Great Films Trivia Quiz

Answer: Florenz Ziegfeld

Powell was "The Great Zielgfeld" (1936), a film which won three Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress (Luise Rainer). Powell was not nominated for the Academy Award, but did receive a Screen Actors Guild Award.

"The Great Ziegfeld" follows the career of Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld from 1893 until his death in 1932. For several decades, Ziegfeld was one of the most successful figures in American entertainment, with his Follies. His last major production was "Show Boat" (1932). The film was one of the most successful of 1932, earning over $4 million at the box office, double its budget. It is one of the more notable achievements of MGM during the 1930s.

There are several films starring and about Al Jolson. James Cagney won an Academy Award as Broadway showman George M Cohan in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942).

Answer: barber

Chaplin plays a Jewish barber who bears a striking resemblance to the dictator of the fictional land of Tomania, Adenoid Hynkel. Chaplin's character is helped, by a former colleague from World War I, to take Hynkel's place. The film closes with one of the most inspirational speeches ever given, a beautiful call for soldiers to resist tyranny and oppression and to fight for freedom and hope.

"The Great Dictator" (1940) is one of the first major anti-Nazi films produced. Even though much of it is a parody, it does deal with serious themes including anti-Semitism and militarism. It was Chaplin's most commercially successful film and earned five Academy Nominations, including Best Actor (Chaplin), Best Writing (also Chaplin) and Best Music (Meredith Wilson).

Answer: Flight Lt Robert Hendley (the scrounger)

Hendley, played by James Garner, is one of the few to escape the camp who made it back alive. He escaped with Colin Blythe (Donald Pleasence), who is gunned down when their plane crashes near the German-Swiss border.

Ashley-Pitt (David MacCallum) sacrifices his life to allow Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough) and MacDonald (Gordon Jackson) to escape from the Gestapo. Bartlett and MacDonald are later captured and are among fifty prisoners executed by the Nazis.

The only major characters who appeared to successfully escape were Danny (Charles Bronson) and Willy (John Leyton), who rowed to freedom, and Sedgwick (James Coburn) who bicycled his way until meeting the French resistance.

"The Great Escape" is based on a real-life prison camp escape. As in the film, 76 escaped, and in real life only three successfully escaped and in real life, fifty of the escapees were murdered. The real life escape took place in March 1944. The film is a highly fictionalized telling of the story, with Americans playing a larger role (Steve McQueen and Garner).

Answer: New York and Paris

The race crosses North America from New York through Canada and Alaska, across the Bering Strait, then across Siberia to Europe, with the final finish line in Paris. The movie reunites Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon of "Some Like It Hot" (1959). Curtis plays the dashing hero while Lemmon plays his evil nemesis. Natalie Wood plays an enterprising journalist.

The film is loosely based on a real 1908 race between New York and Paris. The film was directed by Blake Edwards, who directed numerous popular comedies. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Sound Effects.

Answer: Barnstorming Pilot

"The Great Waldo Pepper" (1975) is about barnstorming pilots in the 1920s. Redford plays the title character, with Bo Svenson and Edward Hermann as rival pilots. The film accurately relates the dangerous nature of barnstorming in the 1920s, and Redford's character was injured multiple times.

Barnstorming was a popular entertainment in the early days of aviation, especially the 1920s. Pilots would perform dangerous stunts, often low flying passes over objects such as barns (hence the name). After several pilots died, federal laws were passed that effectively made barnstorming illegal.

To see Redford as a grifter, watch "The Sting" (1973). He plays journalist Bob Woodward in "All The President's Men" (1976) and plays an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency in "Three Days of the Condor" (1975). Redford also did "The Great Gatsby" (1974) during the same period.

Answer: Lieutenant Colonel

Wilbur Meechum is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps, a highly accomplished military aviator. His call sign among fellow aviators is "The Great Santini". The film is set in 1962, and focuses on Meecham's failures as a husband and father despite his success as a military officer. At the end of the movie, Meechum heroically crashes his plane to save a town.

Duvall is frequently in uniform during the film, and he wears the silver clover insignia of a lieutenant colonel. He is called "colonel" because lieutenant colonels are addressed that way by custom.

Robert Duvall was nominated as Best Actor as Meechum, and Michael O'Keefe was nominated as Best Supporting Actor and for a
Golden Globe for playing his son Ben. While the film was critically acclaimed, it did not perform all that well at the box office.

Answer: Dennis Quaid

Dennis Quaid takes his cocky bad boy persona and plays it for all its worth in the 1989 biopic about Jerry Lee Lewis. It follows the early years of Lewis' career between 1956 and 1958, and the scandal involving his marriage to 13 year old Myra Gale (Winona Ryder). While Lewis hated the film, he did admire Quaid's performance saying "He really pulled it off."

Quaid worked with the other three on "The Right Stuff" (1983), as astronaut Gordon Cooper. Ed Harris was John Glenn, Scott Glenn was Alan Shepherd and Sam Shepherd was Chuck Yeager.

Dennis Quaid started acting in 1977 in "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden". His work in the 1980s included "The Right Stuff" (1983), "Innerspace" (1987) and "DOA" (1988). Other notable films include "The Parent Trap" (1998), "Frequency" (2000), "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004) and "Foot Loose" (2011).

Answer: Ruth Hussey (1949)

Ruth Hussey was Jordan Gale, while Betty Field was Daisy in the 1949 film starring Alan Ladd.

Ruth Hussey started her film career in 1937, and she was a big name actress in the 1940s. She received an Academy Award nomination for her role as James Stewart's almost girlfriend in "The Philadelphia Story" (1940). Most of her roles in the 1950s and 1960s were on television. Her last film was in 1960. Hussey retired from acting in 1973, and died in 2005.

Robert Redford was with Mia Farrow as Daisy in the 1974 version. Toby Stephens was with Mira Sorvino in the 2000 TV movie. And Carey Mulligan played Daisy against Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013.

"The Great Gatsby" is based on the 1925 novel by F Scott Fitzgerald which tells about life among the wealthy on Long Island in the 1920s. Gatsby has come to be seen as a symbol of over-indulgence. Fitzgerald based the characters on people he knew during his years in New York.

Answer: Alfonso Cuaron

Alfonso Cuaron, who went on to win Directing Awards for "Gravity" (2013) and "Roma" (2018), also directed "Great Expectations" (1998). He was the first Mexican born filmmaker to win a Best Director Award,

"Great Expectations" is based on the novel by Charles Dickens and stars Ethan Hawk as Finnegan Bell (Pip), Gwyneth Paltrow as Estrella, and Anne Bancroft as Nora Dinsmoor (Miss Havisham). Much of the 1998 film was shot in Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida.

Inarritu and del Toro are two of the other directors in the "Mexican Wave". Inarritu won an Oscar for directing "Birdman" (2014) and "The Revevenant" (2015), Del Toro won for "The Shape of Water" (2018). And Chinese director Ang Lee won for "Brokeback Mountain" (2005) and "The Life of Pi" (2012).

Answer: Wisconsin

The John Hughes comedy is set in Pechoggin, Wisconsin on Lake Pottawattominiac. John Candy plays Chester Ripley, a working guy from Chicago who is vacationing with his family. Dan Aykroyd plays Roman Craig, Chet's brother-in-law, who suddenly arrives at the lake. The film plays off the tensions between the two families. The film is a good example of Candy's everyman persona. Sadly, Candy died only a few years later, at the age of 44.

Roman mentions Wisconsin rattlers in the horse riding scene, an actual threat in northern Wisconsin. There are multiple shots of the neon Lake Pottawattominiac sign at the pool hall/bar. And there are Iconic Wisconsin symbols like Vince Lombardi, Leinenkugels beer and the muskellunge, the state fish. And Wisconsin attitudes about people from Illinois were accurate.

Both Pechoggin and Lake Pottawattominiac are fictional, although if there was a real Pottawattominiac, it would absolutely be in Wisconsin.

The movie was shot at Bass Lake, California, which is near Yosemite National Park and roughly 2000 miles away from Wisconsin., "The Great Outdoors" drew mixed reviews from critics, and grossed a modest $41 million at the US box office, because it really isn't all that great. It is Annette Benning's first film, and she is pretty good. If you want a GREAT Dan Aykroyd/John Candy film watch "The Blues Brothers" (1980).