'The Sheep are Quiet': Movies in Other Words 2 Quiz

Answer: Some Like It Hot

Synopsis: Two fugitive musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), who inadvertently witness a Chicago gangland massacre, impersonate women in an all-girl band to escape the 'mob'. They're befriended by a lonely vocalist (Marilyn Monroe), with whom the Curtis character becomes besotted. In turn, Lemmon is pursued by satchel-mouthed veteran Joe E Brown. When the gangsters are routed and all is revealed at the Miami denouement (Lemmon: 'But Osgood, I'm a man!'), Brown utters the immortal final line of the movie expressed in the hint.

Noted for first depicting men in drag to wide acceptance and commercial success, it was a death knell for the sanctimonious grip of the Hays motion picture code. It also established the versatile Curtis as a romantic-comedy leading man after making his name in a cringeworthy series of matinee swashbucklers in the mid-50s - medieval knights and coiffed crusaders with a thick Bronx accent - spare me! In a key beach scene, Curtis gives a passable Cary Grant imitation - given some of his past performances, who knew?

Trivia: Marilyn's pill-popping and erratic behavior on set were by now notorious. Lemmon and Curtis are said to have bet on how many takes she would need to complete a given scene; the film was shot in black and white against the trend for major films of the time because, according to director Billy Wilder, Curtis and Lemmon looked 'unacceptably grotesque' in color. Ergo, they look 'acceptably grotesque' in this?

Answer: Lawrence of Arabia

Lady C's fictional lover was Oliver Mellors, but their creator was David Herbert Lawrence. His contemporary, Thomas Edward Lawrence, a short, wiry archaeologist-turned-saboteur, looked nothing like lanky Peter O'Toole in the classic David Lean film, any more than stocky Mel Gibson looked like the giant guerilla warrior William Wallace the Wight in 'Braveheart'. In fact, fabled effete playwright and actor Noël Coward, on viewing the former, famously told O'Toole at a premiere: 'If you'd looked any prettier, they should have called it 'Florence of Arabia'.

Synopsis: Lawrence, an Arabic-speaking British Army intelligence agent, is sent south from Cairo during WW1 to hook up with Prince Faisal's (Alec Guinness) Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, thus weakening Turkish resources in the British campaign to control the Levant. Aided by Arab chieftains (Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn), he leads the taking of a strategic Turk-controlled Red Sea port by arriving unexpectedly from the east across the 'impassable' Nefud desert, and subsequently stages a series of train derailments and bridge bombings to cripple supply lines. But Lawrence, whose sadomasochistic tendencies are vaguely hinted at, is traumatized by his own role in the carnage and lack of medical assistance for the casualties, as well as the territorial infighting of the victors, and longs for a return to the peace and obscurity of England.

Seven Oscars (ten nominations), stunning authentic Super Panavision 70 mm cinematography (not just 70 mm projection on 35 mm stock, as was the usual practice), one of the most majestic musical themes ever (Maurice Jarre), a Robert Bolt screenplay and superb performances all the way down the line speak for themselves. Despite its significant historical inaccuracies (e.g. in reality the strategic Sinai port of Aqaba was taken with hardly a shot fired), it frequently pops up in critics' top-ten lists, deservedly so.

Answer: Jersey Boys

This smash Broadway 'jukebox-musical' was based on the meteoric rise of Italo-American vocal group the Four Seasons (three consecutive #1s in 1963 alone), driven by the freakishly powerful falsetto of Frankie Valli, and transferred to the big screen to a somewhat mixed reception under the unlikely but competent clapperboard of Clint Eastwood, who astutely insisted on the original Broadway cast rather than big names from Hollywood, the exception being Christopher Walken as Frankie's Mafia 'godfather'.

Synopsis: Each member tells the story of the group's rise and fall and revival in turn, 'season by season' as it were, from their seedy, semi-delinquent beginnings in Newark, NJ, to the big-time national tours and their subsequent financial and personal problems - loan sharks, gambling debts, tax arrears, neglected families, the death of Valli's drug-addict daughter and more. The viewer is left to distill the truth from four discrete and sometimes contradictory points of view.

Here was a gripping story that had waited fifty years to be told, and well told it was. John Lloyd Young, reprising his Broadway success, met the daunting challenge of filling the diminutive Valli's enormous shoes with the lead vocal chores. Eastwood had the chance to distinguish the film when the credits rolled by inserting some classic Seasons recordings, instead opting disappointingly to use the original versions of their early novelty hits, already well covered in the film.

Trivia: As depicted in the film, another renowned Jersey boy and fellow Newark native, Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci (portrayed here by Joey Russo), was the one who introduced Valli to writer/arranger bandmate Bob Gaudio, and that's when the musical fireworks really started. Thank you, Joe.

Answer: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Memorable for the first double-dose of handsomeness, macho Western swagger, handsomeness, acting talent and handsomeness in the pairing of Robert Redford and Paul Newman; also memorable for one of the most irritating theme songs in film history in Grammy-winning 'Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head', repeated ad nauseam on radio and TV that year. The songwriters, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, have done much better elsewhere, I think.

Synopsis: The heat is on for 1890s Wyoming's notorious Leroy 'Butch' Cassidy-led 'Hole in the Wall' gang, as sheriffs' posses relentlessly close in. He and his main lieutenant Harry 'Sundance' Longabaugh (Redford) learn that the Union Pacific Railroad has a price on their head and is determined to kill them. With Cassidy's schoolteacher girlfriend Etta Place (the highly decorative Katharine Ross) they manage to escape to Bolivia, where they commit a string of robberies. Etta wisely flees for her life, and the pair are last seen trapped in a village attempting a desperate breakout.

Award-winning original screenplay (William Goldman), snappy dialogue, strong performance chemistry, photogenic locations, and a unique 'based on' true story all contributed to major success, though some critics complained with some justification about too many shoot'em up scenes. Personally I'd rather bullets falling on my head that those infernal raindrops.

Answer: The Dirty Dozen

Based on E. M. Nathanson's best-selling novel of the same name which was, believe it or not, partially inspired by an airborne unit called 'The Filthy Thirteen', who were said to have refused to bathe after their capture (their existence is uncertain). It starred Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas and other 'heavies'. Deciding who bathes with whom among these legendary Hollywood tough guys could very well have ended in a bloodbath. The movie did. It cleaned up at the box office, predictably, and its ilk continue to milk the mighty macho money machine to this day.

Synopsis: In the weeks preceding D-Day, Major John Reisman (Marvin) is tasked with training a dead-end bunch of army convicts, psychopaths and misfits for a suicide paratroop mission to a chateau somewhere in western France, where their brief is to liquidate members of a Nazi high-ranking summit, thus seriously disrupting the enemy's chain of command on the eve of the Allied invasion. Despite hostile skepticism from General Breed (Borgnine) and attack plans gone awry, they manage to prove their heroic worth, but few live to tell.

Trivia: Reportedly John Wayne declined a role in the movie because it contained 'adulterous' scenes - far worse than slaughtering native people and Asians I suppose. Conversely, Jack Palance declined because he refused to say the racist lines written for his slated character.

Answer: The Wizard of Oz

My very second movie-theater experience, after Disney's 'Pinocchio'. When you're five years old, the Wicked Witch of the West is truly the stuff of nightmares. Her portrayer, Margaret Hamilton, was said to be the kindliest of souls, a kindergarten teacher who doted on children. She's reported to have had even the teachers diving under their seats in terror during latter-day visits to school auditoriums for talks about the 'making of' etc. On persistent request, she would (reluctantly) let loose that cackle into a powerful mike and suddenly you're a petrified five-year-old again - and not in Kansas any more.

Synopsis: Prairie farm girl Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) and her little dog Toto (played by a brindle Cairn terrier named 'Terry') are whisked 'over the rainbow' by a tornado to a colorful enchanted world. There she is told by the pint-sized 'Munchkins' she must seek the Wizard of Oz (Frank Morgan) to learn how to return home. On her journey to the Emerald Palace via the Yellow Brick Road, she teams up with a brainless scarecrow (Ray Bolger), a cowardly lion (Bert Lahr) and a 'heartless' tin man (Jack Haley) who also seek the Wizard's favor. On their quest they must contend with the Wicked Witch (Hamilton) and her army of winged monkeys ('Winkies'). The witch is after Dorothy's ruby slippers 'stolen' from her sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, who was killed when Dorothy's house landed on her. Dorothy gets some magical assistance from Glinda the Good Witch of the North (Billie Burke), and also learns a few of life's lessons before she clicks her ruby slippers together to return home.

Trivia: the studio at first wanted Shirley Temple. I wonder what Judy's signature tune would have been if Little Miss Dimples had played Dorothy; Shirley's occasional dancing partner, versatile TV legend Buddy Ebsen (Georgie Russell, Jed Clampett, Barnaby Jones) was the original Tin Man but had to drop out due to a severe allergic reaction to the metallic paint. The cast were not told he'd been hospitalized and some assumed for years afterward that he'd been fired - that's Hollywood, after all. Ebsen was the original Scarecrow but Bolger wanted to play the part so desperately that the studio relented. I assume Buddy was too sick, or just too darn nice, if Donna 'Ellie May' Douglas's recollections of him are anything to go by, to ask for his scarecrow back.

Answer: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Kudos but no points for spotting the alternative titles were taken from the Danny Kaye 1956 medieval spoof 'The Court Jester'.

The Python sextet, who revolutionized TV satirical sketch comedy in Britain in the early 70s, had been well established there for several years with their BBC 'Flying Circus' of absurdist, surreal characters, deconstructionalist punchlines (or lack thereof), ingenious segues and links, manic wordplay and sanity-threatening double-takes, but were still very much an esoteric cult in America. Steadily their fanbase grew with promotion from the likes of 'SNL' alumni, especially Steve Martin, and made a number of individual appearances on that show.

This, their first purposely scripted movie, was shot on a shoestring budget at obscure Scottish castle ruins and on soggy moors, directing themselves with no more than a handful of extras (even for the pitched battle scenes), the BBC wardrobe dept., and Terry Gilliam's distinctive, iconoclastic animation. No horses? Simple. Pretend you're riding one and bang some coconuts together. Some of the lines, sequences and routines are now legendary among comedy fans but tedious to recount here. Not for nothing has the word 'Pythonesque' passed into the language to describe a certain brand of absurdist humor.

Synopsis: Arthur, King of the Britons (Graham Chapman) and his motley retinue of knights set off on a quest to locate the legendary relic of the Last Supper, only to encounter a bizarre range of characters and scenarios including Marxist peasants, abusive French sentries, seductive nuns, a witch trial, a bubonic plague, a ferocious white rabbit and the loony, shrubbery-loving 'Knights who say Nih', just to name a few. That is, until the British constabulary arrive to sort them all out. As usual, the Python troupe play most of the speaking parts.

Trivia: According to one 'Memphis Mafia' insider, it was one of Elvis's favorite movies and he would watch it over and over in his final years. So that's what killed him!

Answer: Finding Neverland

Depp sensitively underplays Peter Pan creator J M Barrie in this (somewhat time-tweaked) real-life 'roots-of' movie adapted by David Magee from Allan Knee's stage play 'The Man Who Was Peter Pan'. I wish the undeniably talented Johnny had stuck to more of these straight characterizations rather than trying to upstage himself with every increasingly eccentric grotesquerie he's brought to the screen in his later career.

Synopsis: Celebrated 1890s London playwright, Scotsman James Barrie, seems to have lost his 'mojo'. Depressed by a childless marriage, he gains inspiration from his games in Kensington Gardens with the three young Llewelyn Davies brothers and their widowed, well-connected mother, of the Du Maurier family. He becomes especially attached to the youngest and most difficult of them, Peter (Freddie Highmore), and develops an exciting new children's fantasy for stage production. Meanwhile, his wife (Radha Mitchell) leaves him and the boys' mother develops a fatal respiratory illness.

Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies gives fine support, and Hollywood royalty is present in the form of Dustin Hoffman (who flatly refused to do a 'Hook' cameo) as theater impresario Charles Frohman. But for me, it's the boys' grandma, Julie Christie as the disapproving Emma Du Maurier, who steals every scene she's in. Though the story ends in tragedy, we are offered a way of dealing with life's blows through the power of the imagination, by finding our own 'Neverland'.

Trivia: the lives of the real Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired Barrie all ended prematurely and dramatically - George's with a bullet in the head on the WW1 front line, Michael's in a drowning accident at Oxford in 1921 and Peter, by then a dissolute alcoholic weary of being labelled the boy who was Peter Pan, threw himself under a train in 1960; Barrie's original play is also credited with bringing the girl's name 'Wendy' into vogue.

Answer: From Russia with Love

Deliciously nefarious adversaries - huge, iron-jawed 'Red' Grant (Robert Shaw) and tiny, vinegar-breasted Rosa Klebb (musical theater legend Lotte Lenya) - one of the best ever Bond themes (by Lionel Bart), and fast-paced action in exotic locations propelled the second Connery-Bond bombshell to the year's highest grosses, eclipsing the previous year's 'Dr No' and establishing the franchise as essential 60s. And essential 70s. And 80s etc. etc.

I saw it at my local fleahouse as a double-feature with 'Dr No' when I was just 15, so my personal highlight was 1960 Miss Universe Daniela Bianchi as James's (main) love interest, Tatiana Romanova (another likely name). I was surprised to learn much later that, like Ursula Andress in 'Dr No', her accent was too thick at that time and her voice had to be dubbed by English actress Barbara Jefford. (So then why did they cast her? ... oh!) I wouldn't have cared if she'd been uttering the black tongue of Mordor ...

Synopsis: 007 is sent to Istanbul to assist the defection of consular cypher clerk Romanova with the 'Lektor', a valuable Soviet decryption machine (she insisted on Bond's involvement after seeing his photo). But SPECTRE is on to them, and sends their man Grant to pose as his bodyguard. After a succession of 'trains and boats and planes' shenanigans, double-agent shootings and intrigues, Bond finally disposes of Grant, who had tried to blackmail him using secretly filmed hotel liaisons with his beautiful defectress. SPECTRE #5 mastermind Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) is executed for the scheme's failure, but in a last-ditch effort, #3 Klebb, posing as a hotel maid, tries to kick our man to death with poison-spiked shoes, until she is shot by Romanova. The compromising film is destroyed and the pair speedboat off into the sunset.

Answer: South Pacific

Knock knock! Who's there? Sam and Janet. Sam and Janet who? Sam and Janet evening. Sorry.

Based very loosely on stories by Pulitzer Prize-winner James A Michener, this Todd-AO widescreen extravaganza (pink and gold Maxfield Parrish sunsets; verdant, mist-swathed Polynesian mountains) remains my favorite 'Golden Age' musical movie and was hugely successful on stage (10 Tonys, best selling original cast recording of the 40s). You will never wash this dreamy Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II score out of your hair once you hear it. One of its flagship anthems, the ethereal 'Bali Hai', has become a popular stage choice for young crossover classical sopranos of late.

Synopsis: On a fictional island near the WW2 Pacific front, US Navy Ensign Nellie Forbush (spritzy Mitzi Gaynor, as adorably 'corny as Kansas in August') falls in love with suave, worldly French plantation owner Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi, singing dubbed by Giorgio Tozzi), only to learn he is the father of several native children by his deceased Polynesian wife. Meanwhile, Tonkinese matriarch Bloody Mary (Juanita Hall, reprising her stage role) tries to marry off her beautiful daughter Liat (gorgeous France Nuyen) to Marine officer Joseph Cable (John Kerr). Both Forbush and Cable have strong racial reservations about their relationships. De Becque and Cable become involved in a dangerous mission behind enemy lines which is successful, but only De Becque returns. In the meantime Nellie has bonded with his children and happiness ensues, for them anyway.

Mary Martin (Larry Hagman's mum) brought Forbush to life on the Broadway stage in probably her most popular role opposite acclaimed Italian baritone Ezio Pinza, whose unmistakably continental accent, like Brazzi's and Tozzi's, fortunately seemed to fit. It was the second-longest run ever up to that point after 'Oklahoma' (also Rodgers and Hammerstein). The soundtrack version was the first 12-inch LP record in our home (#1 for months in the States), and I soon knew the lyrics by heart. Alas, I still can't sing them. Mum and Dad's 'our song' was 'Some Enchanted Evening', and I may very well have been conceived to the sound of it, which could explain my sentiments.