Mamma's Good Lookin' Trivia Quiz

Answer: Little Lord Fauntleroy

Mary Pickford was already close to her thirties when she impersonated little Lord Fauntleroy and his mom in 1921. Double exposure wasn't new to the audience, but this time mom and son seemed to touch each other.

The story is well known: After the death of his heir, an Earl imports the child of a younger late son: little Cedric. Sadly his mother is American, and the Earl doesn't want to meet the lady. But both mother and child are close to sainthood, something that can't be ignored by the old boy. After some trouble with a fake Lord, they live happily ever after.

Heidi (from an original story by Johanna Spyri) also had a grumpy grandfather to deal with, and she also changed him, but he was a Swiss living in the Alps. Beautiful Madge Evans was a pretty Swiss Miss in 1920.

"Lord Jim" was written by Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim is a simple seaman, not a real Lord. You had a chance to see Percy Marmont play Lord Jim in 1925. The film director was Victor Fleming, who is better remembered for directing "The Wizard of Oz".

"Lady Windermere's Fan" was a play by Oscar Wilde. It was made into a movie by the great Ernst Lubitsch, also in 1925.

Answer: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

To continue: after a nice day in a town, they couple takes the boat again. This time there is a real accident, and the man (the don't have names in the movie) thinks his wife has drowned. He tries to strangle his lover, but is stopped by the news that his wife has been saved. The actress who plays the wife and mother (the one with the strange blond wig), Janet Gaynor, did receive an Academy Award in 1929 as Best Actress in a Leading Role, not only for this movie, but for all her works in the year before, making her the first to get this prize.

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was one of the most important directors of the silent era. The wrong answers are well known movies he had made before he took the ship from Germany to Hollywood. "Sunrise" was his first work in the USA.

Answer: Anna Karenina

Directed by Clarence Brown, this 1935 Hollywood blockbuster told the love story of Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky. She leaves her son Sergej and her husband to live with her lover. He leaves her to go to war. She throws herself in front of a train. Karenin, Anna's husband, was personified by Basil Rathbone, her son by Freddie Bartholomew. He would be another "Lord Fauntleroy" in 1936.

Leo Tolstoy published the story of Anna Karenina between 1873 and 1877. The first movie adaption was in 1914. Garbo played Anna Karenina already in a 1927 film called "Love". There are two versions: the usual tragic end for the Europeans, and a happy one for the US film lovers!

Answer: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Produced by a certain Walt Disney, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs " was the first American animated feature film. The bad step-mother only tried the poison apple, not the other methods you can find in the original fairy tale.

While the other mentioned movies of 1937 can be suspected to have music you could whistle to, Snow White and her dwarfs performed a happy song called "Whistle While You Work". Another novelty: you could buy the soundtrack.

Answer: Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne was born in 1898 in Kentucky, USA. In her working years she collected several nominations for the Academy Award, but never could take an Oscar home.

Dunne appeared in "Cimarron", "I Remember Mama", "Roberta" and "Showboat". She died aged 91 in 1990.

"Anna and the King of Siam" was based on the memoirs of the real Anna Leonowens, a British women working at the Royal Court of Siam from 1862 until 1868. Modern historians believe that Anna added some fiction - for example, about her own importance on court - to reality.

Comparing movie to real life: while movie-son Louis Leonowens dies in a riding accident - adding drama to the movie - the real son lived until 1919.

If you chose another answer than the one expected, don't worry too much. They all played Anna Leonowens at some time on screen or TV.

Answer: Kind Hearts and Coronets

Audrey Fildes played the mother, Vincent Price the revenging son and Alec Guinness eight members of the noble family, including a woman and men of all ages. One drowned, one was poisoned, one came in contact with exploding caviar, and so on.

Louis writes his memoirs while waiting for the hangman. To his bad luck he was convicted for a murder he didn't commit. In the end, he can leave the prison. To please American censorship, his memoirs are discovered to make sure that the murderer of so many is punished, while the English version leaves this point open to imagination.

The wrong answers are also movies made in the Ealing Studios, London, UK just like "Kind Hearts and Coronets".

Answer: Elizabeth Taylor

Liz Taylor, born 1932, was just sweet 18 when the movie came out. In the same year she married for the first time: Conrad "Nicky" Hilton. (The first of several marriages to many different husbands.)

Liz Taylor had her first role in "Lassie Come Home" in 1943. She was Rebecca in the 1952 version of "Ivanhoe". Through the next years, she appeared in "Giant", "Cleopatra" and "Butterfield 8" in 1960, winning an Oscar as the leading actress. In 1980, she appeared in Agatha Christie's "The Mirror Crack'd". By 2003, when her declining health stopped her, she was mainly seen and sometimes even only heard on TV.

"Father of the Bride" was released in 1950 and paired Tracy and Bennett as the loving and caring parents of a beautiful bride. The father has to fight his way through many small disasters until his daughter is given away.

Steve Martin and Diane Keaton were the desperate parents in the 1991 remake.

The other young ladies you may haven chosen as an answer acted as Elizabeth Taylor's sisters in "Little Women" in 1949.

Answer: The Man Who Knew Too Much

As you certainly know, everything ends well and the family is reunited.

"The Man Who Knew Too Much" is the only remake Hitchcock ever made from one of his own films. The first version was done with Peter Lorre as the bad guy in 1934.

The version I am talking about had James Stewart as the father and Doris Day as the mother.

Having Doris Day in a movie without allowing her to sing would have been unheard in those days. She performed "Que Sera, Sera"; the song won an Academy Award.

Answer: The Graduate

New in the cinemas in 1967, "The Graduate" helped to develop the careers of Simon and Garfunkel, who delivered most of the soundtrack, and of Dustin Hoffman, who played Benjamin Braddock. Katherine Ross was pretty Elaine while Anne Bancroft was the beautiful and seductive Mrs Robinson. If you don't know the plot: in the end, Benjamin stops Elaine's wedding to another boy and takes her away - not on the traditional white stallion, but on a bus.

When Dustin Hoffman - the just graduated youngster in "The Graduate" - was born in 1937, Anne Bancroft was just waiting to celebrate her sixth birthday. Katherine Ross, her daughter in that movie, was born in 1940. Not much younger than her movie mother!

Answer: Anne of the Thousand Days

All the other films had an Anne Boleyn in it, but it was "Anne of the Thousand Days" in 1969. The movie was based on a theater play from 1948 of the same name.

The movie is told in flashbacks to show about the relationship of Henry and Anne. It was nominated for 10 Oscars and won one for the costumes. Geneviève Bujold did get a Golden Globe, and these were also awarded for "Best Motion Picture - Drama", "Best Director" (Charles Jarrott) and "Best Screenplay".