Hanks for the Memories Trivia Quiz

Answer: Robert Langdon

The 2006 film "The Da Vinci Code" was based on the 2003 thriller by Dan Brown. The protagonist is Robert Langdon who had first appeared in Brown's 2000 novel "Angels and Demons". Tom Hanks plays Langdon, the American symbologist, who is called to the Louvre to examine the dead body of the curator.

He comes across clues, murder attempts, secret organizations, the Holy Grail and a possible descendant of Christ. The movie "Angels and Demons" is the sequel though the book is the prequel!

Answer: Jimmy Dugan

The time is World War II and there is a dearth of males to partake in baseball, "the national pastime". In the Midwest, to fill the void, a women's professional baseball league is created. This is the plot of Penny Marshall's 1992 movie, "A League of Their Own". Has-been Jimmy Dugan (Hanks) takes on the coaching assignment for the Rockford Peaches and utters the now famous line "There's no crying in baseball".

Answer: Jim Lovell

The Apollo 13 launch was on April 11, 1970, and its safe landing occurred on April 17, 1970. The astronauts aboard were Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. In 1995, Ron Howard's film about this historic event was released and, despite the fact that we knew the outcome, it was still thrilling. Tom Hanks played Jim Lovell, as we relived the oxygen tank explosion, the aborted mission to land on the moon, ("Houston, we have a problem."), and their safe return.

Answer: Sam Baldwin

Writer and director Nora Ephron gave us the 1993 romantic comedy "Sleepless in Seattle". Taking a page from "An Affair to Remember", after Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) from Baltimore talks to widowed Sam Baldwin in Seattle (Hanks) on a radio program, they agree to meet at the Empire State Building in NYC on Valentine's Day. Sam has a young son, the one who initially made the call, and Annie is engaged to someone else but "the course of true love never did run smooth".

Answer: John H. Miller

In "Saving Private Ryan" from 1998, Steven Spielberg puts us in the middle of the Normandy Landings in World War II. We then find out about Private James Ryan, a paratrooper whose three brothers have all been killed in action, and whose mother learns of their deaths on the same day. To assuage some of her grief, US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall instructs a small group of eight men to go behind enemy lines to safely return the soldier. Tom Hanks portrays Captain Miller, the leader of the brave men assigned to the dangerous task.

Answer: Andrew Beckett

The poignant 1993 film "Philadelphia" depicts Andrew Beckett (Hanks) as an attorney at a high-powered law firm. Jonathan Demme ("The Silence of the Lambs") shows the fear and bigotry against Beckett after his lesions give him away, and his firm discovers he is a homosexual and HIV positive.

They fire him and he decides to sue for discrimination, hiring Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), the only lawyer who will handle the case.

Answer: Paul Edgecomb

Based on Stephen King's 1996 novel, "The Green Mile", we have the 1999 movie of the same name. The film begins in 1999, with Paul Edgecomb reminiscing about his days as as a prison officer on death row ("the Green Mile") in Cold Mountain Penitentiary in 1935.

Here Paul meets John Coffey, the black gentle giant who has been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of two white girls. Coffey is able to cure Paul's bladder infection, resurrect Mr. Jingles and cure the warden's wife. The life of John Coffey, this "miracle of God", ends sadly.

Answer: Chuck Noland

Tom Hanks puts on an almost one-man show in "Cast Away", a 2000 film directed by Robert Zemeckis ("Back to the Future"). Hanks plays Chuck Noland, an obsessive Federal Express executive. While traveling to Malaysia on an assignment, his plane crashes over the Pacific Ocean, with Chuck as the only survivor.

He lands on a deserted island (a la Gilligan and "Lost") and must use his wiles to survive, and his 'friend' Wilson to help retain his sanity.

Answer: Carl Hanratty

While Tom was not actually the protagonist in 2002's "Catch Me If You Can", his role as FBI agent Carl Hanratty was critical to the plot. Spielberg's film is based on the real life of conman and forger Frank Abagnale, Jr., played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

By the age of seventeen, in 1965, Abagnale had become the most successful bank robber in the history of the United States. He also worked as a doctor, a lawyer and a co-pilot before getting caught and, eventually, working with the FBI.

Answer: Joe Fox

For our last entry, we have Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks working together again with Nora Ephron; this time in the 1998 film "You've Got Mail". This rom-com is the high tech version of the old Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies. Here the struggling bookseller Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) hates her chain-store competitor Joe Fox (Hanks).

However, when they meet online anonymously, an internet romance begins. Eventually, Joe finds out that his online love is his real life rival, and he has to reconcile the dichotomy.