I Left My Heart... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Thomas Paine

A lifelong Socialist, albeit one who drove a Rolls-Royce, Richard Attenborough had a longstanding dream of making a film about his hero, the radical 18th century thinker and activist, Thomas Paine. He expended a lot of energy on the project, but could not secure the backing he needed.

Paine's pamphlet 'Common Sense' was hugely influential in the American Revolution.

Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte

Kubrick did a lot of research and planning and wrote a first draft of a screenplay for an epic Napoleon biopic. Jack Nicholson was a potential lead! Due to the failure of other movies with a similar theme, the very high budget, and changes at MGM, the project was abandoned. Instead, Kubrick's next movie was 'A Clockwork Orange'.

Answer: Orson Welles

Welles was obsessed with the movie, picking it up periodically through his life, whenever he could pull funds together, largely through taking on work that was well beneath him. He was still talking about finishing the movie in the last months of his life in 1985.

Answer: Ivan the Terrible

With the USSR at war with Germany, Eisenstein started a movie trilogy about the life of Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible. The first movie presented him as a heroic figure and proved highly popular with Stalin on its release in 1944. The second movie hit difficulties with the censors, who refused to release it until 1958. Eisenstein suffered a heart attack while filming the final instalment, and died of a further heart attack shortly afterwards, at the age of 50, in 1948.

Answer: Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin read widely about Napoleon and planned a movie over a long period. At a meeting with Churchill in 1929, the English politician gave an enthusiastic 'pitch' for a treatment he could do.

Nothing came of it. Chaplin went on to make 'Modern Times' and 'The Great Dictator', while Churchill found other things to occupy himself.

Answer: Siege of Leningrad

Leone was inspired in 1982 by reading Harrison Salisbury's book, 'The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad', and planned an epic movie with music by Ennio Morricone. The project was continually delayed until Leone secured funding in 1989. He died two days before signing contracts.

Answer: Rosa Luxemburg

Fassbinder's relentless and punishing work schedule was sustained by copious consumption of alcohol and drugs. After completing 'Querelle', his second movie in the first half of 1982, he started on 'Rosa L.', about the co-founder of the 'Spartacus League' who was executed in 1919 during the German Revolution.

He had been working on notes for the movie on the night he died at the age of 37 of an overdose of cocaine and barbiturates.

Answer: Alfred Hitchcock

Looking to follow up 'Family Plot', Hitchcock went through several screenplays and screenwriters in his attempt to make a movie of Ronald Kirkbride's novel. Stars like Clint Eastwood and Walter Matthau were mooted. Ultimately he ran out of time and abandoned the project in 1979.

Answer: Clint Eastwood

Stone spent months of effort on the planned biopic, 'Noriega', which was to look closely at the roles of George Bush, Sr. and Oliver North in the dictator's rise to power. As part of his research, he conducted a three hour interview with Noriega. Citing difficulties with funding, and script problems, he stopped work on the project in 1994.

Answer: Walt Disney blocked the movie

Imagine Audrey Hepburn - fresh from her success in 'My Fair Lady' - as Peter Pan and Laurence Olivier as Captain Hook. With tens of thousands of pounds being generated for patient care at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, to which J. M. Barrie had given the copyright to 'Peter Pan'.

Unfortunately, Walt Disney blocked the project, claiming he had sole rights to movie treatments after paying a few thousand pounds for permission to make his 1953 animation. The legal dispute continued beyond his death in 1966 and wasn't resolved until 1969 when the Walt Disney Company lost and had to pay compensation and costs to the hospital.