, yes. Often the clothes brought in with postulants are put into a community wardrobe for public use.
Correction: As Maria said, new postulates give their clothes away when they enter the convent. Maria may have taken the new girl's clothes because she had already given away her clothes.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Maria and the children are frolicking in the field, they are wearing the drapes. Then in any shot after that, they are wearing totally different clothing.
Correction: That's because the scenes are not meant to be continuous. They are basically clips taking place over a weeks' time or more.
Corrected entry: Maria and the Captain return from their honeymoon as soon as they hear word about Hitler's annexation of Austria in early March 1938. As they stand outside their home and the Captain rips down the Nazi flag that has been displayed there, it is obviously very late spring or summer - the weather is very warm and the leaves are fully out on the trees. This would not be the case in Austria in March.
Correction: The spring of the Anschluss was unseasonably warm and dry. Salzburg was as warm as a typical summer by mid-March, and there had been no rain or snow for weeks.
Corrected entry: In the scene when the captain demonstrates the whistle signals for each of the children, Maria calls out to the captain with a whistle blow, asking what his signal would be. The captain stops walking and makes almost a full body turn to look back at Maria. But in the next shot he is shown to have turned only his head to look over his shoulder and says, "You may call me, Captain", and walks out straight ahead.
Correction: In this scene the captain does not make almost a full body turn to look at Maria, he makes only a fourth of a turn and looks to his right, and when the scene cuts to the next shot he is still standing in the same spot looking to his right, he is not looking over his shoulder. Also, when he walks out of the room he does not walk straight out of the room, but he turns back the quarter turn and then walks out.
Corrected entry: Maria is given material one night to make clothing for herself, because she claims the only dress she has is the one she is wearing. But the next day and in the rest of the movie, she wears dresses that are not the same color/style as the materials that she was given on her first night.
Correction: Actually, the material is used. For example, Maria is given a tan-ish, multicolor striped material which you see appearing as the upper half of the dress she wears not long after. It is deceptive and does not immediately look the same because the stripes are sewn diagonally (unlike originally shown), but it is, indeed, the fabric she was given.
The other dresses Maria wears are not from the darker materials she gets from the housekeeper - I do not see light blue or light green material in the fabric bolts. And does she make the play clothes overnight?
She could've got the light blue material on one of their trips to town and the greenish dress she wears is the one that she got from the postulant who had just joined the abbey when the Reverend Mother tells her to go back to the von Trapps.
Corrected entry: Why does Maria have a guitar if she can't even play it? During the 'Do-Re-Mi' sequence on the hills, you can see that her left hand doesn't move once to change the chord she's playing.
Correction: If you look at her other hand she is actually finger picking and so doesn't need to move her left hand.
Corrected entry: Could some person please tell me why the the Reverend Mother is wearing a wedding ring?
Correction: Nuns are considered married to Christ.
Corrected entry: When Maria and the children are singing do re mi they start of wearing the clothes made from drapes, but during the scene they change clothes and back again twice.
Correction: The Do-Re-Mi sequence takes the place over the course of several days, hence the change in costumes from the beginning of the scene where they are in the drapes, to other days when they are wearing different clothes, and finally at the end when they are back in the drapes. Remember, the Captain was gone for quite some time. It took awhile for him to drive to Vienna, visit with the Baroness, and then drive back to Salzburg with her and Max.
Corrected entry: The green dress Maria wears when she returns to the von Trapps is the exact same dress as the new postulant is wearing as she enters the Abbey. My guess is that the new postulant was Julie Andrews' understudy and was used in the scene instead of casting another actor or extra. (02:01:02)
Correction: As she said earlier in the film, when women join the convent, they donate all their worldly clothes to the poor. Maria likely did that when she returned from the von Trapp household. As the new girl was joining, she had to give up her worldly clothes. Since Maria was sent back to the von Trapps right after this, she likely grabbed this dress so she could get back there. As this is a film and not a play, Julie Andrews would not have an understudy, as they would have to reshoot the entire film anytime her face is visible.
Corrected entry: When Maria and the children sing "do re mi" sitting in the carriage, Liesl is supposed to sing "ti ti" but she mouths the "la" before her turn.
Correction: She's not mouthing "la". She's simply opening her mouth in preparation to sing her part, which she sings in time.
Corrected entry: On the 40th anniversary edition DVD, there is a behind the scenes interview with the actors who played the Von Trapp children. One of them comments that they thought during the scene in the Abbey with the Nazis rattling the gates, that the children who were with Julie Andrews were making too much noise. Charmian Carr says (joking) that they were with the star of the movie (Julie Andrews) so they were allowed to make noise, but in the movie Charmian is with Christopher Plummer's group, not Julies.
Correction: This does not mean though that one or more of the children weren't switched around and placed differently, before the director finally settled on the grouping that is seen in the movie.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the captain "calls off" the engagement to the baroness at night on the terrace/balcony, he meets Maria down by the lake. The captain says to Maria, "I thought I just might find you here." He asks her to sit. From the camera's point of view, she is sitting on the right-side of the bench, the captain sits on the left-side. As they talk, she stands up, and "immediately" in the next shot the captain is sitting on the right-side end of the bench.
Correction: No - he is still sitting on the left side, it is just that the camera was coming from a different direction in each shot.
Corrected entry: When Maria is praying at her bed, Leisel creeps in through the window behind her. She is supposed to have climbed up the house but you can see Leisel walking across to the window outside before climbing into the room.
Correction: Why can't there have been a balcony (or at least a ledge) outside of the window?
Correction: It's not a mistake in the film, it's Captain von Trapp being flustered and misspeaking. It's written this way in the play too.
Greg Dwyer