The Sound of Music Returns

Just ahead of the iconic musical’s annual holiday airing, Julie Andrews takes a fond look back at a classic

For those who deem The Sound of Music one of the sweetest sounds in movie history, rest assured that Dame Julie Andrews still feels that way, too.

Director Robert Wise’s Oscar-winning 1965 take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical gets its traditional yuletide telecast this weekend on ABC. Inspired by the true story of the tuneful von Trapp family, it recounts how spirited, optimistic governess Maria (Andrews) works her way into the hearts of the children and, eventually, their stern widower father (played by late Canadian icon Christopher Plummer).

“How lucky can we all get?” the ever-pleasant Andrews marvels at the fact that Sound of Music is one of very few movies that still get annual showings on the U.S. broadcast networks during the holiday season. (It’s a Wonderful Life and The Ten Commandments being other prime examples.) “Though it’s not about Christmas, it’s a family pleasure,” reasons Andrews of her film, “and that’s just as well. I’m grateful that I was able to be a part of it. It was such an enormous point in my life.”

Indeed, Andrews had just won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the previous year’s Mary Poppins, and she maintains she “could not have foretold” having two such enduring classics back-to-back. “Truthfully, to work with such tasteful and very classy people as Robert Wise and all the people [on The Sound of Music]… and of course, Chris Plummer, who so sadly has left us.”

The Sound of Music is getting its first ABC airing since Plummer’s death last February, and Andrews notes that they remained “great friends. We did a few other bits and pieces together. We went out on tour once in a sort of Christmas concert, and we did On Golden Pond together for television, which was lovely. We always kept in touch one way or another, and we’d have the odd meeting every once in a while. I was very close to him and his lovely lady Elaine.”

Co-stars Charmian Carr and Heather Menzies, who played von Trapp youngsters Liesl and Louisa, also have died. “Time has passed,” Andrews acknowledges, “and people have grown up and had their own kids and grandkids and that wonderfully strong and stalwart movie is plowing ahead.”

Now serving as narrator Lady Whistledown on Netflix’s Bridgerton and still collaborating on children’s books with daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, Andrews admits she can’t remember the last time she actually watched The Sound of Music herself. “I might have stumbled upon it sometime, somewhere. I’ll run across an old picture of mine on Turner Classic Movies, but I don’t actually screen or go to any of them, unless it’s some kind of big event.”

The Sound of Music airs Sunday, December 19th at 7 p.m. on ABC