The Sound of Music (film) of the film; the actor accepted after being assured that he could work with Lehman to improve the character; Plummer later described himself as having become quite arrogant at the time, "spoiled by too many great theater roles". Wise also spent considerable time and effort on casting the secondary characters. For the role of Max Detweiler, Wise initially considered Victor Borge, Noël Coward, and Hal Holbrook among others before deciding on Richard Haydn. For the character of Baroness Elsa Schraeder, Wise looked for a "name" actress—Andrews and Plummer were not yet widely known to film audiences—and decided on Eleanor Parker.
The Sound of Music (song) song has a four-line verse ("My day in the hills has come to an end I know...") followed by the familiar chorus "The hills are alive with the sound of music..." The film soundtrack and the soundtrack album have two different instrumental preludes to "The hills are alive..." both of which contain portions of the music of the original verse. The cast album to the 1998 Broadway revival contains the four-line verse as well as the instrumental prelude present in the film version. This version is also the same key as the film version. The song was ranked tenth in