Duane Chase made history 60 years ago in ‘Sound of Music’
Duane Chase, born Dec. 12, 1950, in Los Angeles, Calif., had only three film roles during his brief acting career but one changed his life. Chase left his mark portraying Kurt, one of the Von Trapp children, in “The Sound of Music.”
Chase, who was 13 years old at the time the movie was filmed, left acting to become a geologist and computer engineer, getting a graduate degree at the University of Alabama and later working at Intergraph Corp. in Huntsville.
I interviewed Chase several years ago and asked him about his Alabama connections and about his iconic “Sound of Music” moment: That high note in “So Long, Farewell.”
He told me he enjoys his place in pop culture. “We had zero clue,” Chase said of the film’s success and subsequent place in American’s hearts as one of the most beloved movies of all time. “I’m pretty sure the studio had zero clue.”
The heartwarming film that has become a Christmas-viewing staple starred Julie Andrews as nun-in-training Maria and Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp. In the days leading to World War II, Maria becomes nanny to the captain’s seven precocious and musically talented children. The soundtrack by famed songwriting duo Rogers and Hammerstein features a plethora of classics like “My Favorite Things,” “Do Re Mi,” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” and “The Lonely Goatherd.”
Chase and surviving castmates reunited in 2022 when Julie Andrews received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. The remaining “von Trapp children” who led a singalong of “Do Re Mi” included Nicholas Hammond (who played Friedrich), Angela Cartwright (Brigitta), Debbie Turner (Marta) and Kym Karath (Gretl). Charmian Carr (Liesl) died in 2016 and Heather Menzies-Urich (Louisa) died in 2017. See a clip of the event below.
The film made $100 million at the domestic box office during its initial release, equivalent to about $1 billion today, according to Fortune magazine. It won five Oscars at the 1966 Academy Awards: Best picture, director for Robert Wise, sound, film editing and musical score.
Let’s revisit some of Chase’s recollections of the movie and Alabama as the film turns 60 this March 2025.
Before the “The Sound of Music,” Chase worked in commercials. After the film, he had two very small parts, one uncredited role in “Follow Me, Boys” and one on the TV show “The Big Valley.”
And about that high note in the song “So Long, Farewell?” The trivia you’ve read is true: The note was out of Chase’s range so it was dubbed.
“That’s the only note I didn’t sing myself,” he said, adding singing ability was one of the requirements for “all seven of the kids” when auditioning.
Duane Chase, shown in 2013, played Kurt von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” in 1965.Courtesy of Duane Chase
“We had to be able to sing and do basic dance steps to be sure we didn’t trip over our feet. We had to read from the script or from something else,” he said. His castmates said he had a love of adventure – and rocks – during filming in Austria. “…I’d go off on little hikes, so our teacher and our drivers, who kind of kept an eye on us, didn’t know where I was,” he told Parade magazine in 2013, “and I was off around a corner on some outcrop of rock just enjoying myself.”
Chase said although the role didn’t make him rich, the money from the film did help pay for his education.
“It certainly helped me through college and graduate school, especially when I was in Tuscaloosa and truly on my own, going to school and working,” he said.
What made Chase decide to come to Alabama? After getting his undergraduate degree at the University of California in Santa Barbara, he was working with Chevron in Denver.
“It looked as if, to continue in my field, I needed a master’s degree and one of the geologists I was working with suggested the University of Alabama,” he said. Some well-known geologists were working at the college at the time and Chase decided to give it a try.
He was somewhat familiar with southern food.
“The foods were not foreign to me,” he said. “My roommate in Santa Barbara was from South Carolina. As a student, you can live on a whole bag of grits for a long time. And not the instant kind. I think I’d even tried fried okra before I came to Alabama.”
Chase’s time in Alabama began in 1978 when he packed up his brother’s pickup truck and moved from his home state of California to Tuscaloosa to get his master’s degree in geology. After finishing his course work, he worked at the Geological Survey of Alabama while writing his thesis. Then, in 1985, he moved to Huntsville to work at Intergraph Corp. and stayed for two years, working in the mapping division.
He has fond memories of Alabama, he said, largely because he met his wife, Petra Maria, in Huntsville. “I always enjoy going to Huntsville,” Chase said.
At one time, Chase worked in forestry and even fought forest fires. He eventually combined his love of geology with computer engineering and worked near Seattle, Wash.
Read More
