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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 35 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Manchurian Candidate, The
1952. The place and date are the first things seen in the movie.
Chunjin. Chunjin was the interpreter for the platoon, and led them into a trap.
| Upon return to America, Raymond Shaw received the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving the entire platoon, minus two. His mother and stepfather threw a welcoming party for him as he stepped off the plane. His stepfather, John Iselin, was a senator from which state? | The Manchurian Candidate
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We never find out. We also never discover which political party he belonged to.
A Republican. They shared a common hatred for the Iselins.
Ed Mavole. He was chosen because he was the person in the platoon Raymond disliked the least. He killed Bobby Lembeck in Alvin Melvin's dream.
Nicest. "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." This sentiment is repeated by Alvin Melvin after having his recurring nightmares.
| When confronting the Secretary of Defense, how many Communists did John Iselin say there were in the Defense Department? | The Manchurian Candidate
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207. When questioned by Marco after the briefing, he picks two random numbers out of the sky (104 and 275). 57 is the number they eventually settle on, in a Heinz ketchup product placement.
| Raymond had been brainwashed to be susceptible to suggestion upon seeing which card in a game of solitaire? | The Manchurian Candidate
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Queen of Diamonds. The Queen of Diamonds is in many ways reminiscent of Raymond's mother, whom he hates.
Holborn Gaines. This was a test to make sure the brainwashing mechanism is still in place, and that Raymond can still kill efficiently.
| On the train to New York, Marco's new friend Rosie commented that Maryland was a beautiful state. Which state were they in when she said this? | The Manchurian Candidate
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Delaware. Rosie was played by Janet Leigh.
Chunjin. He came to work for Raymond after Senator Iselin gives him a visa...the first clue that something fishy is going on with the Iselins.
| When Ben and Raymond finally got together, what was the name of the lost love Raymond reminisced about? | The Manchurian Candidate
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Josie. He met Josie, the daughter of Senator Iselin's arch-rival Thomas Jordan after being bitten by a snake.
New York. Raymond's mother mentioned this when trying to convince Raymond that it will never work, they live too far apart.
| After hearing the trigger phrase ("Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?") and finding the trigger card in a bar, what did Raymond do? | The Manchurian Candidate
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Jumped in a lake. The bartender was telling a story that happened to include the trigger phrase and instructions to take a cab, go up to Central Park, and jump in a lake.
Abraham Lincoln. This seems to be a theme for his campaign, as many of his supporters at the convention later in the movie will be dressed the same way.
| After Thomas Jordan threatened to block Iselin's nomination to the vice-presidency, Iselin charged him with what? | The Manchurian Candidate
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High treason. We found this out as the newly married Raymond and Josie were eating breakfast.
A carton of milk. The bullet went right through the carton, spilling the milk onto the floor.
Arthur. Benjamin K. Arthur was the man Raymond was ultimatley supposed to assassinate.
Bennett Marco. After killing his mother and stepfather, he finally put on his Medal of Honor, at last feeling like he earned it. Then he killed himself.
Sergeant Bilko. Maybe that was director John Frankheimer's way of acknowledging his debt to television, the medium in which he perfected his directing skills.
Three years. When 'The Manchurian Candidate' was filmed, Angela Lansbury was 36 and Laurence Harvey was 33. Originally, Frank Sinatra wanted Lucille Ball to play Eleanor Iselin, but John Frankheimer suggested Angela Lansbury and persuaded Sinatra to see her in a film called 'All Fall Down'. Sinatra was so impressed that he readily agreed to have Lansbury take on the role.
| Senator Iselin's private plane (a gift from his supporters) featured in one scene of the movie was in fact the property of someone else connected with the movie. Who actually owned the plane? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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Frank Sinatra. The plane belonged to Sinatra. I don't know if the other choices owned planes. It must be nice to be rich!
| Khigh Dhiegh, who played Dr. Yen Lo of the Pavlovian Institute in 'The Manchurian Candidate' was perhaps better known for his repeated appearances as a Chinese agent in 'Hawaii Five-O'. Do you remember his character's name in that series? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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Wo Fat. Wo Fat was the ever-smiling thorn in the side of Steve McGarrett (played by Jack Lord). Hop Sing (played by Victor Sen Yung) was the cook on the TV series 'Bonanza', Don Ho is a singer, famous for the terribly saccharine 'Tiny Bubbles', and I made up Ho Lee.
| In 2004, 'The Manchurian Candidate' underwent the re-make treatment (and it failed miserably in my opinion, although the acting was superb). The re-make was set in the Gulf War period and starred Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. Who directed the film? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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Jonathan Demme. The 2004 version, directed by Demme, did not achieve the same level of critical acclaim accorded the original film version. I felt that the remake did a great disservice to Condon's compelling story.
| In the original film Dr. Yen Lo demonstrates the efficacy of his brainwashing treatment for a group of Soviet, Chinese and Korean officials and military big-wigs. Where do the hypnotized GIs think they are? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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At a Garden Club meeting. The GIs had been hypnotized just before the demonstration and were under the impression that they were sheltering from a rainstorm in the lobby of the hotel where the Garden Club was meeting and listening to a less-than-compelling talk called 'Fun with Hydrangeas', delivered by a Mrs. Whittaker. Screenwriter George Axelrod evidently lifted the entire monologue from a seed catalogue. The Garden Club meeting is the main feature of the recurring nightmare experienced by both Captain Bennett Marco (Sinatra) and Corporal Al Melvin (James Edwards). In Marco's dreams all the elderly ladies are white, and in Melvin's dream they're black.
They were the first black actors cast in non-black-specific roles. The 1962 version of 'The Manchurian Candidate' broke ground in several areas, not the least of which was casting black actors in roles that did not specifically require a black man in the part. Joe Adams played the consulting psychiatrist called in by the army when Marco first tells his colonel about his recurring nightmare. James Edwards played Corporal Al Melvin, a member of Marco's platoon who shares the same nightmare.
| Richard Condon wrote the 'The Manchurian Candidate', the book on which the film was based (and very faithfully, too, I might add. George Axelrod, who adapted the book for the screen, used whole chunks of Condon's dialogue verbatim - including the cryptic conversation between Marco and Rosie when they meet on the train). What other book by Condon featured assassins and was made into a smash hit movie? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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Prizzi's Honor. 'Prizzi's Honor' starred Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner as assassins hired to kill one another. It was directed by John Huston whose daughter Anjelica Huston won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Maerose Prizzi.
'The Third Man' (1949), directed by Carol Reed, is a thriller set in post-war Vienna and starred Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. Graham Greene wrote both the book on which the movie is based and the screenplay. The film also introduced most of us to the zither, the musical instrument on which Anton Karas played the movie's haunting theme (which he had also composed).
'The Day of the Jackal' (1973) was based on the book by Frederick Forsyth, with screenplay by Kenneth Ross. Fred Zinnerman directed this taut tale of an assassin called The Jackal (played with chilling precision by Edward Fox) who is hired to bump off French President Charles de Gaulle.
'Bad Day at Black Rock' (1955) starred Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and a whole gaggle of Hollywood stalwarts in a stark combination of film noir and western. Directed by John Sturges, the film was adapted for the screen by Don McGuire from a story by Howard Breslin.
| The karate fight between Captain Marco and Chungjin, the Communist agent, was the first time that two karateka had faced-off in an American-made film. Who played Chungjin? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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Henry Silva. For a Brooklynite of Spanish-Sicilian descent, Henry Silva made a dandy Korean! Silva grew up in Harlem and when he was 13 he put paid to his regular schooling to study acting. He paid his way by working as a dishwasher and a waiter and 14 years later, when he was 27, he auditioned for a place at the prestigious Actors Studio, to study under its Artistic Director, the prominent acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Silva was one of five successful applicants out of 3,500 hopefuls! Strasberg taught the Stanislavsky Method and trained such luminaries as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Shelley Winters, Anthony Franciosa, Eva Marie Saint, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro...it's a long list of stars, and it even includes Marilyn Monroe who was already a star when she took lessons from Strasberg.
If you answered Han Suyin, you are hereby sentenced to one year of non-stop viewings of 'A Many-Splendored Thing', a sappy romance based on the novel of the same name by novelist/physician Suyin.
James Shigeta and Jack Soo starred in the film version of 'Flower Drum Song' (as Wang Ta, the romantic lead, and Sammy Fong, the playboy nightclub owner, respectively). You may remember Soo as the wise-cracking Sergeant Nick Yemana on 'Barney Miller'.
| During the filming of 'The Manchurian Candidate', Sinatra sustained an injury that is said to be one of the reasons that he bowed out of the starring role in the film that made Clint Eastwood's day. What was that film? | The (Original) Manchurian Candidate
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Dirty Harry. During the karate fight with Henry Silva, Sinatra smashed his hand on a table. The table was supposed to be a breakaway, but someone forgot to tell the Props Department, and the only thing that got broken was Sinatra's hand. He eventually required surgery on his hand to alleviate pain and restore mobility. Some years after the release of 'The Manchurian Candidate', Sinatra was tapped to play Harry Callahan in 'Dirty Harry' but had to bow out because of the difficulties still affecting his hand eight years after the injury. Something tells me that Clint Eastwood has a lot to thank Sinatra for!
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