The (Original) Manchurian Candidate Quiz

Answer: Sergeant Bilko

Maybe that was director John Frankheimer's way of acknowledging his debt to television, the medium in which he perfected his directing skills.

Answer: Three years

When 'The Manchurian Candidate' was filmed, Angela Lansbury was 36 and Laurence Harvey was 33. Originally, Frank Sinatra wanted Lucille Ball to play Eleanor Iselin, but John Frankheimer suggested Angela Lansbury and persuaded Sinatra to see her in a film called 'All Fall Down'. Sinatra was so impressed that he readily agreed to have Lansbury take on the role.

Answer: Frank Sinatra

The plane belonged to Sinatra. I don't know if the other choices owned planes. It must be nice to be rich!

Answer: Wo Fat

Wo Fat was the ever-smiling thorn in the side of Steve McGarrett (played by Jack Lord). Hop Sing (played by Victor Sen Yung) was the cook on the TV series 'Bonanza', Don Ho is a singer, famous for the terribly saccharine 'Tiny Bubbles', and I made up Ho Lee.

Answer: Jonathan Demme

The 2004 version, directed by Demme, did not achieve the same level of critical acclaim accorded the original film version. I felt that the remake did a great disservice to Condon's compelling story.

Answer: At a Garden Club meeting

The GIs had been hypnotized just before the demonstration and were under the impression that they were sheltering from a rainstorm in the lobby of the hotel where the Garden Club was meeting and listening to a less-than-compelling talk called 'Fun with Hydrangeas', delivered by a Mrs. Whittaker. Screenwriter George Axelrod evidently lifted the entire monologue from a seed catalogue.

The Garden Club meeting is the main feature of the recurring nightmare experienced by both Captain Bennett Marco (Sinatra) and Corporal Al Melvin (James Edwards).

In Marco's dreams all the elderly ladies are white, and in Melvin's dream they're black.

Answer: They were the first black actors cast in non-black-specific roles

The 1962 version of 'The Manchurian Candidate' broke ground in several areas, not the least of which was casting black actors in roles that did not specifically require a black man in the part. Joe Adams played the consulting psychiatrist called in by the army when Marco first tells his colonel about his recurring nightmare. James Edwards played Corporal Al Melvin, a member of Marco's platoon who shares the same nightmare.

Answer: Prizzi's Honor

'Prizzi's Honor' starred Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner as assassins hired to kill one another. It was directed by John Huston whose daughter Anjelica Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Maerose Prizzi.

'The Third Man' (1949), directed by Carol Reed, is a thriller set in post-war Vienna and starred Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. Graham Greene wrote both the book on which the movie is based and the screenplay. The film also introduced most of us to the zither, the musical instrument on which Anton Karas played the movie's haunting theme (which he had also composed).

'The Day of the Jackal' (1973) was based on the book by Frederick Forsyth, with screenplay by Kenneth Ross. Fred Zinnerman directed this taut tale of an assassin called The Jackal (played with chilling precision by Edward Fox) who is hired to bump off French President Charles de Gaulle.

'Bad Day at Black Rock' (1955) starred Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and a whole gaggle of Hollywood stalwarts in a stark combination of film noir and western. Directed by John Sturges, the film was adapted for the screen by Don McGuire from a story by Howard Breslin.

Answer: Henry Silva

For a Brooklynite of Spanish-Sicilian descent, Henry Silva made a dandy Korean! Silva grew up in Harlem and when he was 13 he put paid to his regular schooling to study acting. He paid his way by working as a dishwasher and a waiter and 14 years later, when he was 27, he auditioned for a place at the prestigious Actors Studio, to study under its Artistic Director, the prominent acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Silva was one of five successful applicants out of 3,500 hopefuls! Strasberg taught the Stanislavsky Method and trained such luminaries as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Shelley Winters, Anthony Franciosa, Eva Marie Saint, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro...it's a long list of stars, and it even includes Marilyn Monroe who was already a star when she took lessons from Strasberg.

If you answered Han Suyin, you are hereby sentenced to one year of non-stop viewings of 'A Many-Splendored Thing', a sappy romance based on the novel of the same name by novelist/physician Suyin.

James Shigeta and Jack Soo starred in the film version of 'Flower Drum Song' (as Wang Ta, the romantic lead, and Sammy Fong, the playboy nightclub owner, respectively). You may remember Soo as the wise-cracking Sergeant Nick Yemana on 'Barney Miller'.

Answer: Dirty Harry

During the karate fight with Henry Silva, Sinatra smashed his hand on a table. The table was supposed to be a breakaway, but someone forgot to tell the Props Department, and the only thing that got broken was Sinatra's hand. He eventually required surgery on his hand to alleviate pain and restore mobility.

Some years after the release of 'The Manchurian Candidate', Sinatra was tapped to play Harry Callahan in 'Dirty Harry' but had to bow out because of the difficulties still affecting his hand eight years after the injury. Something tells me that Clint Eastwood has a lot to thank Sinatra for!