MOVIE QUIZ
As if 2020 wasn’t annus horribilis enough, now as it’s drawing to a close, we can’t help but conjure up our own personal in memoriam segments of all the movie luminaries we’ve lost over the past 12 months.
Let’s honor their legacies with a quiz highlighting some of the high points of their lives … on the silver screen.
1. With the shocking death of Chadwick Boseman over the summer from colon cancer at age 43, he already got his own quiz, but there’s still more to say about the actor, whose last film, the upcoming “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” is generating major posthumous Oscar buzz for him. In a short career, Boseman became known for playing real-life people, including in his 2008 film debut, “The Express: The Ernie Davis Story.” He didn’t play first black Heisman Trophy winner Davis, but another famous football player, Floyd Little. In a sad irony, Davis died of leukemia and just last month, Little entered hospice because of a rare cancer. Boseman went to Howard University, but what university in New York state did both Davis and Little attend?
2. The James Bond franchise was particularly hard hit in 2020, with the deaths of Sean Connery, Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg. Connery was, of course, the first – and for many, only – big-screen Bond, and starred opposite Blackman in 1964’s “Goldfinger.” Rigg was the Bond Girl in George Lazenby’s only outing as the superspy, 1969’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Connery and Rigg did get to work together in a non-bond film, the 1994 comedy “A Good Man in Africa.” But what is the connection between Blackman and Rigg?
3. Golden Age icon and Amsterdam native Kirk Douglas died in February at the age of 103. Flame-haired Rhonda Fleming followed in October at 97. The two starred together in a 1947 film noir that was remade in 1984 with James Woods and Swoosie Kurtz taking on their equivalent roles. Name both films.
4. Two-time Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland did Kirk Douglas one year better, passing on in July at the age of 104. Although the two never appeared in any movies together, de Havilland did have a recent connection to Douglas’ family: she filed a lawsuit over the portrayal of her in the 2017 TV series “Feud: Bette and Joan” by Douglas’ daughter-in-law, Catherine Zeta-jones. With what actress did de Havilland have her own well-publicized, decades-long feud?
5. True or false: the following character actors, all of whom left us in 2020, were the same age – 50 years old – when their respective movies listed came out --- Wilfred Brimley in “Cocoon,” Max von Sydow in “Flash Gordon,” Fred Willard in “This Is Spinal Tap” and Brian Dennehy in “Cocoon: The Return”?
6. In 1981, Ben Cross and Oscar-nominee Ian Holm co-starred in “Chariots of Fire” as an Olympic runner and his coach, and both actors died in 2020. Holm’s next film after “Chariots” had him working with Sean Connery and three members of Monty Python – Terry Gilliam, John Cleese and Michael Palin – but not Terry Jones, who also died this year. What was the movie?
7. It was a shock to learn that Kelly Preston had died in July at 57 after a secret two-year battle with breast cancer. During her career, she appeared in films with three of this year’s acting Oscar winners (alas, not Brad Pitt). She was in “Jerry Maguire” with Renee Zellweger, both “Daddy and Them” and “Citizen Ruth” with Laura Dern, and in Joaquin Phoenix’s 1986 movie debut. Name that movie.
8. Bollywood star Irrfan Khan died at just 53 years old in April, but he was already arguably the biggest crossover success in Hindi cinema, working in films like “Jurassic World,” “The Amazing Spider-man” and Wes Anderson’s underrated “The Darjeeling Limited.” He also is the first and only Bollywood actor to appear in two Western films that both won best directing Oscars, and were both nominated for best picture (one won). What were the films?
9. Nearly a year ago on Jan. 8, Buck Henry died after a 60-year career as an actor, writer and director on the big and small screens, with credits like “The Graduate,” “Get Smart,” “What’s Up, Doc?”, “Catch-22,” “Saturday Night Live,” “To Die For” and “Short Cuts.” Along with Warren Beatty, he shares what distinction with the Coen Brothers and the team of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins?
10. Which of these veteran comedy geniuses was older when they left us in 2020, Carl Reiner or Jerry Stiller?