1967: The Year in Entertainment Quiz

Answer: Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever

The Beatles were so remarkably prolific all throughout the sixties that even if a few months went by without a new release, the public clamored for more and EMI, their record company, got nervous. The last Beatles release had been on August 5, 1966--both the LP "Revolver" and the single "Yellow Submarine" were released on that date--so it had been a mere six months between releases, a pace unimaginable in today's pop music market. Still, EMI insisted so this double A-side single was released. Both songs were masterpieces, among the greatest songs the band would create during a career that was full of great songs.

Answer: A Man for All Seasons

This tale of Thomas More, who stood up to King Henry VIII when the King rejected the Roman Catholic Church so he could divorce and remarry, is kind of a bore, to be perfectly honest. It is not nearly as engaging as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", the other stage-to-screen adaptation that was up for best picture that year. Director Fred Zinneman and lead actor Paul Scofield both took home Oscars as well.

"A Man for All Seasons" was released in 1966; 1967, as we will see later in this quiz, was a different time. The impact of a handful of films released in '67 would forever change the American Cinema.

Answer: Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu

Priscilla's Air Force captain father was stationed in Germany at the same time as Private Elvis Presley. It was 1959 and Priscilla was only 14 years old, ten years younger than Elvis. Eight years later, they were finally married. By October of 1973, the marriage was over.

Answer: A Day in the Life

"I'd love to turn you on"--this is the lyric that would raise the eyebrows of the BBC watchdogs. John Lennon would state publicly that they weren't talking about drugs, that by "turn you on" they meant "turn you on to the truth" but, really, who were they kidding?! Either way, it's an extraordinary song, yet another masterpiece from the boys from Liverpool. Rolling Stone magazine would rank "A Day in the Life" as the 28th greatest song of all time. I'd rank it higher but nobody asked me.

Answer: The Monkees

"The Monkees" debuted on NBC on September 12, 1966 and was an immediate success, due in large part to the nearly simultaneous release of the band's first single, "Last Train to Clarksville". The song topped the charts in November of that year and anchored their self-titled debut album. The Emmy win on June 4 was considered quite an upset, beating out long-time favorites "The Andy Griffith Show", "Bewitched", "Get Smart", and "Hogan's Heroes".

If the TV show doesn't hold up particularly well more than fifty years later, the music certainly does. Hits like "I'm a Believer", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Daydream Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" still sound fresh.

Answer: Donovan

The Monterey International Pop Music Festival is often credited as having kicked off the Summer of Love. It certainly established California as the center of the counterculture and the music that represented it. Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, The Mamas and the Papas, the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix all played the historic festival.

Donovan was scheduled to perform but, due to a 1966 drug bust, he was denied a visa to the U.S. The Beach Boys, the Kinks, Bob Dylan, and even the Beatles were rumored to be on the bill but, alas, they were all no-shows. Didn't seem to hurt the Festival, which still goes down as one of the seminal musical and cultural events of the decade.

Answer: Hair

"Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" brought rock and roll into the American theatre. Long before rock became mainstream in musicals such as "American Idiot" and "Jersey Boys", the musical theatre world had a hard time coming to terms with rock music. After all, before the advent of rock in the '50s and '60s, much of popular music sprang from the Broadway musical. A great many standards from the '20s, '30s and '40s came from Broadway shows. Elvis and the Beatles changed all that and "Hair" rode that rock and roll wave to success in the theatre and, in so doing, paved the way for other shows to come.

"Hair" tells the story of a 'tribe' of hippies living a Bohemian lifestyle in New York City. Espousing a free-love, anti-war philosophy, the show had a successful run at Joe Papp's Public Theatre in late '67; it opened on Broadway in April of 1968 and lasted four years on the Great White Way. It's cast album became a best-seller and several songs from the show--"Aquarius", "Good Morning, Starshine", and the title track--became pop hits. A (dreadful) film adaptation followed in the 1980s and a Tony-winning revival in 2009 won the musical a new generation of fans.

Answer: Brian Epstein

Brian Epstein, the man who put the Beatles on the road to unprecedented success, died too early. He was only 32 when, on August 27, 1967, he died of an overdose of Carbitral, a form of barbiturate. There is little doubt that Epstein's premature death hastened the break-up of the Beatles a little more than 2 years later.

Epstein had read about the Beatles in Mersey Beat, a local newspaper devoted to the Liverpool rock and roll scene in the early '60s. A visit to the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played regularly, convinced Epstein to sign the boys to a management contract. He cleaned up their act, put them in matching suits and, after a Herculean effort, secured them a recording contract at EMI. The rest, as they say, is history.

Answer: The Graduate

"The Graduate", directed by Mike Nichols, tells the story of a young man, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman in his breakout role), who falls into an affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the alcoholic wife of his father's business partner. Almost as haphazardly, he falls out of the affair and into love with Elaine...that's right, Mrs. R's daughter! Wackiness and heartbreak ensue.

Along with the equally iconic "Bonnie and Clyde", another '67 release, "The Graduate" perfectly captured the youthful spirit of the era. Both films were smash hits and caught studio heads off guard. The film business changed as these same execs came to realize that young people--those dreaded "Don't trust anyone under 30" long hair types--were the box-office target to pursue. Dreck like "Dr. Doolittle" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was still getting made and still getting Oscar nominations but, make no mistake, things were changing. The Spielberg/Coppola/Lucas/Scorsese revolution of the '70s might not have happened had it not been for films like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate."

Answer: Otis Redding

Only days before his death in the plane crash, Redding recorded what was to become his biggest hit--"Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay". The song remains the only posthumous hit to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts.

Losing Otis was a profound blow to music and culture. He is, to this day, considered one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music. Artists from the Rolling Stones to Janis Joplin, from Led Zeppelin to Al Green all credit Otis Redding as an important influence.