The past two articles presented a Movie History quiz. Here are the answers. How well did you do?
1) Director David Wark Griffith invented the close-up, first used 1911. What was it? A wrench! Other characters believed the character was carrying a gun. Some
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| Rudolph Valentino & Alla Nazimova in Camille |
2) An iris-in is a photographic trick by which when a scene is shown at first only a small circle appears which grows larger and larger until the picture covers the entire screen.
3) There are sixteen impressions taken by the camera are shown on the screen in a second
4) There are one thousand feet are there in a reel of film
5) $175,000 dollars was the largest sum ever paid for the film rights to a stage play. It was paid by DW Griffith for Way Down East.
6) The names of three women writers given in the 1920 quiz were: Anita Loos, Frances Marion and Ouida Bergere.
Just a few of the other prominent female screenwriters of the 1920s were June Mathis, Jane Murfin, Jeanie MacPherson, Elinor Glyn, Bess Meredyth, Clara Beranger, Dorothy Farnum, Agnes Christine Johnston, Frances Guihan and Eve Unsell.
7) The woman director given as the answer was Lois Weber. You could add Dorothy Arzner and Alice Guy-Blaché. Lillian Gish directed her sister Dorothy in the 1920 film Remodeling Her Husband. The costar was Dorothy's husband at the time James Rennie. Cleo Madison and Mabel Normand were among the list of actresses who were directing in the 1920s.
8) Mack Sennett went by the pseudonym Walter Terry
The devices used to create old time radio sound effects were similar to those used behind the scenes of silent movies
9) The man in the photo at right provides sound effects on a variety of devices to enhance silent movies. In the photo, he's operating a wind machine, which
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| Sound effects man 1922 |
**Note: The same sort of machine was used during the making of The Wizard of Oz (1939) to simulate the sound of the tornado.
10) Buster Keaton coined a new word Optience. He suggests we use it instead of the word Audience. His word refers to people who attend the movie theater vs the stage theater. It's also used to refer to people who attend the movies vs those who listen to the radio.
11) Cecil B. DeMille was called the answer to an extra's prayer.
Open questions 1 through 11 in another tab
Also Known As:
12) Charlie Ray, Mary Pickford and Louise Glaum
13) "It may shock you to know that Arline Pretty gurgled in her cradle under that very same name."
Years earlier in 1917, a magazine offered a contest. Fans could win $25. Arline Pretty was looking for a new name. "Star to discard real name and $25 will be given for a new reel one." Guess the studio and/or the star never liked any of the suggestions?
14) Juliet Shelby aka Mary Miles Minter
15) Gilbert Roland and Barry Norton
16) Lucille Le Sueur aka Joan Crawford
17) Anita Dooley aka Nita Naldi
18) Ricardo Cortez, his birth name is Jacob Krantz
19) Mack Sennett, producer
20) James Kirkwood's wife Augusta Appel aka Lila Lee
21) Gladys Smith aka Mary Pickford
22) Lucille Langhanke Astor combined with the given name of Mary
23) It's Talmadge; he is Richard Talmadge born Sylvester Metz, who had been a boy member of the famed acrobats, the Mazetti Troupe.
24) Joel McCrea, because "he is the most slug-nutty person in Hollywood."
25) Joan Crawford (his wife at the time.) He also called her JoJo and she called him DoDo.
26) Theda Bara was the first screen vampire. Her nickname was The Vamp, short for vampire. Bara began making movies in 1914.
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| Alan Roscoe, Theda Bara in Camille. This 1917 film is considered to be lost. |
27) Lewis Joseph Cote aka Lew Cody
28) In 1920 the most famous horse in pictures was Bill Hart's 'Pinto'
29) Actress Carole Lombard married someone named William twice. In 1931 she married actor William Powell. In 1939 she married actor William Clark Gable.
News and Gossip
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| Lew Ayres and Ginger Rogers 1934 |
Her mother contacted the sheriff's department and asked them to search for her. Some of her friends had a hunch that Lew Ayres, her boy-friend knew where she had gone, but he agreed she needed the rest and kept her secret.
Ginger, resting on a Nevada ranch was surprised to hear over the radio that she had been reported missing and contacted her mother right away. It was February 1934 at the time of her disappearance and Ginger Rogers was twenty-two years old. Rogers and Ayres were married later that same year.
31) "Dainty Lilian Harvey who weighs only 95 pounds can boast the smallest waist in Hollywood exactly nineteen and a half images. However Ginger Rogers who isn't quite as petite as Lilian weighing about one hundred and fifteen pounds comes very close to Lilian's waist measurements and perhaps hers may be called the second smallest."
What about your waist? The Ideal woman's figure through time....
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| Barbara Stanwyck 1932 |
By 1934 Stanwyck was nearing 30, she was probably more serious about life and her craft, her future. She had her health and her son to think about.
33) "Constance Bennett was the cause of the quarrel between Gilbert Roland and Clark Gable at a party at the home of Samuel Goldwyn.
"Roland who escorted Connie to the party took offense at the manner in which Gable spoke to Constance and was quoted as saying angrily to Gable, 'You quit picking on her and pick on me.'
"Clark seemed willing and for a minute it looked like the start of a good old fashioned fist fight, but other movie luminaries present stepped in and calmed the boys. In the absence of her husband Maquis Henry Falaise who is in China making a picture Roland has been acting as Connie's escort."
Gilbert Roland and
Constance Bennett were wed in 1941 and remained married until 1945.
34) Karl Dane who made his first screen hit as the Swede in The Big Parade shot himself on April 14 despondent over his failure to obtain motion picture work. Dane's body was found surrounded by newspaper and magazine clippings of his former success - cut short by talkies.
35) Helen Vinson was selected the most beautiful Technicolor subject for 1937 by the International Color Camera Club.
36) Dick Powell's contract with Warner Brothers contains a clause saying that Dick is not to marry while said contract is in effect - lest he jeopardize his popularity. Dick scoffs at the danger and wants it taken out. Dick and Mary Brian have been going together so long that it is possible he wants to marry the girl.
[It's been suggested that other stars had such clauses in their contracts and that in other cases studios forbade stars from marrying such as in the case of Jean Harlow and William Powell in the 1930s.]
37) Danielle Darrieux was paid to learn English.
38) "Are Herbert Marshall and Gloria Swanson a mutual consolation society? Herbert's marriage to Edna Best once one of filmdom's happiest seems on the verge of a break-up, Gloria's marriage to Michael Farmer is about to end in divorce - and Herbert and Gloria have been night-clubbing together."
39) Alice Faye didn't like stairs.
40) Sigrid Gurie was forbidden by her studio to be seen in public before the release of her first picture.
Sam Goldwyn's publicity department suggested that she was the Norwegian answer to Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich as she was set to star in The Adventures of Marco Polo. After her debut, news was it "turned out she was from a little farm town of Cucamonga, California."
41) Lily Pons considered the number 13 to be good luck
42) Sue Carol had a phobia of birds, particularly hating their flapping wings.
These quizzes were prevalent and fun in the old magazines and even in the newspapers. They covered a variety of topics. I plan to run more from time to time. You'll find links here.
Open questions 12 - 42 in another tab
Download quiz questions and answers in a PDF file
Print out for your Hollywood movie party or long car or plane trip. Fun to occupy friends between movies.
Related pages of Interest:
Old Hollywood Stars Thanksgiving Menus Quiz: Match the stars to the menus they served Their traditional Thanksgiving meals
Retro TV Housekeeper Quiz Eight maids at Christmas not a-milking, Eight Maids at Holiday Time or Any Time
Group games for parties, For old and young: for Christmas, Birthdays, Vintage parlor games for any time of year, movie-inspired
Fake Snow Bringing winter to silent movies: Making snow blizzards in Hollywood California - Includes Way Down East
Keeping time with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor: Gifts of watches and sapphires 1930s
Sources:
Motion Picture 1934
Movie Weekly 1922
Photoplay 1922, 1927, 1938
The Miami News February 21, 1934
Picture Play Magazine 1920 and 1922
Talking Screen 1930
by Harpo Marx, Rowland Barber
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with an all-star cast, 1998. Angela Bassett is Stella. The film is from the Terry McMillan book.
