coffeedan
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Posts posted by coffeedan
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Wednesday's question: What was reportedly Ernest Hemingway's favorite adaptation of his own work?
Good luck!
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coffeedan
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Good job, belylou!!!!!! You are correct!!!!!!!
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I think it had something to do with the way cars were constructed in the old days. On many 4-passenger models, the driver's side front door did not open -- a feature carried over well into the 1920s. So you had to slide out the passenger side regardless, and I guess people continued the practice just out of habit.
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Tuesday's question: What Alfred Hitchcock film was promoted with the tagline: "Don't give away the ending -- it's the only one we have"?
Good luck!
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Good guesses . . . but incorrect.
Yesterday's answer: Jean Harlow, whom George Cukor directed in DINNER AT EIGHT (1933).
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Monday's question: What film actress, according to director George Cukor, "was very soft about her toughness"?
Good luck!
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Happy Halloween, everybody! No scary stories from me this week, though I have a good family story I just finished telling on another website. I told this for the first time in public for a genealogy club I used to belong to, whose members used to beg me to retell it to their friends. I posted it on the Internet about five years ago, but I don't think I've shared it with my friends and fellow posters here, so let me tell you how my grandmother bobbed her hair . . .
Grandma told me she was 18 or 19 at the time, which meant this would have happened in 1920 or 1921. Bobbed hair was just becoming popular among young women at that time, and she and her three sisters used to talk about who was going to be first in their family, since their mother was dead set against it. So they decided that Grandma was going to be the first, since she was the oldest of the girls.
On a day when their mother was visiting a neighbor and their father and brother were still at work, the four girls marched down to the local barber shop (no beauty salons in Pittsburgh back then), and Grandma hopped in the chair and asked the barber to bob her hair. While her three sisters watched, the barber carefully cut off Grandma's long tresses straight across the back of her neck, and put them aside for her to take home, as she had asked. He then brushed out the rest of her hair, trimmed the ends a little, and that was it. Quick as it was, Grandma said it was the longest five minutes of her life.
But her sisters squealed about how good she looked, and they walked home happily. Then Grandma started thinking about what her parents and older brother would say. Dreading the worst, she went upstairs to her room and didn't come out for the rest of the afternoon.
When her mother called everyone in for supper, Grandma was the last one to the table. As she came into the room and sat down, the room grew strangely quiet. Grandma said she could literally feel everybody staring at her. Nobody said or did anything for about a minute. Then her mother got up, strode over to Grandma, pulled her out of her chair by her hair, and slapped her face, saying "You HUSSY! Leave this table!" And Grandma left the table without her supper. She cried herself to sleep that night.
But over the coming year, her three sisters all got their hair bobbed, the youngest for her 14th birthday. Her mother still protested, but a little less each time, until she finally threw up her hands, like what could she do?
My grandmother first told me this story when we were going through one of her trunks of memorabilia, and she pulled the long skein of hair that the barber saved for her that day out of a shirt box. It was thick, a deep auburn color -- and it must have been four feet long! Grandma was always a tiny woman, and I'll bet she could have sat on her hair.
After she died in 1986, when my mother asked us kids if there were any of Grandma's personal effects that we wanted, I said that I wanted her hair. Needless to say, this drew some strange reactions from my other family members, but when I explained further, we turned several of Grandma's old trunks looking for it, but to no avail. I never did find out what happened to it (I have some theories, but can't prove anything). Nevertheless, I'm thankful that Grandma left behind some wonderful family stories which either she or I wrote down in the few years before she died . . . and that's a great legacy in itself.
Whew! Now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .
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In the November issue of Now Playing, TCM's program guide, I counted 262 movies that are closed-captioned -- about 75 percent of TCM's programming for the month. That includes almost all the movies that TCM owns outright. And they're working on CCing Robert Osborne's intros and outros to their prime-time offerings as well. Compared to other cable channels, I think TCM has bent over backwards for its hearing-impaired viewers.
As for the other films that TCM leases (and that includes most of the Hitchcock titles they're showing this month), remember that TCM is only as good as the companies that provide those titles. If those other companies don't provide CCs in their masters, TCM can't provide them either.
Every month, TCM indicates its CC programming in the Now Playing guide, and in their online schedule. You can even use TCM's Custom Scheduler on this website to compile your own personal schedule of CC movies. Try 'em all!
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coffeedan
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Friday's question: Betty Grable was known as "The Girl with the Million Dollar Legs," but what movie dancer had her legs insured for $5,000,000 at the peak of her career?
Good luck!
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Thursday's question: In what film does Claire Trevor say "You gave me my first drink, Johnny"?
Good luck!
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Good guess, feaito! You are correct!
Rex Ingram's aversion to Mayer even went as far as the opening credits of his films, which were labeled as "Metro-Goldwyn" releases.
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Wednesday's question: What influential MGM director specified in his contract that the name of Louis B. Mayer not be mentioned in connection with any of his films?
Good luck!
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Yesterday's answer: THE LAST SUNSET (1961).
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I printed out the November schedule when it was originally posted, and both LA BOHEME and DESERT NIGHTS were on it. DESERT NIGHTS was probably dropped to make Nov. 20 a total Harold Lloyd night, which neatly coincides with New Line Cinema's release of THE HAROLD LLOYD COLLECTION next month (which looks like a busy month for classic DVD fans!).
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coffeedan
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Tuesday's question: In what film does Kirk Douglas sing "Pretty Little Girl in the Yellow Dress"?
Good luck!
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You are correct, path! I like this one, too . . . it's almost an American version of THE 39 STEPS.
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Monday's question: In what film do the lead characters hitch a ride with the Russell Bros. Circus while running from the police?
Good luck!
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Greetings, everybody!
Can't think,
Brain dumb.
Inspiration won't come.
Clumsy words,
Leaky pen,
Best wishes,
Amen.
Been wanting to use that one for years! Now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .
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coffeedan
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Friday's question: In what movie does Celeste Holm say, "Once I tried to let a amile be my umbrella. I got awful wet"?
Good luck!
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Thursday's question: In what movie was Boris Karloff billed as "Karloff the Uncanny"?
Good luck!
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Good guess, feaito -- but incorrect.
Yesterday's answer: On the basis of the same screen test, Maurice Chevalier was rejected by MGM in 1929 and signed by Paramount. MGM borrowed him later for THE MERRY WIDOW (1934).
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Wednesday's question: What musical film star failed an MGM screen test, but was signed by Paramount after they saw the same test?
(HInt: MGM later borrowed him from Paramount after he became famous.)
Good luck!
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What, no takers? Yesterday's answer: THE THIRD MAN (1949), featuring the distinctive "Third Man Theme" played on the zither by Anton Karas.
Director Sir Carol Reed discovered Karas in a village cafe outside of Vienna, and immediately engaged him for THE THIRD MAN. Reed also discovered when he got Karas in the studio that he couldn't read or write music, and asked him to come up with a disticntive theme for the character of Harry Lime in the film. Karas responded by playing a tune he made up years earlier, and the rest is film history.
Karas became a rich man from the royalties on THE THIRD MAN, and he eventually opened a restaurant where he still played his famous theme on the zither if a customer requested.
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Tuesday's question: What classic motion picture featured a famous theme composed by a musician who could not read or write music?
Good luck!
Trivia -- Week of October 31, 2005
in Games and Trivia
Posted
Hmmm . . . not quite.
Yesterday's answer: Ernest Hemingway's favorite film adaptation of his own work was Mark Hellinger's 1946 production of THE KILLERS -- at least the first 15 minutes of the film which stuck quite closely to Hemingway's original story.
John Huston adapted Hemingway's story for the screen, but couldn't take screen credit because he was under contract to Warner Brothers at the time. Years later, Hemingway told Huston that he felt that THE KILLERS was the best adaptation of his own work. Huston then revealed he had done the adaptation, and then -- as Huston related it -- Hemingway "called me a dirty word."