Seven Chances Trivia Quiz

Answer: It is in early Technicolor.

Keaton was less than thrilled with the play Schenck had bought, and really had his doubts about how good a film it would make. So he spiced it up a bit with two-strip Technicolor for the opening. The color is a bit washed out with the passage of time, but the red of the roses still stands out, and the flesh tones are visible in the winter scene.

The opening also stands out in that Keaton used decorated intertitles rather than the plain intertitles he more commonly used.

In the opening sequence, we see Jimmie and Mary standing at the gate outside her house, while in successive shots the weather changes and her tiny Dalmatian puppy grows into a large dog.

Answer: To the country club

The secretary holds the man off until Jimmie and Billy sneak out the other door. But the lawyer follows them doggedly and gives them the news. Jimmie will inherit seven million dollars -- if he is married by 7:00 p.m. on his 27th birthday. Which, of course, just happens to be today.

Snitz Edwards, the persistent attorney, was a Hungarian-born actor who played in dozens of films before his death in 1937. Edwards performed prominent roles in Keaton's "College" (1927) and "Battling Butler" (1926).

Answer: She thinks he only wants the money.

Jimmie sits alone on a bench in the garden, practicing his proposal. Mary slips up behind him and answers, "Yes!" But their sweet moment goes sour when Jimmie bungles by explaining why they have to be married so soon. Mary scolds him, goes inside, and sits forlornly in the window seat. A heartbroken Jimmie returns to the country club.

Jimmie's trip to and from Mary's house was one of Keaton's favorite special effects. Cameraman Elgin Lessley filmed Keaton getting into his car at the country club, then closed the aperture as he cranked. He back-cranked, then carefully set Keaton and the car up in front of Mary's house, and cranked forward as he opened the aperture. The result was a fade from one location to the other while Keaton seemed to sit unmoving in the car.

Answer: She overhears Jimmie saying that the money means nothing to him without Mary.

Mary tries to call Jimmie, but he accidentally put the phone off the hook, which means that when the operator puts the call through, he can't hear Mary but she can hear him. Mary writes a note and sends the gardener to get it to Jimmie right away.

The gardener, a black man, was played by Jules Cowles, a white man known for performing blackface humor. The choice of casting, along with Cowle's stereotyped portrayal, is appalling to our modern eyes, but was normal for the era.

Answer: The lawyer

Billy kneels down and makes an earnest marriage proposal to Snitz Edwards, Jimmie, however, can't bring himself to make even a mock proposal to the homely, droopy-faced attorney. He goes for broke with the next girl -- only to have her and a bunch of passing golfers laugh at him.

The seven names on the list are Eugenia Gilbert, Doris Deane, Juddy (sic) King, Hazel Deane, Bartine Burkett, Connie Evans, and Pauline Taller -- all the real names of actresses playing women who turn down proposals in the film!

Answer: She thinks he is proposing on behalf of the ugly old attorney.

Billy carefully positions the handsome young Jimmie in in a nice, conspicuous spot, but when the girl snuggles up against Billy -- thinking he's proposing on his own behalf -- a discouraged Jimmie wanders off. Billy disentangles himself from the young woman -- and the attorney gets accidentally pointed out as the source of the proposal.

Keaton, who only used one stunt double in all of his independent films, used frequent hand doubles to avoid close-ups of his right hand, which was missing the index fingertip due to a childhood mishap. Most close-ups of Keaton's characters writing anything were done with hand doubles, as in the envelope-proposal scene. A rare exception was the changing of $1 to $4 on the box of chocolates in "Sherlock Jr." (1924)

Answer: The lawyer will marry the other one himself.

Jimmie and Billy part ways in search of a bride. Jimmie starts before he even leaves the country club, proposing to the switchboard operator (who is already engaged), a woman reading a newspaper (who has a baby hidden behind the newspaper and is a bit insulted at Jimmie's insinuation that she doesn't have a husband), and the hat-check girl (who has witnessed the other proposals and wants no part of whatever Jimmie is up to). Finally a girl approaches him.

She'll be thrilled to marry him! But her mother intervenes, taking back her coat and revealing that the girl is underage -- still dressed in a child's frock and ringlets.

Answer: He walks into a swimming pool.

Jimmie drives his car straight into a tree proposing to the first woman.

He steps into a hairdresser's shop and proposes to the woman whose hair is being styled -- but the hairdresser picks up her head and walks off it it. It was a dummy! Buster walks over to what he thinks is another dummy and tries to pick it up. But it's a woman's head he's trying to lift off!

He gets beaten up in a gag lost on modern audiences, which involves Jimmie bribing his way backstage at a theater. Jimmie ends up proposing to a female impersonator, Julian Eltinge, a name that would have been familiar to audiences of 1925. Jimmie's battered condition as he leaves the theater was also in keeping with Eltinge's reputation as an exaggerated he-man brawler offstage.

Answer: Train tickets -- to Niagara Falls and to Reno

Jimmie has tickets to Niagara Falls for the honeymoon, and to Reno for the divorce. A hand double holds the ticket to Reno for the close-up.

As a piece of totally useless trivia, the ad also says that the executor of the estate -- presumably the attorney played by Snitz Edwards -- is named Caleb Pettibone.

Answer: Nothing. He's asleep on the first pew.

Keaton takes full advantage of the silent film convention that characters can only hear what's going on when it fits the plot, so Jimmie sleeps through the arrival of the brides. He awakens as two brides settle themselves on either side of him. Jimmie's dawning realization of what's going on, as the two brides flanking him recognize him from the photo in the paper, is a classic moment of silent comedy.

Answer: Mary's gardener

The gardener, led to the church by the same ad that brought the brides, was trying to get into the packed church through the window. As the brides head for the exit, Jimmie and the gardener hide in the crawl space. There, the gardener gives Buster Mary's note. Now Jimmie has two goals -- to escape the rampaging brides, and to get to Mary before it's too late to get his inheritance.

Answer: By dumping him in the the path of an oncoming train

Jimmie grabs the hook of a crane to get lifted free of the brides, but they commandeer the crane. A struggling Jimmie dangles from the hook as the brides try to control it and end up swinging the crane around and driving it down the track in the rail yard. He's lowered to the ground on railroad tracks on the other side of a fence, where he scrambles to safety just before a freight train speeds past. The brides cry when they think they've killed him -- but when they see him alive, they chase him down to finish the job.

Billy and Jimmie briefly cross paths during the pursuit, long enough for Jimmie to tell his friend to get the minister and meet him at Mary's house.

Answer: They start swimming after him.

Buster Keaton considered it good luck for a film if he got a dunking. The one he got in "Seven Chances" begins with Jimmie throwing a goodbye kiss to the brides back on shore, only to have them wade in and start swimming. When it becomes clear that they can swim faster than he can row, he jumps into the water and starts swimming himself.

Answer: An avalanche of boulders

As Jimmie approaches the bottom of the hill, nearly safe from the falling boulders, he faces the mob of brides, who have rushed to head him off. He ponders the brides, then the boulders -- and decides he'll take his chances with the boulders.

The famous avalanche scene wasn't in the original cut of the movie. As Keaton observed the reactions of an audience during a test screening, he noticed very little laughter until a point in which he was running down a hill. He dislodged a few small rocks, which started rolling down the hill after him, as if Mother Nature herself had joined the chase. Keaton had Fred Gabourie and his team make hundreds of paper mache boulders, some huge and weighing over a hundred pounds, and the avalanche scene was born.

Answer: Everybody kisses Mary except Jimmie and the lawyer.

As Jimmie leans in to kiss his bride, the preacher interposes himself to give her a chaste kiss. Then her mother kisses her. Then Billy. As the lawyer is puckering up, Jimmie grabs Mary by the hand and leads her out to the garden. They sit on a bench, but just as Jimmie is about to finally get his kiss, the dog interposes himself and kisses Mary, then Jimmie.