The Joker Is Wild Trivia Quiz

Answer: A speakeasy in Chicago

Joe (Frank Sinatra) and his faithful piano player Austin Mack (Eddie Albert) have a good job at Georgie Parker's speakeasy. But when Joe announces plans to move up to a respectable venue, the Valencia, Parker (Ted de Corsia) and Tim Coogan (Leonard Graves) become threatening. Joe refuses to take seriously either the gangsters' threats or Austin's fears. And at first all seems to be well.

The opening goes off splendidly. In subsequent days they go to Blue Label Records to cut a disc. Even Coogan's appearance at the Valencia on Joe's opening night does not alarm him, believing as he does that the gangster's menace is all bluster.

Answer: They send a huge black wreath to his home.

When Joe still refuses to take the threat seriously, three goons attack him in his home, cutting his vocal cords, beating him severely and leaving him for dead. The violence takes place off camera. We only see the results, Joe agonizingly dragging himself out of his apartment and along the corridor searching for help.

Answer: No

Austin has to tell everyone that Joe checked himself out of the hospital and vanished. Still weak, unable to sing for his living and barely able to talk, Joe is alone...somewhere. Hearing that he may have gone to New York City, Austin and Swifty Morgan (Jackie Coogan) set out to find him.

Answer: He is the silent butt of a burlesque comedian's crude humor.

Swifty and Austin are appalled to find their friend in such a degrading job. Austin, who is currently working for Sophie Tucker, prevails upon her to do something. What she does is to proclaim from the stage that the silent clown is in fact Joe E. Lewis and that he will sing for them. With no alternative, Joe tries to sing, but cannot.

In desperation, he improvises a standup routine that brings the house down.

Answer: Letty

Angry and embarrassed at first, Joe is rather rude to the pretty, inquisitive Letty Page (Jeanne Crain), who finds him behind the movie screen. Eventually, though, she persuades him that his impromptu standup act was very good indeed, so he has nothing to be ashamed of. Her gentle persistence and good humor finally wear him down to the point that he agrees to dance with her.

Answer: Joining the USO

While on their USO tour, they come under enemy fire. Sure they are about to die, Austin thinks of his wife Cassie (Beverly Garland) and Joe thinks of Letty, whom he had not seen or said goodbye to before leaving. He realizes how remarkable and precious her love is, and that he should stop mucking about and marry her.

Answer: Letty is married.

Letty's patience with Joe's mercurial behavior has finally run out. Cassie tells him that "She got married two weeks ago." Despondent, Joe returns to his drinking and horserace gambling, and he throws himself into his work.

Answer: Martha receives an offer from Hollywood.

Martha Stewart (Mitzi Gaynor) has worked with Joe for years. She believes that marrying him would be a dream come true. Though Cassie is doubtful, she reluctantly sets aside her own misgivings and allows the wedding to go ahead.

The day of the wedding dawns stormy, but Martha only fleetingly thinks this a bad omen. The ceremony goes off without a hitch. Just as the happy couple is about to leave on their honeymoon, word comes that Martha has received an offer from a Hollywood producer. Though she is willing to forego it, Joe urges her to accept.

Answer: A distraught Martha makes a scene on the casino floor.

The marriage is not a happy one. Martha works during the day, while Joe works at night. More than that, though, one gets the feeling that Joe harbors a simmering resentment towards Martha's success. After one particularly exasperating scene, when Martha comes home to find the house filled with Joe's lowlife, gambling friends, they have words and he leaves early for his Vegas gig.

Desperate that she will lose him, Martha follows him to Las Vegas. But when she arrives, he is too intent on the roulette wheel to pay attention to her increasingly distressed importuning. Cassie and Austin try to calm her, but she refuses all comfort. At last, now visibly drunk, she returns to Joe to demand tremulously that they get a divorce, so she can go back to adoring him.

Answer: No

During the show Joe, unwisely, engages in a slinging match with a persistent and rather cruel heckler (Wally Brown). At length the heckler says spitefully, "I hear you and your wife give drunk lessons." At that, Joe breaks. He leaves the stage to assault the loudmouth, faithful Austin right behind him. Later, Cassie comes to his dressing room and tells him simply, "You'll have to find another piano player."

In the final scene, Joe is walking down the same Chicago street where the film began. In the blank storefront windows he sees episodes from his life and realizes that, despite everything he has achieved, he has lost those things he should have prized most.

As portrayed by Sinatra, Lewis could never quite believe that the horrors of his past were truly past, so he was unable to appreciate or even quite accept as real Letty's love and Martha's affection were. So he lost them both. And judging by Cassie's last words in the film, he also lost his truest friend. In view of what happened to him at the hands of the mobsters, this is understandable; but it is no less sad for that.