Plummer recalls his doubts over The Sound of Music

The veteran Canadian actor Christopher Plummer did nothing to dispel his reputation as a curmudgeon when he appeared on Oprah yesterday with the entire cast of the The Sound of Music, reunited for the first time since the Oscar-winning film was released 45 years ago.

Plummer said he had been dubious about accepting the part of Captain von Trapp, the single-parent father who takes on a nanny (Julie Andrews) to look after his brood of seven adorable/ghastly/nauseating children (choose according to taste), because "the part was not exactly Hamlet".

He then spent the period of filming worrying - some would say with good reason - that the production was at risk of becoming mawkish and sentimental. So mush so that he nicknamed it "The Sound of Mucus".

On this point, even Julie Andrews had to agree. "If we weren't careful," she told Oprah Winfrey, "the film could've been dreadfully saccharine."

Andrews was already a rising star when she filmed The Sound of Music, having appeared the previous year in Mary Poppins. But she told Winfrey she had been nervous about working with Plummer.

"Well, I was in awe of this gentleman. I mean, a very, very famous dramatic actor, and here I was just a musical songstress, and honest to god, that's the way I felt."

Plummer responded: "I'd fallen in love with her in My Fair Lady on Broadway, so I'd had a crush for forever, but when we did meet she had just had a child, so I had to stay at arm's length. Arm's? What am I talking about? It was full-length away from her, but it was sort of like an awful tease."

This was not the only on-set "crush" apparently. Charmian Carr, who played the eldest child Liesl - the one who sang Sixteen Going On Seventeen - admitted on Oprah to having had a crush on Plummer, who occasionally took her out to Austrian bars during breaks between filming.

"Did you learn anything from [Plummer]," asked Winfrey. "Yes, I learned how to drink." ·