Liesl, played by Charmian Carr
by Jonathan B. Perry
Just to be awkward, I’ll mention that I really used to have a thing for that Liesl character from The Sound of Music. She was pretty smokin’ for being 16 going on 17 and on the cusp of womanhood. Secret gazebo rendezvous(es?) are excellent, especially if it’s raining. The Sound of Music was the sort of thing we watched a lot growing up in my musical family, so I grew to appreciate the flirtiness and the innocence coupled with sexy slyness smack in the middle of this wholesome feast of classic cinema. I’m not sure how old Charmian Carr was when she played the role (she had to have been in her 20s), but she acted an impressive part and early on became the gold standard for girly hotness to me and many young men (and certainly plenty of dirty old men).
Julie Andrews as Maria
In my article about Elegant Women, I included Julie Andrews whose proper Britishness almost automatically qualifies her for queen of the category. Between SoM & Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews seems like the strict disciplinarian that we all desperately need to help make that nasty medicine go down until we’ve learned our lessons and promise to be very good boys, unless she really wants to punish us again.
She wasn’t all discipline, though. We mustn’t forget the light and airy image of her twirling around on top of that Austrian mountain, being the spazzy nun we want to throttle. She had some serious personal sorting out to do at the beginning of the movie before leading Rodgers and Hammerstein sing-alongs, giving puppet shows, then getting kind of sexy, flirting and dancing with the Christopher Plummer who played the Captain. Of course, near the end she wins the Captain from the Baroness, suddenly becoming mother to 7 bratty Austrian kids and it’s all downhill into frumpery from there (If you really want to get into it, the Baroness had a little sumthin’ sumthin’ goin’ on herself, but Maria and Leisl were the star babes.).
Pre-girlfight!
Whenever I see that part of the movie near the end where Maria and the Captain have just come back from their honeymoon and Maria is having a mother/daughter talk with Liesl about how handsome Rolf looks in his Nazi uniform, I always get the impression that Julie Andrews is at great pains suddenly being the unsexed matron. Apparently, the actual age gap between Julie Andrews and Charmian Carr was pretty slim. When the movie came out in March 1965 Andrews was 29 and Carr was 22 (I just Googled it and am absolved of my jailbait attraction to Liesl. Yay!). That’s just 7 years difference! It’s at this point of the movie where Liesl says something like “I love calling you mother” and Maria grunts approximately “I enjoy hearing it”. If you look carefully at Julie Andrews it would seem she stiffens a little here and isn’t really into the idea of being the mother figure of the two because she’s not much older and this pushes her out of hot babe contention. It’s unlikely there were any wrestling matches between the two on the set, but you never know. Perhaps the crew had to keep them apart (this is how rumors are started).
No, for the last chunk of the movie, Maria’s function is shifted to that of mother and whip-organizer for the escape. The romance is all behind her. The only thing left is trudging through the Alps dragging Gretl on a leash. All the while, Liesl is thinking up wicked ways to work up the French boys waiting down on the other side of the hill. Yodelayhehoo!
Here’s a song I wrote vaguely about Liesl. It’s a bad recording:
Waiting For The Day (or How Liesl Escaped the Nazis and Got Freaky)
Coming soon..the final instalment in the 11 Steps to Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor. Did you notice how I only used one ‘l’ in installment…I mean, instalment? I like to ‘colour’ my writing with weird Brit spellings sometimes.
The secret compound word is deathmatch.
Related Reading:
Celebrity Crushes: Is Elegance Elitist?
Celebrity Crushes: The Girl Next Door
Which Is Your Type? A Pseudo-Cosmo Quiz
Intimidated By Smart Girls?
My 11 Favorite CHRISTMAS Albums
30 Favorite Songs of 2009 (1-15)
Google-Stalking the Ex
Logan’s Run and Population Control
Men Without Cats
Bachelors in History
Domesticated Bachelor Step #6: Be A Jack-Of-All-Trades
Bachelors in Catholicism
Valentine’s Day Shame
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
Related Blogs
by Jonathan B. Perry
Recent Comments