HEATHER MENZIES
HEATHER MENZIES
Louisa von Trapp The Sound of Music (1965)
1949-2017
Heather Menzies was a Canadian-American actress and model. She is best known for her role as Louisa von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music (1965). She was aged 14, when she was cast in the role and had no previous acting experience. In the film she sang So Long Farewell and Lonely Goathered.
“There was a one time a screen test [for The Sound of Music] fell on a Friday, so I had to miss school and take classes on the set,” Menzies recalls. “There was a trailer out back that acted as our schoolroom for the day. When I got there I saw all of these child actors I’d grown up watching, like Johnny Provost [from the Lassie TV series] and Kurt Russell. I’d grown up worshipping these people and there I was in this schoolroom with them—only now they were peers of mine!”
Menzies was born in Toronto, Canada to Scottish parents who immigrated to Canada after the war. In 1967, she went on to study acting at Falcon Studio’s University of the Arts. After the Sound of Music she went on to appear in numerous programs as well as feature in Playboy magazine in 1973.
She appeared in My Three Sons (1964), Dragnet (1967-1969), Bonanza (1970), James Dean (1976), The Six Million Dollar Man (1977), Logan’s Run (1977-1978), Piranha (1978), and, The Love Boat (1978-1979).
She married Robert Urich in 1969 and remarried him in 1975 and the couple adopted three children. He died in 2002, and she worked tirelessly for the Robert Urich Foundation which raises money for cancer research and to support cancer patients.
Menzies was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2017 and died at the end of that year, aged 68.
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