The Sound of Music: relative ages of actors, characters, and the real people
Sometime recently I got into a discussion about the relative ages of actors and the characters they portrayed. I think it started with Reba McIntyre vs Ethel Merman as Annie Oakley in "Annie Get Your Gun", but sometime in there "The Sound of Music" also got mentioned, contrasting Mary Martin and Julie Andrews' portrayals of Maria, while I opined that the two actors portraying Captain von Trapp were actually pretty close to the actual age of their character.
Suffering tonight from a fit of Weird o'Clock Wakefulness, I decided to go Googling on this.
The real Capt. von Trapp and Maria were actually ages 47 and 22 when they married in 1927.
When "The Sound of Music" debuted on Broadway in 1959, Theodore Bikel at age 35 was actually playing-older as the Captain, while Mary Martin at age 46 was playing considerably younger.
In the 1965 movie, Christopher Plummer as the Captain was actually 36: also playing-older. Julie Andrews as Maria was actually 30, which was older than the actual Maria, but not as MUCH older as Mary Martin had been.
Suffering tonight from a fit of Weird o'Clock Wakefulness, I decided to go Googling on this.
The real Capt. von Trapp and Maria were actually ages 47 and 22 when they married in 1927.
When "The Sound of Music" debuted on Broadway in 1959, Theodore Bikel at age 35 was actually playing-older as the Captain, while Mary Martin at age 46 was playing considerably younger.
In the 1965 movie, Christopher Plummer as the Captain was actually 36: also playing-older. Julie Andrews as Maria was actually 30, which was older than the actual Maria, but not as MUCH older as Mary Martin had been.