Arts & Books Mixed Bag 8 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Peter Benchley

I could have asked "Who wrote 'Jaws'?", but I'm sure you've all seen that question a hundred times before. The answer is the same, though, Peter Benchley.
'The Deep' also starred Robert Shaw, who played Quint in 'Jaws'. Jacquelline Bisset, Lou Gossett jr, Eli Wallach and Nick Nolte round out an all-star cast.
'The Island' did not find favor with the critics or at the box office. Indeed, it earned Golden Raspberry nominations for Michael Caine (Worst Actor) and Michael Richie (Worst Director)?
Benchley was born in New York City in 1940 and died in 2006 aged 65.

Answer: Madama Butterfly

I could have made this one easier by telling you that Sharpless was the US consul to Nagasaki, or by mentioning the principal female characters, the eponymous Cio-Cio San and her maid, Suzuki. Other male roles include Prince Yamadori and Cio-Cio San's uncles, Yakuside and The Bonze.
Of the alternatives, the poet Rodolfo provides the tenor's role in 'La Bohème'. The painter Mario Cavaradossi and Baron Scarpia are the principal male roles in 'Tosca'. The sheriff Jack Rance and the bandit Dick Johnson/Ramirez fulfill those roles in 'La Fanciulla del West' (The Girl of the Golden West).

Answer: Peter Paul Rubens

Born in Siegen in southern Westphalia, Rubens is the best known of the 17th-Century Flemish Baroque artists. I could have made this question harder by asking which artist was also such a skilled diplomat that he was knighted by two different monarchs -- King Charles I of England and King Philip IV of Spain. Store that piece of trivia somewhere as I'm sure someone will ask one day. It is Rubens' depiction of voluptuous women in paintings such as 'Venus with a Mirror' and 'The Three Graces' that gives rise to the term 'Rubenesque'.

The term has been replaced to some extent of late by the acronym BBW (Big Beautiful Women), which was coined by Carole Shaw when she launched 'BBW Magazine' in 1979.

Answer: William Faulkner

Born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi in 1897, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and is now considered one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. Most of Faulkner's works are set in his home state, with his fictional town of 'Jefferson' based on Oxford MS (where Faulkner grew up) and his Yoknapatawpha County based on Lafayette County MS. The alternatives are three more American Pulitzer winners. Mailer won in 1968 for 'Armies of the Night' and in 1979 for 'The Executioner's Song'. Michener won in 1948 for 'Tales of the South Pacific'. Drury won in 1960 for the novel 'Advise and Consent'.

Answer: Jerome K Jerome

Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall in 1859. His best-known work, 'Three Men in a Boat', published in 1889, was actually based on his honeymoon a year earlier: a boat trip down the Thames with his new wife and her young daughter.
Regular quizzers should look out for questions concerning the opening line of this: "There were four of us." Don't forget the dog, whose name, incidentally, is Montmorency. Another potential question, I'm sure.
The alternatives are three more English humorists... Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, the creator of Jeeves, was born in Guildford in 1881. John Boynton Priestley was born in Bradford in 1894. Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was born in London in 1872.

Answer: Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was born in 1873 into an aristocratic family in Semyonovo, near Novgorod in northwestern Russia. His 'Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor' is often known simply as 'Rach 3'. The most famous recordings of this concerto are by the composer himself and by Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

Indeed, Rachmaninoff was apparently so impressed with a recital that Horowitz gave for him in 1941 that he vowed never to play it again himself. The concerto is the focal piece in the 1996 film 'Shine', in which a young pianist enters a competition intending to play 'Rach 3'.

As he practices relentlessly, striving for perfection, so his mental state deteriorates. Geoffrey Rush won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the piano player, David Helfgott. If you haven't seen the film, rush out and rent it tonight, both for Rush's performance and for the fantastic score.

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

I'm sure you know what 'The Vitruvian Man' looks like, even if you had no idea what it was called. It is da Vinci's famous pen-and-ink depiction of a naked male figure superimposed in two positions, arms and legs apart and inscribed in both a circle and a square. The drawing, which was made around 1487, also contains copious notations.
This work is also sometimes known as 'Proportions of Man' or 'The Canon of Proportions'.
This is one of the more difficult of the great works of art to view. Although it is housed in 'Gallerie dell'Accademia' in Venice, it is only very rarely displayed.

Answer: The French Lieutenant's Woman

This one would have been too easy if I had told you that the film starred Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. Set in Victorian England, the film was directed by Karel Reisz and the screenplay was written by Harold Pinter. Both Pinter and Streep earned Oscar nominations for their work on the film.

The author's choice to play the character of Sarah/Anna was Helen Mirren, but no doubt he was happy with Streep's performance. The alternatives are three of the other nominations for 'Best Adapted Screenplay' in 1981. 'On Golden Pond', which won, was written by Ernest Thompson, adapted from his own play. 'Ragtime' was adapted by Michael Weller from E.L. Doctrow's historical novel. 'Pennies from Heaven' was adapted by Dennis Potter from his own 1978 BBC mini-series.

Answer: 19th

Alfred Tennyson, and later 1st Baron Tennyson, was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire in 1809. He succeeded William Wordsworth as English Poet Laureate in 1850 and retained that position until his death at the age of 83 in 1892. He is probably best known for his 1854 narrative poem about the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'.

He is also one of England's most quoted poets, even though people may not always know the source of sayings such as "it's better to have loved and lost" or "ours not to reason why".

Indeed, a good illustration of what a prolific writer Tennyson was is that he is the answer to the question: "Other than Shakespeare, who appears most often in 'The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations'?"

Answer: John Grisham

John Grisham's first novel, 'Time to Kill', was written while he was still a practicing attorney, and was rejected by numerous publishers before eventually being given a limited print run in 1988. His second book, 'The Firm', made it to number seven on the list of America's bestselling novels of 1991, and he has since produced one novel a year. From 1994 until 2000 he had a number one bestseller every year, something no one else had ever done. With more than 60 million copies sold, he is easily the bestselling author of the 1990s. To give you some idea of what a phenomenal success Grisham's novels are, consider that few authors sell more than two million copies on the first printing, mostly pre-ordered copies (JK Rowling and Tom Clancy are in the elite group who do so). For Grisham's 1992 novel, 'The Pelican Brief', this figure exceeded 11,000,000 in the US alone.