2015 Film Trivia

Fun questions based on the 2015 VFF movie selection - as featured in the 2015 programme.

Questions

1. Which star of Caught surfaced some 30 years later as Miss Ellie on the TV soap Dallas?
2. Which star of The Picture of Dorian Gray surfaced some 35 years later as Miss Ellie on the TV soap Dallas?
3. Whose legs were reportedly insured for $5 million?
4. Buster Keaton (The Cameraman) came out of retirement in 1950 and appeared in a macabre black comedy with fellow silent stars Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim. Name the movie.
5. Which debonnaire actor, with a supporting role in The Picture of Dorian Gray, became one of the Rat Pack, hobnobbing with the likes of Sammy, Frank and Dean?
6. How old is Angela Lansbury?
7. Name John Ford's last western.
8. Why does Natalie Schafer (featured in a supporting role in Caught) look so familiar?
9. Why did Claire Trevor get top billing over John Wayne in Stagecoach?
10. Why is there confusion over the title of The Bicycle Thieves? It is often referred to in the singular, as The Bicycle Thief.
11. What is Hattie McDaniel's (Judge Priest) claim to fame?
12. Where was Walter Pidgeon (How Green Was My Valley) born?
13. Name the two actresses from The Picture of Dorian Gray who went on to star in their own long-running TV series.
14. What is Marie Dressler's claim to fame?

Answers

1. Barbara Bel Geddes played the mother of feuding sons Bobby, Gary and the notorious J.R. Ewing.
2. Donna Reed: When Barbara Bel Geddes fell seriously ill, Reed was recruited to take her place. When Bel Geddes recovered, Reed was unceremoniously dumped from the series. She sued.
3. Cyd Charisse (The Band Wagon). She later claimed this was not true and merely part of MGM's publicity machine.
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. Peter Lawford. He was also JFK's brother-in-law.
6. Angela Lansbury was born in 1925. The Picture of Dorian Gray was her second movie. At age 90, she is still active in theatre.
7. Cheyenne Autumn, with Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker and James Stewart, released in 1964. Clocking in at more than two hours, it was also his longest film.
8. Because she played Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island on TV in the mid-1960s.
9. When Stagecoach was released, Trevor was the more bankable star with more than 30 films and an Oscar nomination behind her. Wayne had yet to break out from B-movies.
10. Although originally released in North America as The Bicycle Thief, the more literal translation from Italian is The Bicycle Thieves, in the plural. It's also more accurate, because-without giving it away-there is more than one thief in the movie.
11. Judge Priest was her first major role, but five years later in 1939, McDaniel would earn an Oscar for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She was the first African-American to win an Academy Award. However, the win was not without controversy because her role (and many subsequent roles) did little to eradicate racial stereotypes in the movies.
12. Born and raised in Saint John, New Brunswick, Walter Pidgeon was one of several actors with Canadian roots from Hollywood's golden era. Among others were Raymond Massey, Deanna Durbin, Norma Shearer and Walter Huston.
13. Donna Reed found TV fame on The Donna Reed Show, a sitcom, from 1958 to 1966. Angela Lansbury played the Agatha Christie-like sleuth Jessica Fletcher on Murder She Wrote from 1984 to 1996.
14. Marie Dressler was an unlikely superstar: at age 59 and the antithesis of a Hollywood ingénue, she was the undisputed queen of the movies in the early 1930s. Marie was born right here in Northumberland County-in a house on King Street in Cobourg. She was the inspiration for the film festival you are attending today.