Peggy Wood Biography

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Peggy Wood was the daughter of a popular Manhattan columnist. Gifted with a lilting soprano voice, she began her stage career in musicals and operettas. Her chief Broadway fame rested in multilayered dramatic roles, though she was also an expert comedienne when the occasion arose. In her heyday, Wood was a member of the New York "intellectual" circuit, making occasional lunchtime stopovers at the Algonquin Round Table. A star on stage, Wood seldom appeared in anything larger than supporting roles in films; for example, she had only one scene as the sympathetic central-casting secretary in David O. Selznick's A Star Is Born (1937). From 1949 through 1957, Wood starred on the popular TV series Mama, reportedly exerting a great deal of script and casting control. Peggy Wood's last screen appearance was as the Mother Abbess in the Oscar-winning musical The Sound of Music (1965); sadly, her once beautiful singing voice was a thing of the past, and she had to be dubbed. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• 1. Mother Abbess: Maria, these walls were not meant to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live.
  2. Kurt: I wonder what grass tastes like.
  3. Captain Von Trapp: You brought music back into the house. I had forgotten.
  4. Frau Schmidt: The Von Trapp children don't play. They march.
  5. Captain Von Trapp: If the Nazis take over Austria, I have no doubt, Herr Zeller, that you will be the entire trumpet section.
  6. Kurt: Only grown-up men are scared of women.
  7. Maria von Trapp: When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.
  From The Sound of Music. Submitted by rick b (50 days ago)