Hollywood Forever - Resting Place of the Stars Quiz

Answer: Don Adams

Don Adams (1923-2005) was a comedian turned actor whose greatest fame was as the spy Maxwell Smart in the spoof espionage series "Get Smart". Smart fans may have noticed I packed a few of his most used sound bites into the question. A phone hidden in the heel of a shoe was also a way Smart had of contacting his bosses.

The show ran for five seasons from 1965. It was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry and was a send-up of mainstream serious espionage productions, such as the James Bond movies.

Answer: Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc (1908-1989) provided many of the voiced for the Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera cartoons. Looney Tunes cartoons generally signed off with a final frame that read "That's all folks." Nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Voices", his career began in radio and he went on to work on television and the movies.

Answer: Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney (1920-2014) was born in Brooklyn, New York City, into an artistic family. His parents had a vaudeville act and Rooney (birth name Joseph Yule, Jr.) made his debut in the family show at the age of 17 months. He made his first movie in 1926, "Not to Be Trusted", and his last in 2011, "The Muppets". He was a child star as "Mickey Maguire" and "Andy Hardy". Adult roles followed, but the intervention of World War II was a hiatus that might have stymied the career of a less determined artist.

His diminutive stature - he was 5ft 2ins tall - did not help. However, if Hollywood did not want him, Rooney had other ideas and a busy Broadway and television career followed. He had a mixed personal life, not only through failed relationships and an addiction to gambling; he was also bipolar. Though a star who made a fortune during his career, he left only $18,000 in his will.

Answer: Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) was born in New York City and in a short life moved from street thug to crime boss - and even Hollywood playboy. From burglary and petty crime, he co-founded one of the city's most feared gangs, getting involved in robbery, gambling and murder. Prohibition was to give him the chance to make it even bigger in the world of crime.

From the start of the 1930s he began to befriend Hollywood's great and good. Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Jean Harlow were in his circle. For all his notoriety and criminality- he even tried selling explosives to Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini - Siegel was only ever convicted of two minor offences. In 1941 he was arrested for the murder of an underworld leader and spent time in jail on remand. However, the charges were dropped after a key witness died under what were reported to be "mysterious circumstances". In the end his notoriety caught up with him and he was shot dead in his Beverley Hills Home in June 1947. It had all the hallmarks of a gangland assassination. The murder has not been solved.

Answer: Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) was one of two great film-makers from the same family, his brother, William C. DeMille, was also active in Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille was an actor, director and playwright and helped to establish Paramount Pictures in 1914. Among the movies he was noted for were "Cleopatra" (1934), "Samson and Delilah" (1949),, two versions of "The Ten Commandments" (1923 and 1956) and "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1953).

He worked in both the silent and sound eras. He won three Oscars, although only one was directly for a movie, "The Greatest Show On Earth", which was 'best picture' in 1953.

Answer: Estelle Getty

Estelle Getty (1923-2008) worked as a comedian and in theatre before getting her television break with "The Golden Girls" in 1974. She played an Italian mother who lived with her daughter (played by Bea Arthur) and two other women (Betty White and Rue McClanahan). The sit-com ran for seven seasons and was a ratings and critical success.

Answer: Tyrone Power

Tyrone Power (1914-1958) made in his movie debut in 1932 in "Tom Brown of Culver" and died of a heart attack during the making of his final movie, "Solomon and Sheba". His quarter-century of movie-making was interrupted by military service in World War 2. Power served as a cargo plane pilot in the US Marine Corps, and was to be buried with military honours. Before that military service Power had a brilliant career with movies such as "Jesse James" (1939), "Brigham Young" and "The Mark of Zorro" (both 1940) and "The Black Swan" (1942).

He was recalled from military service to complete "Crash Dive" in 1943, and it was to be something of a recruiting movie. Post WW2, he was noted for "Mississippi Gambler" (1953), "Untamed" (1955) and "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957).

He also appeared in theatre productions.

Answer: Peter Lorre

Peter Lorre (birth name Laszlo Lowenstein) was born in what is now Slovakia in 1904 and grew up in Vienna, where he went to drama school. He began a busy acting career in Germany. In 1931, he starred as a child murderer in "M", one of the first German sound films. Director Fritz Lang later described Lorre's performance as "one of the best in film history and certainly the best in his life." Lorre was of the Jewish faith and left Berlin in the mid 1930s to settle in London, where he earned critical acclaim. Eventually he settled in Hollywood but found himself typecast in 'sinister foreigner' roles. Hollywood really did not know what to do with him and he ended up playing Japanese detective 'Mr Mto' in eight movies.

"Stranger on the Third Floor" (1940). was essentially an English language remake of "M" but it sparked off a renewed career. "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca" brought him together with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, and he was to work on eight movies with Greenstreet and six with Bogart. His career settled in to a busy one of smaller roles, though he also acted in radio and television dramas. He also worked on several film adaptations of Jules Verne novels, and others of works by Edgar Allan Poe.

Answer: Bob Guccione

Bob Guccione (1930-2010) first published "Penthouse" in England in 1965 and then in North America in 1969. He clearly set out to rival Hugh Hefner's "Playboy", however, without being too explicit but "Penthouse" photo-shoots were rather more explicit than anything that had been seen in adult magazines before.

Initially, Guccione took most of the photographs himself.In between the photos, he commissioned articles of a serious and even investigative nature - though that still did not make his magazine acceptable many circles. "Penthouse" earned Guccione a fortune and he lived a good life in a massive Manhattan apartment. In contrast to the flamboyant parties of Hugh Hefner, Guccione preferred more modest occasions.

From magazines, Guccione turned to movies and financed the controversial "Caligula" in 1976. Fame, and fortune soon passed, though. The magazine company was liquidated; Guccione's mansion was foreclosed and he had to sell his vast art collection. He died of lung cancer in 2010.

Answer: Fay Wray

Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman, Joel McCrea, George Raft and Fredric March were among the actors that Fay Wray (1907-2004) played opposite, but her 1933 encounter with "King King" remained long in the memory.
Although he appeared huge in the movie, Kong was a model that stood only 18-inches high. The only physical contact Wray had was with an eight-foot long arm.

She later recalled: "I would stand on the floor and they would bring this arm down and cinch it around my waist, then pull me up in the air. Every time I moved, one of the fingers would loosen, so it would look like I was trying to get away. Actually, I was trying not to slip through his hand."
Wray was born in Alberta, Canada, and began acting in silent comedy shorts, graduating to leads for Hal Roach. She got her big break in 1926, when Erich von Stroheim have her the female lead in "The Wedding March". While she was to appear in dozens of movies, her art was often under-appreciated.

She later said: "I would have loved to have had more roles of more depth like the one in 'The Wedding March', and I often thought that was too bad. However, it's a strange thing. I think I have at least one film that people have cared enough about to make them feel good. I think it's a strange kind of magic that 'King Kong' has."