Facts on Famous Movie Stars Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Wayne

The comical thing was that John Wayne had a real dislike for this movie. He felt "it was an allegory for blacklisting, which he actively supported". Years later when being interviewed by a magazine, he said he considered it "the most un-American thing I've seen in my whole life". The movie's basic plot, a good old western, was that of a valiant town marshal, facing up to a gang of ruthless killers all by himself, due to lack of support by the townspeople.

Cooper was good friends, not only with John Wayne, but also with Jimmy Stewart. It would be Stewart who would then go on to accept Cooper's honorary Oscar in 1961, just before the announcement came that Cooper was dying of cancer. So upset was he over his friend's looming death, Stewart barely made it through the acceptance speech. Gary Cooper, who was born in 1901, died in May, 1961, one month after this event. During his career, not only did he win an honorary Academy Award, he was nominated five other times for his work in films. He won it twice, for "High Noon" in 1952 and for "Sergeant York" in 1941. "Sergeant York" tells the true story of the American Alvin York, who fought in WWI, and was that war's most decorated hero.

Answer: He had a heart murmur.

He was rejected when he tried to enlist because of this. This great old actor was not only known for his comedic film partnership with fellow actor Dean Martin. He was also known for his singing, producing, directing, screenwriting and for his variety television shows. Actually his normal singing voice, as opposed to the ridiculous one he used in his comedies, was quite pleasant, and he released several records and an album of the same.

He and Dean Martin split their film partnership when Martin grew tired of the puerile scripts they were given, but maintained their friendship, after a short cooling off period, until Martin's death in 1995.

In 2005, Lewis released a book he'd written. It was called "Dean and Me (A Love Story)" and tells of their working life together, and their friendship. Perhaps more than anything else, however, the greatest achievement of Jerry Lewis - apart from the gift of laughter he gave to the world - was his lifelong support into fundraising research for the terrible childhood disease muscular dystrophy.

Answer: She was underage.

Betty had a stage mum, one of those ghastly women who push their children, sometimes under appalling pressure, into the world of entertainment. She disguised Betty's youth with make-up and hair dye (platinum blonde) for the first film in which the girl had a role. That was as a chorus dancer in the 1929 film "Happy Days". Betty was only twelve at the time. For her second, and unknown film, her mother obtained a false I.D. for the child.

When this was revealed, she was fired. Betty, however, went on to become a talented actress, singer and dancer in her own right (and at the right age).

Her best known film was the 1947 musical "Mother Wore Tights", in which her character went to New York to attend business school but ended spending a lifetime in showbusiness instead.

By the time she made that film, she had also become known as the number one pin-up girl for American soldiers during World War Two. As an example of her physical appeal, such was the fame of her shapely legs, that they were insured for one million dollars with Lloyds of London. Betty died, aged 56, of lung cancer.

She was replaced as the studio's top money spinner by the tragic Marilyn Monroe.

Answer: He had an Irish voice coach.

I think that's awfully funny - an Irishman teaching an American how to speak cockney English. In spite of this, the musical, which details the effect the magical Mary Poppins has on an entire family and all around her, was an outstanding success. So that's one in the eye for the critics.

Born in 1925, Dick Van Dyke's outstanding career spanned six decades in the film and television industry. The television production of "Diagnosis: Murder" was particularly successful, and ran from 1993 to 2001, In this show, in which he played a doctor helping solve complicated murders, and for which he was one of the producers, this great entertainer and family man included many of his children, grandchildren and other family members in various roles from time to time.

His son Barry was also a co-star in the series.

Answer: She and Lizzie Borden were related.

They were in fact sixth cousins once removed, descended from the same ancestor, who lived in Massachusetts in the 17th century. Elizabeth, as far as anyone knows, was unaware of this. She was nominated for an award for her work in this film however. Perhaps it was for a very lifelike performance? During her career, she made more than twenty movies, in addition to her famous television role in the series "Bewitched". Two of these movies include ""A Case of Rape" (1974) in which she played a woman who was raped twice by the same man; and "Amos" (1985) in which she gave a chilling performance as the head of a nursing home who killed the inmates one by one when they became too tiresome to be nursed properly.

In "Bewitched" which ran from 1964 to 1972, Elizabeth played the beautiful witch Samantha Stevens, who was forever intervening between her most loved human husband Darrin, and her tormenting family of witches and warlocks. Salem, Massachusetts, where several episodes of the show were shot, is notable for its infamous Witch Trials which were held in 1692.

In 2005, a statue of Elizabeth was erected - in her persona of Samantha Stevens the witch - in this city.

Answer: The audience kept laughing.

Unfortunately, the young budding actor couldn't deliver his lines and remain serious at the same time. Laughter was the result. Born to make audiences laugh, Red Skelton first saw light in 1913 in Indiana. His father had worked as a clown with a well known circus for some time, before settling down to more sober work as a grocer. Laughter was therefore in Red Skelton's genes it seems, a fact he realised very early in life. From the age of ten he was making people roar with amusement, and by fourteen he was classed as a veteran vaudeville performer. In between times he had attempted to try that piece of dramatic acting. He also worked on a showboat during this period of his life, the lucky lad. By 1931 he was married and working with his wife in an act in Montreal, where he developed his famous "Doughnut Dunkers" routine, in which he impersonated the different ways in which people ate doughnuts. Unfortunately he had to eat nine doughnuts for each performance of this routine, and as the show went on five times a day, he very rapidly gained a large amount of weight. Really suffering for his art, he was subsequently put on a strict diet.

Skelton's many films included "Ship Ahoy" (1942) and "The Fuller Brush Man" (1948). Along the way, he was drafted into the army during the second world war in 1944, where he entertained the troops in ten to twelve shows per day. The intense workload involved in this saw him eventually suffer a nervous breakdown in 1945, and he was subsequently discharged. This funny man who made people laugh for most of his life, either on radio, stage, television or in film, revealed a deeper, more sensitive side in an astonishing output of songs, short stories and paintings. He wrote at least one short story a week, and had over 8,000 songs and symphonies to his credit...absolutely amazing. Red Skelton died from pneumonia in 1997, leaving behind a legacy which enabled a performing arts centre to be constructed at Vincennes University in Indiana, the town in which he was born.

Answer: Taking a packed lunch to work

Oh well, so what? There's nothing in the rules that says the rich and famous should eat diamond studded steak. MacMurray's lunch always came packaged in a brown paper bag and usually included a hard boiled egg. Somehow that seems to suit the personalities he played in many of his films and in his well known television series, "My Three Sons" - that of an ordinary, decent sort of fellow devoted to family life.

His fellow colleagues however nicknamed him "The Thrifty Multimillionaire". In his film career, MacMurray specialised in light comedies usually, but he was also more than capable of playing much heavier, and even villainous, roles.

His more than eighty films included "Take a Letter, Darling" in 1942, "Double Indemnity" in 1944 and "The Absent-Minded Professor" in 1961. Fred was born in 1908 in Illinois.

He died in California in 1991 from pneumonia, following a long struggle against leukemia.

Answer: A park

This lovely park, which was dedicated in 2005, is called, what else, "The Borgnine Park". Ernest Borgnine (born in 1917) displayed an amazing ability for character portrayals, right throughout his long career, in the more than one hundred films he made. These included the cruel, fat Sergeant Judson in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity"; the sympathetic and likeable Major General Worden in the 1967 film "The Dirty Dozen"; and the warm-hearted, Italian-American butcher, Marty, looking for love, in the film of the same name. He won an Academy Award for the latter, and was nominated very many times for his countless appearances in various forms of entertainment right throughout his acting career. These included stage, film, and television performances. To my sorrow (because I detest the idiotic show) this also included his voiceover work as the Mermaid Man in the cartoon series "SpongeBob SquarePants".

Nor should we overlook his starring roles in three separate television shows. These were "McHale's Navy" (1962-66) as the rough-around-the-edges but very likeable skipper Lieutenant Commander McHale; "Airwolf" (1983-86) as the helicopter pilot; and "The Single Guy" (1995-97) as the doorman, Manny. A sterling career was topped off when, at the age of 92, he received an Emmy Award nomination for playing the grieving husband of a woman who had just died, in the final episode of the series "ER" (1994-2009). Still going strong in 2010, he appeared in the movie "Red" that same year. Ernest Borgnine - one amazing actor.

Answer: Gilda

In the 1946 movie "Gilda", Rita Hayworth played the traditional femme fatale. The movie included a sensational striptease number by her. All film-goers got to see however was her seductive removal of one glove. The rest was left up to their imagination. She had already sent men's hearts racing earlier in the forties, following a particularly provocative photograph of her (for the times) that appeared in the magazine "Life". In this she was dressed in a negligee and posed alluringly on a bed. Racy! Relating to this film, such was its appeal that, when the first nuclear tests commenced in the Marshall Islands in 1946, the name Gilda was painted across the first bomb that detonated. A dubious honour to be sure.

Born in 1918 as Margarita Carmen Cansino to a Spanish father and an Irish/English mother, Rita Hayworth's life was far more interesting than any of the characters she played in the 61 films she made throughout her career. Dominated by her father who wanted her to become a famous dancer, her childhood was one of constant bullying by him as he forced her to endlessly practice dance routines. Her road to fame at first consisted of small parts in films, in which she played exotic roles befitting her then Spanish appearance. It would be when studio head Harry Cohn made her change her looks that her career leapt into top gear. This appearance change consisted of repeated electrolysis to lift her hairline, and a hair colour change from her natural dark brown to a striking redhead. Cohn controlled and bullied Hayworth as much as her father had, even to the extent, it was suggested, of bugging her dressing room.

Years of this bullying by both father and studio head saw Hayworth make five disastrous marriages, all to men with the same nature, who, in some cases, even abused her physically and financially. She began to drink heavily and this increased as her looks began to deteriorate, a fact she found incredibly distressing. By 1974, she began having what everyone assumed to be alcoholic outbursts of rage. The drinking, they said, also had a deteriorating effect on her memory and she could only shoot movies at one line at a time. She basically went through a decade of this horror until finally, in the early 1980s, her true diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease was discovered, whereupon she was placed into the care of her daughter. Poor, sad Gilda died in 1987, completely trapped somewhere in her own mind.

Answer: Carmen Miranda

Poor Carmen Miranda. She grew to hate that hat with a passion. Born in Brazil, of Portuguese parents, in 1909, she went on to a top-notch career in Hollywood and was the highest paid performer in America for several years. Her signature hat, piled with fruit, first appeared in the 1943 film "The Gang's All Here", but alas, it would be for her hat and not her fine singing, dancing and acting that she would be forever associated and remembered.

It was lampooned and satirized in various news articles and stage productions, and became a standard performance number of many drag performers. Even Bugs Bunny parodied it in one of Warner Brothers Cartoons. Comically so, on a return visit to her home country in the 1940s she was then severely criticised for portraying Brazilians in such a ridiculous fashion. Carmen died in 1955 on the night following an appearance on "The Jimmy Durante Show" in which she sang and danced.

She was honoured after her death in various ways. These included a biography written by Ruy Castro, two museums in South America dedicated to her costumes, a nightclub in Sydney named after her, and, amusingly so in 1982, a hot air balloon in her image - complete with a fruit piled hat.