60 Jahre ‚The Sound of Music‘: Dunkle Geheimnisse, vergessene Träume und das rätselhafte Schicksal der echten Von-Trapp-Kinder – Was wurde aus den einst so strahlenden Gesichtern des Filmklassikers? 

Then and now: the cast of The Sound of Music

Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich)

After making The Sound of Music, Hammond, who played the eldest son Friedrich, went on to have the most successful acting career of all the children. He appeared in films, theatre and TV, most famously playing Peter Parker in the Spiderman series of the late 1970s. Now 74, he lives in Australia.

When Hammond auditioned for The Sound of Music, he was up against 3,000 hopefuls. Surprisingly, he tells me: “I had no training as a singer or dancer, but I was the first one they cast.”

So why did they select him if he didn’t have the key attributes needed in a musical? “Robert Wise, the director, just wanted children he thought could act. I think if you look at the film now, we’re not fabulous singers and dancers but I do think we look like a real family.”

Hammond’s mother was an actress and worked on many occasions for the BBC; she died earlier this month at the age of 105.

Heather Menzies and Nicholas Hammond – LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

Angela Cartwright (Brigitta)

“We didn’t have highfalutin’ ideas and remained grounded,” says Cartwright, 72, who played the intelligent and resourceful Brigitta. She remains good friends with her co-stars, although her career has taken a very different path.

“I got married, had a couple of kids and left show business so I could be a mum,” she tells me. She is now working in photography and art.

I ask whether she misses making films. “Show business is not how it used to be. It seems to be more about money than it is about creativity, so I don’t miss it.”

She did, however, adore working with Julie Andrews. “She would tell us all about Mary Poppins, which hadn’t been released at that point. She taught us to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards.” She then gives me a perfect recitation.

Angela Cartwright – LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

Duane Chase (Kurt)

There is a scene in the film where 13-year-old Chase (playing the gentle younger son Kurt) has to dance with Julie Andrews. I show him the footage and he laughs, telling me that the scene required him to dance in a clumsy manner.

“I didn’t want people to think I was clumsy and so afterwards the director allowed me to dance properly with Julie Andrews. She was a sweetheart.”

Chase is incredibly laid back as we chat. He tells me: “I took a big interest in how the filming was done. I made good friends with the cameramen and took my chance to go behind the camera to see how they did their jobs.”

He was also inspired by the mountain scenery which later in his life led him to take up mountain climbing as a hobby.

Chase, now 74, got a masters degree in geology, then worked for an oil company and in the tech industry. When I ask if he would have liked to have stayed in film, he gives a very honest answer. “I think if I was a good enough actor, I may have stayed a little longer, but I have absolutely no regrets.”

Duane Chase – LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

Debbie Turner (Marta)

Debbie Turner is 68 and was seven when she played the shy, sweet-natured Marta.

“I went for the audition and afterwards my mum said, ‘you’ve got a movie part’, and I said, ‘Oh, great, what does that mean?’ Remember I was just seven.”

Prior to that she had done some modelling but never a film. Turner also loved working with Julie Andrews but says Christopher Plummer was very different.

Plummer portrayed a very strict father in the film who rarely smiled and, Turner reports, “he stayed in character between scenes to keep us on edge, but that was his character in the film so that was a good thing”. Plummer spent most evenings on his own playing classical music on the piano at the hotel where he was staying.

Turner went on to design weddings and gardens for commercial properties, and has four daughters and nine grandchildren. Do the grandchildren watch The Sound of Music, I wonder?

“I was babysitting my one-year-old grandson recently and I started singing Edelweiss to get him to sleep and I had to do it repeatedly. Either my singing wasn’t very good, or he wasn’t tired enough.” Edelweiss was Julie Andrews’s favourite song in the film and the last one Oscar Hammerstein ever wrote.

Debbie Turner and Kym Karath – LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy Stock Photo

Kym Karath (Gretl)

Karath was only five years old when she was cast, but she was already a veteran actress by the time she started work on The Sound of Music. She had appeared in films with a host of Hollywood stars including Doris Day, Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Maureen O’Hara. She suffered a hair-raising moment while filming when she and the other children and Julie Andrews had to fall out of a boat. Karath couldn’t swim and had to be rescued by a technician.

“I didn’t lose consciousness, but it wasn’t nice,” she said.

After graduating from university, Karath, now 66, moved to Paris, as she spoke fluent French. “I fell in love and got married. I guess that’s what 24-year-olds do in Paris in the springtime,” she tells me. She eventually moved back to New York and had a son.

“That changed my life completely because Eric has special needs, he got meningitis. He got very sick, had seizures and it caused brain damage. He needed me more than anything else in my life.”

Karath subsequently started a charity, the Aurelia Foundation, which looks after 100 young adults with disabilities.

Meanwhile, she is planning to return to the film industry. She has written a script for a film and hopes it will be made soon. “There’s even a part for Nicholas Hammond,” she reveals.

Daniel Truhitte (Rolf)

Rolf was the delivery boy who fell in love with eldest daughter Liesl and famously sang in “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”. Later in the film, Rolf joins the Nazi party and, in one of the most dramatic scenes, gives the Von Trapp family away to the Nazis who are searching for them in the abbey crypt.

It was a role that meant he got a negative reaction from some members of the public. “I met Darth Vader once at a film convention. I got his autograph, and he said: ‘Dan, just remember every film has to have a baddie.’”

Daniel Truhitte as Rolf Gruber

After the film, Truhitte, now 81, joined the US Marine Corps reserve, where he was affectionately known as “Private Hollywood”. He later went on to teach acting and singing and ran a drama studio.

He tells me he earned “between 10 and 20 thousand dollars” for making the film. “That was good money in those days.”

I am Sixteen Going on Sixty will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on March 26 at 3.30pm