Eleanor Parker of The Sound of Music Dies at 91 - People Magazine

By Associated Press

12/09/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Christopher Plummer (far left), Julie Andrews (standing) and the children, in The Sound of Music, with Eleanor Parker (far right)

Everett

Eleanor Parker, a three-time Oscar nominee who played the scheming baroness in The Sound of Music , has died. She was 91.

Family friend Richard Gale said Parker died Monday morning due to complications from pneumonia.

Gale told the Associated Press the actress "passed away peacefully, surrounded by her children at a medical facility near her home in Palm Springs."

The red-haired actress had best-actress Oscar nominations in 1951 and 1952 for her roles as a prison inmate in Caged and as Kirk Douglas's frustrated wife in Detective Story.

Her third nomination was for the challenging role of polio-stricken opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody.

The 1965's The Sound of Music in which her icy character loses Christopher Plummer to Julie Andrews, was her last major film role.

In last week's live TV version of The Sound of Music , the role of the baroness was given a different spin by Broadway actress Laura Benanti.