MOVIE QUIZ: MOTHER'S DAY ON THE MARQUEE
Mother’s Day is upon us once again and the film industry’s long legacy of getting all maternal is on our minds. Fierce moms abound on screen, from Barbara Stanwyck in “Stella Dallas” to Shirley Maclaine in “Terms of Endearment,” from Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to the doomed doe in “Bambi.”
But its not just the characters and plots that connect to this parent-honoring holiday, it’s also the titles. Take our quiz to see how much you know about movies with all of the variations of the word “mother” in their names. And say hi to your mother for us (wherever she may be).
1. “Mother’s Day,” the last of director Garry Marshall’s holidaythemed, ensemble comedy-dramas, was released three months before his death in 2016. True or false: It also includes the last film appearance by his sister, actress and fellow director Penny Marshall, before she died in 2018.
2. Which one of TV’S “Golden Girls” played the title gunslinger in the 1992 Sylvester Stallone comedy (?), “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”: Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue Mcclanahan or Betty White?
3. Albert Brooks directed Debbie Reynolds in 1996’s “Mother,” Bong Joon-ho directed Kim Hyeja in 2009’s “Mother,” and Darren Aronofsky directed Jennifer Lawrence in 2017’s “Mother!” Which one of these was its director’s highest-grossing film behind the camera?
4. Motherhood — or, at least, “Mamas” — was a big theme in 1970s exploitation flicks. Match the actress with the low-budget crime movie in which they starred: A. Angie Dickinson, B. Pam Grier, C. Cloris Leachman, D. Shelley Winters; I. “Big Bad Mama,” II. “Black Mama, White Mama,” III. “Bloody Mama,” IV. “Crazy Mama.”
1986’s “’night, Mother”
and 1996’s “Mother Night” – one was based on a novel by a one-time GE employee in Schenectady, who earlier had gotten a Mother’s Day leave from the army during World War II, only to discover his mother had committed suicide the night before; and the other is an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prizewinning play about a woman telling her mother she would be killing herself that night. Which was which?
6. True or false: 1948’s “I Remember Mama” was the first film to earn two Oscar nominations in the supporting actress category.
7. Last year’s “The Good Mother” starring Hilary Swank was filmed and set in Albany. Was any of the unrelated 1988 film “The Good Mother” starring Diane Keaton shot in the Capital Region?
8. Which actress has appeared in “Stepmom,” “Mother and Daughters,” “A Bad Moms Christmas” and the popular “Saturday
Night Live” musical short, “Motherlover”?
9. Which one of these actresses got an Oscar nomination for playing the titular mother in her film: Faye Dunaway in “Mommie Dearest,” Betty Grable in “Mother Wore Tights,” Anne Ramsey in “Throw Momma from the Train,” Kathleen Turner in “Serial Mom” or Helen Mirren in “Some Mother’s Son”?
10. Meryl Streep – who has played iconic bigscreen mothers in films like “Sophie’s Choice,” “One True Thing,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “August: Osage County” and many more – has only starred in one movie (and very briefly in its sequel) with a variation of mother in the title, but it’s the 146th highest-grossing movie of all time, nestled in between “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” and “Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse.” Name it.