Yellow in Entertainment Trivia Quiz

Answer: When yellow leaves or none or few do hang

Sonnet 73 is one of Shakespeare's most lovely ones. The image of the yellow leaves is that of autumn and rapidly approaching winter, likened to old age and approaching death. For most of this lovely piece of writing, it would appear to be a poem about the speaker himself. However, as in all Shakespeare's sonnets, it is the last two lines that contain the real message of the work - and the real person to whom the sonnet is addressed. That message is to urge a young nobleman (and any reader at any time in history) of his acquaintance to love while he can and love strongly at that. Before it all slips away forever. A tip for reading Shakespeare is to cover up each sonnet with a piece of paper or anything similar - and move that paper down only one line at a time. That gives you time to absorb and comprehend each beautiful line fully before moving on to the next. The complete sonnet follows below:

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long."

Answer: John Wayne

"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is a 1949 western starring John Wayne. "Howdy, pilgrims". As with all John Wayne's movie, the strong personality of the actor submerges the character in the film. He's always John Wayne in every film in which he takes part, unlike other actors who have the ability to become each character they play. This movie relates the story of an aging cavalry captain taking his troops on a final mission to deal with an Indian uprising following Custer's defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Just to throw in a couple of token females, he must also deliver the wife and daughter of his superior officer to a stagecoach along the way - and avert the possibility of an Indian War into the bargain. You get the picture? Of course he ultimately succeeds in his dealings with the Indians, but only after appearing to fail first - and of course, he ends up with the daughter as well. The usual. Hopefully nobody ever takes those old western movies as true to life history. If they did, they must surely wonder how the west was ever populated by Europeans at all. There's only one or two females in each film, but hundreds of rootin' tootin' hollerin' scalpin' cowboys and Indians doing their best to eliminate one another completely.

Incidentally, the official colour of the US army's armour branch is yellow. This is often depicted in those old westerns in the neck kerchiefs worn by cavalry soldiers - even though a yellow neckerchief was not actually part of the official dress code. The men frequently worn one though - for the purpose of wiping the dust from their faces and out of their eyes. Also, the title of the film was adapted from an old 1917 song originally called "'Round Her Neck She Wears a Yeller Ribbon", which apparently was an old military marching song. Perhaps it was, but if so, it certainly wasn't around in the time period in which the film is set. That's what is meant by never mistaking those old westerns as historical truth. Still, it was a great old movie for its time as far as entertainment value went, and very popular with audiences everywhere. Well, probably with the exception of native Americans, that is.

Answer: Girlfriend of a gangster

Made in 1964, "The Yellow Rolls-Royce" starred a host of big name stars, including Rex Harrison, Shirley MacLaine, Ingrid Gergman and Omar Sharif. It tells the story of a yellow Rolls-Royce as it passes from owner to owner over time. It was initially purchased by a wealthy nobleman (Harrison) as a wedding anniversary for his French wife, but when he finds her and her lover canoodling in the back seat, he takes the car back. Miles later the vehicle belongs to a Maharajah, and then eventually to a gangster and his bored girlfriend (MacLaine) who are on holiday in Italy. She too is eventually found in the back of the Rolls with a fellow she's fallen for, but reluctantly leaves him and goes back to her gangster.

Ten years into the future sees the poor neglected Rolls now up for sale in a car repair yard, where it is marked down as a bargain. There it is purchased by an American widow (Bergman) who is holidaying in Europe during the Second World War. Was she insane?! However, while there, she is reluctantly forced to smuggle a Yugoslavian (Sharif) across the border while he hides in the boot of the Rolls. They fall in love of course and she ends up ferrying several carloads of partisans to safety in the mountains. Sharif then asks her to return to the US and tell everyone of the horror she has witnessed back in Europe. That she does, for we next see the yellow Rolls being unloaded from a ship in New York, and then driving off into the distance on its next adventure. What an unsatisfactory ending.

This film was not particularly successful at the box office, and it's not hard to see why. It's more a series of episodes than one connecting thread. Time magazine actually described it as an "an elegant, old-fashioned movie about roadside sex". It still crops up from time to time on late night television if you ever want to see it. I wouldn't bother, though.

Answer: Vincent Van Gogh

This painting by the sorrowful Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) goes by either of the titles suggested in the question (with or with the word yellow), and is sometime also known as "Still Life with Hat and Pipe". The dates too for when it was painted vary between 1881 and 1885. The exceptionally prolific Van Gogh painted 913 painting in his all too short and tortured life, and more than another 1,000 sketches. It's a happy painting, in bright cheerful colours, and with those colours blending harmoniously in the one. In addition, the further back from the painting one steps, the more of an almost three-dimensional effect it begins to have on the viewer. Quite amazingly so.

In that lifetime which produced so many "portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, olive trees, cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers", but was also dotted with lengthy periods of illness, darkness of mind and isolation, the tormented Van Gogh sold only a very small handful of his works while he was alive. Of all those wondrously coloured and - yes, for the most part - happy works, to only sell such a pitiful few. It's too cruel. Today, his works sell for millions of dollars. The tragedy of his creative genius is that, while his mind continued to torture him so dreadfully until he could take no more, the majority of his paintings are somehow very happy. His colours, in the main, are cheerful and bright, as indeed are most of his subjects, and a viewing of same leaves one feeling cheerful and uplifted - an utter contrast to the dark and struggling mind that painted them. It was as though Vincent was trying to capture happiness on the page before him when he couldn't capture it in his soul. It's heartbreaking.

Answer: Brian Hyland

This light-hearted song was written by Paul Vance and Lea Pockriss in 1960 and made popular by Brian Hyland on the music charts of the time. It tells the tale of a modest young girl who has a new bikini to wear to the beach. However, when she first puts her "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" on in the change room, she is rather horrified at all it reveals, and initially refuses to go outside wearing it. The next verse tells us that our modest young miss finally makes it down to the beach, but only while she is wrapped in a blanket. There she sits, initially too afraid to let the blanket drop and go into the water. The last verse sees the unfortunate girl in the water at last, but now too afraid to come back out again, so she is stuck there still at the close of the song, turning a delightful shade of blue.

At the time this song was written, bikinis were still considered shocking enough to raise the eyebrows of the tut-tut brigade. Yes, dear readers, unbelievable isn't it? Today, with beach-goers wearing nothing but a painful looking string pulled up between their buttocks, or nothing at all, there was a time when the bikini was considered to be the height of immodesty. Anyway, the upshot of this song, ironically enough, was that bikini sales shot through the roof.

Answer: She did

Joni Mitchell's 1970 recording of "Big Yellow Taxi" rapidly climbed towards the top of the charts in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom when it was released in those countries, but only made it as high as number 67 on the US charts at that time. This excellent protest song, which was also composed by Joni, was written while she was on a trip to Hawaii. Joni said during an interview in the 1970s that, when she woke up on her first morning in that lovely land, she looked out over the beautiful mountains in the distance, but then looked down below - and all she could see as far as she looked was a huge parking lot. The song was the result. Some of its lyrics follow below:

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot...

They took all the trees, and put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot...

Hey farmer, farmer, put away your DDT
I don't care about spots on my apples,
Leave me the birds and the bees
Please
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot..."

Answer: On a cattle and oil ranch in Texas

"The Yellow Rose" featured on the television screen for one short season of twenty-two episodes only. It seems a shame really but perhaps it was the story line of the show which saw its demise. It basically was a more skittish form of the very popular series "Dallas", and tried to outdo that show in over the top story lines. Nobody could out-villain the villainous but lovable J.R. Ewing from "Dallas", now could they? Set on a cattle and oil ranch in Texas - called The Yellow Rose - this was one series that saw its flower wilt on its stem, in spite of its quite impressive cast that included stars such as David Soul, Cybil Shepherd, Jane Russell and Chuck Connors.

Oh, the clue in the question? The name of the show comes from that popular old American song, "The Yellow Rose of Texas". Surprisingly, that song has been around since 1853, and performed by very many singers, including Elvis Presley, ever since.

Answer: London

"Yellow Dog" has to be quite the worst book ever written. It appears to have taken every single woeful story line ever penned and then combined them all into a mish-mash of revulsion. A few of these story lines include the following: A violent London gangster, Mick Meo, who has died in prison, his son Xan, a young man so badly beaten that his personality undergoes a radical transformation, rival gangs, one of whom is led by Mick Meo's arch-enemy, Joseph Andrews, Xan's academic wife, Russia, who is studying families of tyrants, a seductress called Cora who is seeking revenge on Xan because Xan's father had crippled her own father - even though her father was sexually abusing her. Zzzz. Oh - wh - what, sorry, I nodded off.

Then there's a porn actress thrown in somewhere for good luck, the revelation that Xan's father isn't Mick Meo after all, but the villainous Joseph, a ruling monarch called Henry IX (huh, where'd he come from?), his daughter who has been secretly filmed in the nude, with the video tape about to be given to the media, the king's mistress, He Zhizhen, who is working behind the scenes with a-finger-in-every-pie Joseph to bring the king undone, plus a few henchmen, one of whom is called Simon Finger, a cad who is planning to bash up Xan's wife. And then there's the possibility of an abdication and the abolishment of the monarchy as well! The plot thickens!

Oh no, we're still not done. I think the author must have been permanently intoxicated. There's also a tabloid newspaper reporter who is sexually unable to perform, or rather, unable to perform sexually, a maverick football player who likes to bash up women, naughty mobile phone messages (I'm not sure if Shane Warne was involved in those) - wait, no, it turns out they're from a transsexual, plus a couple of murders carried out by the enraged tabloid reporter who is beginning to feel quite excited about the naughty text messages until he discovers who is sending them, somebody blinded in another fight - and oh noooo, this is just too hilarious! There's also an airliner having to make an emergency landing to avert a terrible accident, and, wait for it, a comet passing dangerously close to our planet and the fear of total annihilation. One can only hope, after a reading of that trashy work, that the author would be the first to go.

Answer: Charlotte Gilman

Charlotte Gilman (1830-1895) was an American feminist, sociologist, and writer of short stories, poetry and assorted articles. The majority of these, and her own life, concentrated on feminist issues. "The Yellow Wallpaper", one of her many short stories, is written in the form of a journal by the main character, a woman who has been isolated from all stimulation beyond that which is absolutely necessary, in order to recover from a temporary nervous depression. Instead, the smothering effects of that lack of stimulation sends her deeper and deeper into insanity. She becomes obsessed with the colour and the pattern of her wallpaper, and begins to imagine women are crawling around on it, herself included. Finally, she refuses to leave her room altogether, but instead locks herself in and begins to strip the paper off the walls. When her husband finally forces his way in, he finds her crawling around the room on all fours and chortling to herself that she has escaped the wallpaper at last.

A depressing and horrible story altogether. However, two of Charlotte's quotes in particular from other works are hilarious, because they make the reader laugh BUT also think about their message at the same time - and that is a brilliant way to teach. They are as follows: (1) "The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses" and, my favourite, "There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver."

Answer: Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich - oh what a name to have to spell, thank goodness for copy and paste - Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich lived from 1906 to 1975. The Soviet government he initially admired helped him on his way to good old socialist fame, but he later had a somewhat troubled with those mentors. Surviving all, and working hand in glove with the Soviets, he found himself heaped with various accolades state medals by the time his life came to an end. In a way, it's a shame he had that association, as his many works and his musical genius, if not his story telling, would have possibly led him to fame regardless of same.

"The Golden Age" a work whose description tends to make one grimace, is about a Soviet football team on a visit to an unnamed city in the west, replete with such characters as the Diva, Fascists, a wicked fellow inciting others to break the law, a "negro" and other politically incorrect characters, all symbolic of an evil bourgeoisie that the Soviets despise. The noble Soviet football is harassed by the police, has to deal with match fixing and is finally thrown into prison by the corrupt western government. Dear me. All is not lost for the team however, for the local workers in the town in which they seem doomed to spend their years, rebel against the "capitalist overlords" and the footballers are set free. The ballet concludes with the workers and the burly footballers all dancing delightfully as one. Somehow one suspects that any rugby footballer player seeing that ballet (an unlikely scenario) would likewise rebel at their idea of being portrayed as ballet dancers. But perhaps it was a soccer team instead.