Trivia: The front and back of the von Trapp house are actually two different houses. Also, the gazebo (which belongs to the house used for the back shots) is across a river from the house. You can take the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg.
Trivia: In the boating scene, Kym Karath (Gretl) nearly drowned when she fell in the water. The scene originally called for Julie Andrews (Maria) to pull her out of the water as Kym couldn't swim, but Andrews fell out of the wrong side of the boat. In fact, the crew had to stop filming to rescue Kym. In the movie Heather Menzies (Louisa) pulls her out - Kym threw up on her after swallowing so much water.
Trivia: A Hollywood typist by the name of Marni Nixon, who has dubbed the vocals of Audrey Hepburn, as well as Deborah Kerr in The King and I, and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, makes a cameo appearance in The Sound of Music as a nun.
Trivia: The von Trapps actually escaped via train, en route to their next performance as part of their tour. They did not escape while being chased through the mountains.
Trivia: "Edelweiss" was the last song Oscar Hammerstein wrote before his death.
Trivia: When Julie Andrews is singing "I Have Confidence" she trips. The trip was completely accidental, and not choreographed, but the director felt it was in character, so he left it in.
Trivia: They filmed Julie Andrews singing on the hills at the very beginning of the film by helicopter and everytime the helicopter went round she was blown down.
Trivia: When filming the sound of music in the scene where Liesl is dancing in the gazebo during the song 'I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen', where she dances from bench to bench, she actually went through one of the panes of glass on the first jump and sprained her ankle because there were two pairs of shoes she had for that scene (one with rubber grips and one without). The ones with rubber grip were meant for the actual filming not the rehearsal but she had been rehearsing with the ones without rubber grip and someone forgot to change them. She was OK but she had to do the dance with a bandage on her ankle.
Trivia: Kurt sang all of his part except in "So Long, Farewell" where he sings "Goodbye" in a high voice. The actual note was sung by Darleen Carr, the younger sister of Charmian Carr, who was one of the singers used to "fill out" the choral sound of the seven Von Trapp children.
Trivia: In the end when the family is climbing over the hills to safety, it is not really Gretl on the shoulders of Captain Von Trapp. On the DVD, it's revealed that while in Austria, Kym Karath gained a lot of weight. This was one of the last shots filmed and so she was a bit too heavy to be carried on Christopher Plummer's back, so he requested a lighter double.
Trivia: Christopher Plummer who plays the Captain, met the real Maria von Trapp when he was a child. He used to ski and had met her at the von Trapp Lodge which the family owned and operated.
Trivia: When Julie Andrews is singing "I Have Confidence" she goes through a little tunnel. There is a cameo appearance of the real Maria von Trapp, who you can see to Julie Andrews' left. This occurs when she is singing "I must stop these doubts, all these worries".
Trivia: More than one take of the boating scene was filmed (Julie Andrews recalls two). On the one used in the movie, Julie Andrews falls off the far side of the boat. However, in the original theatrical trailer shown on the 40th edition DVD, another take is shown in which everyone falls off the near side.
Trivia: Reverend Mother's singing was dubbed, as she herself declared that she was too old to handle the vocals.
Trivia: Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day were both considered for the role of Maria.
Trivia: Christopher Plummer didn't like working in the film, calling it The Sound of Mucus. He even detested singing the song 'Edelweiss,' calling it 'schmaltzy.'
Trivia: Before agreeing to make "The Sound of Music", director Robert Wise turned it down no less than three times.
Answer: In the film, the Mother Abess explains to Maria that the Captain Von Trapp's wife died "several years" ago. This is commonly misheard by viewers as "seven years." In reality, the actual mother of the Von Trapp children was Agathe Whitehead, who died of scarlet fever in 1922, just four years before Maria came to the Von Trapp home, initially as a tutor (not a governess) in 1926.
Michael Albert