Mary, Mary - Quite Contrary Quiz | Movies

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. "I'm just a fictional Mary. Mess with me and I'll not only get a bit contrary, but I might just clobber you with my umbrella, and take us all on a trip to cartoon land where we can do a little fox hunting. In the end though, we'll have a nice tea while floating on or near the ceiling. Swallow up that spoonful of sugar and (snip! snip!)" Can you tell me who I am?

Answer: Mary Poppins

"Mary Poppins" (1964) is easily considered a Disney classic. The book by P.L Travers translated very well to screen. Julie Andrews won an Oscar for Best Actress in it. She was extremely good but it may have come mostly as a knee jerk reaction to the fact that she was snubbed by the movie industry in losing her role as Eliza Doolittle, a role she created on stage in "My Fair Lady".

They get all redemptive out there in Hollywood.

2. This time I'm a real Mary. I played a fictitious lady named Amy opposite my real-life husband once. I played a bank employee who met up with Herbert Wells who was lost in a time trip in a 1980 film. My husband now (as of Spring 2004) played a TV bartender. Who am I?

Answer: Mary Steenburgen

Herbert Wells is better known as H.G. Wells in the really fascinating film "Time After Time". Old H.G. hopped into his fictional "Time Machine" in pursuit of that scoundrel Jack The Ripper. He ends up in modern day San Francisco and meets up with a banker, while trying to convert his foreign (not to mention extremely old) currency into usable funds.

Her name is Amy. Malcolm MacDowell played Herbert and Mary Steenburgen (then his real life wife) was the befuddled Amy from the bank. Steenburgen is now (2004), of course, Mrs. Ted Danson. "Cheers" to them as they seem pretty happy together! Mrs. Danson picked up an Oscar in the 1980 film "Melvin And Howard" (Best Supporting Actress) and has built an interesting and diverse career since.

3. I'm a real Mary. After a healthy TV career, which started by having to deal with that clumsy Rob tripping over stuff all the time, I eventually could "turn the world on with my smile". I'm Mary Tyler Moore. Someone took a chance on me (a quick nod to Robert Redford) and cast me WAY against type in "Ordinary People" in 1980. Oh, I was a horrible (well, I won't call myself any bad names...) in that movie. I was certainly not even close to being crowned Mother Of The Year. What was my character's name in "Ordinary People"?

Answer: Beth Jarrett

Yikes! From Mary Richards/Laura Petry to THIS! I really liked the movie but the temperature in the room went down 40 degrees whenever Beth showed up in it. In the film a boating accident killed one of her two sons who were on the water. It is no stretch to notice that she thought the wrong one went under. Ms. Moore is extremely good in this part and narrowly missed on being named Best Actress at the Oscars that year.

The flick was named Best Picture, though, and Timothy Hutton (playing Conrad "Connie" Jarrett) won for his role as the surviving son.

4. "I'm a fictional Mary this time. In the film my last name is Loomis. Anyone remember being scared silly by the movie "Psycho" (1960)? My character was in a 'sequel', the first one, in 1983. My Mary actually seemed fond of Norman Bates, (which never seems like a good thing to be...). Needless to say, I ended up 6 feet under by the time it was all over and done with." Who played Mary Loomis in "Psycho 2"?

Answer: Meg Tilly

Vera Miles played Lila Crane-Loomis, whose poor sister got that shower of infamy in the original (but Ms. Miles WAS back in this one). Mary Loomis was her daughter, and they came to exact revenge on loose-hinged Norman. Diana Scarwid showed up in "Psycho 3" (1986). "Psycho 2" seemed unnecessary, as did "Psycho 3". I won't even address that shot-by-shot and line-by-line remake of the first one in 1998. Meg Tilly has gone on to much better projects.

Note: no one took a fateful trip to the bathroom in "Psycho 2", but someone did give up the ghost by getting bonked in the head with a frying pan.

When at the Bates' house I'd recommend staying out of rooms with running water. It was a pretty bad film, with an ending that just didn't make sense to me.

5. "I played a character named Mary Sue in this unique film from 1998. In it, me and my kind of dorky brother get zapped into a 1950's TV show. What a bland town we're in! It's initially colorless and always dry, we change all of that in a hurry. Suddenly people are starting to feel things, see things and even enjoy things in our TV Land city. And my Mary Sue certainly livened up Lover's Lane (but that didn't do much good for the basketball team there). I won't give you the movie title just yet, but what real-life actress am I?"

Answer: Reese Witherspoon

The clues all point to "Pleasantville". On the surface of it, it's a light hearted story but, subliminally, it took on lots of issues that were hot topics in the 50's: racial discrimination, sexual freedom, freedom of expression, etc. It starred Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy and Don Knotts. And, of course, Ms. Witherspoon was in there too. And, if you never saw it, in "Pleasantville" colors were not allowed (if you weren't black-and-white, then you were a scourge).

The only street in town went one way leading nowhere.

It never rained there. And all the women had to do was make cookies and meat loaf. Poor Ward & June Cleaver...they just don't get a bit of respect these days!

6. Let's bring up a real Mary. She was mostly a Broadway phenom but did do a few movies. On stage she is probably best remembered as "Peter Pan" but she also "washed that man right out of her hair" in another musical. Her best screen work probably came in "Birth Of The Blues" (1941). Otherwise she is well known as the mother of a TV actor who was widely recognized, at first as an exasperated astronaut, and then as a womanizing and greedy (but popular) character in a nighttime drama set amongst oil in Texas. What was her last name?

Answer: Martin

The hint should have likely given that one away, but it was taking us back a lot. Mary Martin's roles in "South Pacific" and "Peter Pan" were legendary. Adding to her legacy is that her son is Larry Hagman (from "I Dream Of Jeannie" and "Dallas"). Miss Martin passed away in 1990 at the age of 77.

7. "Hi there! I'm Kirsten Dunst. I was in a huge hit movie in 2002 at the age of 20. But it wasn't my first big film. That one came when I was just 12. But that was "Interview With The Vampire", and I'm here to talk about "Spider-Man". In that movie my name was Mary Jane what?"

Answer: Watson

Dunst's first screen role came in "The Bonfire Of The Vanities" (1990), but she really got noticed two years later portraying a child being bitten into eternity by vampires. To date, she has some Hollywood power now and her future roles should be most interesting. She's a young lady who likes to stretch in her choices.

8. Let's bring up a real-life actress named Mary again. She was born in 1964 and got her first big break in her second film "Longtime Companion" when she was 26. From there she went on to "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Grand Canyon" (both in 1991). This one is another who never plays it safe in her choices of roles. TV, movies, Broadway - she'll try it all. Who is she?

Answer: Mary-Louise Parker

Mastrantonio is a little older and Masterson is a little younger than Parker. Meaning no disrespect to Ms. Place, she is good bit older than all the others. Mary-Louise has been in "The Client" (1994), and "Boys On The Side" (1995); two notables among others in a an interesting resume. Then she did well on TV's "The West Wing" and won a Tony for her work in "Proof" on the Broadway stage.

9. "Ah, such a tangled web we sometimes find ourselves in! I'm a contemporary actress who played a 19th century Mary. In my role I was a pretty, young housekeeper, from a very poor background who thought this the ideal job. But then I went and got a big crush on my boss Doctor Jeckyll and, just to make matters worse, I started to like his dark alter ego, too. This was all covered in a 1996 film." Who played this particular Mary?

Answer: Julia Roberts

Roberts played "Mary Reilly". The film did include Glenn Close (but she wasn't Mary) and John Malkovich. Everyone who liked Julia from films such as "Pretty Woman" and the like stayed away from it in droves, and it belly flopped badly at the box office.

But it was actually interesting to watch, and probably broke her free to get more "industrial" parts, such as her Oscar winning turn as "Erin Brockovich" (2000).

10. To close, now onto George M. Cohan. As portrayed by the versatile James Cagney, George was married to a sweet and supportive Mary. He even wrote a famous, for its time, song about her. It was called simply "Mary". What 1942 movie was this?

Answer: Yankee Doodle Dandy

Time to put all these Marys away in our hearts. And remember, if you ever bump into a Mary, give her a chance, and she may just be "sweet as any girl can be". I hope this was a little bit of fun!

Source: Author Gatsby722

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor skunkee before going online.
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Mary, Mary - Quite Contrary Trivia Quiz

This is a movie quiz all about an assortment of Marys. Some are fictional and some are real. And, by the way, I've never met a contrary Mary so far in my life...

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