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Heather Menzies obituary

Heather Menzies, fifth from left, as Louisa von Trapp with Julie Andrews as Maria in The Sound of Music.
Heather Menzies, fifth from left, as Louisa von Trapp with Julie Andrews as Maria in The Sound of Music. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock/Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

The heart-warming 1965 musical The Sound of Music is such a perennial favourite that anyone connected with it in any capacity has basked in reflected glory for the rest of their lives. Such was the case of Heather Menzies, who has died of brain cancer aged 68. The blond, blue-eyed 16-year-old played 13-year-old Louisa, the third oldest of the seven cute Von Trapp children taught to sing catchy Rodgers and Hammerstein songs by Maria, the fresh-faced singing nun-turned-governess played by Julie Andrews. With Andrews and the other six children, Menzies sang Do-Re-Mi, The Lonely Goatherd, So Long, Farewell, My Favourite Things, Edelweiss and the title song against spectacular Tyrolean scenery.

In the film Louisa is slightly mischievous, introducing herself to her new governess as Brigitta, the name of another of the children. When Maria asks her charges for help in how to be a governess, Louisa replies: “The first thing is to tell Father [Captain Von Trapp, played by Christopher Plummer] to mind his own business!” Maria is also warned that Louisa had hidden spiders in the previous governess’s bed. Needless to say, no spiders are hidden to frighten Maria, who wins the children, and eventually the captain, over.

As an adult, Menzies made a name for herself among movie geeks by starring in two cultish, tongue-in-cheek low-budget horror pics, Sssssss (1973) and Piranha (1978), about killer snakes and carnivorous fish respectively, as far away from The Sound of Music as one could get. She added the surname of her actor husband teh surname of her actor husband, Robert Urich, to her own after their marriage in 1975. (She was previously married to John Cluett from 1969 to 1973.)

Born in Toronto to strict Presbyterian Scottish parents, who had emigrated to Canada after the second world war, Heather moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1960. She graduated from Hollywood high school and subsequently attended Falcon Studio’s University of the Arts in Hollywood. Before making her feature film debut in The Sound of Music, she launched her TV career with a juvenile role in an episode of My Three Sons (1964). She then appeared regularly as a guest in series such as The Farmer’s Daughter, Dragnet, Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Love Boat throughout the 1960s and 70s, usually as an innocent girl. But this goody-goody persona was erased by a nude photoshoot for the August 1973 issue of Playboy, entitled The Tender Trapp.

Menzies in 2004.
Menzies in 2004. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

This was followed by Sssssss, in which she does a lot of screaming as the bespectacled daughter of a mad scientist who has turned her boyfriend into a snake. She is a slightly goofy private eye in Piranha, a satirical spin-off of Jaws (1975) in which bathers are the prey of flesh-eating fish. On television, she had a featured role as a revolutionary in all 14 episodes of Logan’s Run (1978), a spin-off from the 1976 sci-fi movie.

Menzies gradually cut down on work when she was busy bringing up her three children, whom Urich and she had adopted. After he died of cancer in 2002, she established the Robert Urich Foundation, devoting much of her time to raising money for cancer research and support for cancer patients. She also attended regular Sound of Music reunions, including one at the 50th anniversary screening in LA in 2015. Charmian Carr, who played her elder sister, Liesl, in the film, died in 2016.

She is survived by her three children, Ryan, Emily and Allison.

Heather Menzies (Heather Menzies-Urich), actor; born 3 December 1949; died 24 December 2017