1964: A Very Entertaining Year Quiz

Answer: Top of the Pops

In a prime example of being in the right place at the right time, "Top of the Pops" started up just as the British music invasion of the U.S. and then the world began. It was originally scheduled to run for a few weeks but ended up lasting 42 years, until 2006! There have been a number of short revivals and specials since.

The first song featured on the program was "I Only Want to Be with You" by Dusty Springfield; the first live performers were the Rolling Stones singing "I Wanna be Your Man".

Answer: Needles and Pins

"Needles and Pins" was written by Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono in 1963. Jackie DeShannon was the first to record it; it peaked at number 83 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1963. The Searchers, a Liverpool group, heard it and recorded it at the end of 1963. Released on January 7, 1964 it reached a respectable number 13 on the chart. For the year-end totals it just made it at number 100. For the record (so to speak), the number 99 song was "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen.

Answer: Dr. Strangelove

The movie's full name is long so let's get it out of the way: "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." It was loosely based on the 1958 novel "Red Alert" by Peter George. Peter Sellers played three characters: the president of the United States, a British RAF exchange officer and Dr. Strangelove, a former Nazi scientist.

It involves a potential nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union started by an insane Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. (George C. Scott) and the attempts to stop a B-52 bomber with an onboard nuclear bomb from dropping it in the USSR, and other attempts to have it bomb its target. (It gets too complicated to explain here.)

Answer: Goldfinger

Having made two successful "James Bond" movies, Eon Productions spent as much money on "Goldfinger" as the first two "James Bond" films ("Dr. No" and "From Russia with Love") together. Based on Ian Fleming's 1959 novel of the same name, Sean Connery is back as Agent 007, tasked with confronting Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) who plans to irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox, Kentucky so that it becomes worthless. Among other characters in the movie, Goldfinger is aided by his assistant, Oddjob (Harold Sakata), who wears a lethal hat.

Answer: Gene Roddenberry

Gene Roddenberry spent several years in Hollywood as a screenwriter and producer beginning in the mid-1950s. In 1963 he created and produced a TV show ,"The Lieutenant," about U.S. Marines in the Cold War. He came up with the idea of a space-travel show and fleshed out a 16-page proposal which he registered with the Writers Guild of America in 1964 (to serve as evidence of authorship).

It took a few tries to sell the idea to television networks and production companies but "Star Trek" premiered on September 8, 1966 on the NBC network.

It has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Answer: Mary Poppins

Released on August 27, 1964, "Mary Poppins" was a partially-animated musical comedy movie based on the "Mary Poppins" books by P.L. Travers. Julie Andrews starred as the heroine who appeared at a home answering an advertisement for a nanny by floating out of the sky with an umbrella as a parachute.

She had lots of magical powers including transporting to other places. The film co-starred Dick Van Dyke as a jack-of-all-trades friend of hers named Bert. It's a light-hearted movie in which both get to show off their dancing and singing skills. And if you ever wondered where the word "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" came from (some people might) this was the place.

It was the title of a song.

Answer: A Fistful of Dollars

Clint Eastwood had his first starring role in this movie and went on to star in "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," a trio of so-called "Spaghetti Westerns" (so-called because they were produced in Europe, mostly by Italians) directed by Sergio Leone. Eastwood played a drifter who got involved in a feud between two smuggler families. There is stolen gold, hostages, treachery and a lot of gunfire.

The movie is considered very influential in starting the Spaghetti Western genre. There were legal issues about whether the movie was an unauthorized remake of the Japanese movie "Yojimbo" so the film was only released in Italy on September 12th, 1964. It was released in other European countries in 1965 and 1966 and finally released in the United States on January 18, 1967. It propelled Eastwood into movie stardom for decades.

Answer: Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island" was a comedy show about seven people who were stranded on an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean. The show was titled after Willy Gilligan, played by Bob Denver, who was the first mate on the cruise boat S.S. Minnow, captained by Jonas Grumby, known as "The Skipper" and played by Alan Hale, Jr. They and five passengers spent the next three years trying to get off the island, with setbacks and problems usually blamed on Gilligan.

Over the course of time various people managed to find the island but they somehow managed to leave without taking the castaways with them. The show was cancelled after three seasons with no episode to resolve things. It was thought the show would air for a fourth season but in the hiatus the CBS television network decided to cancel it. There were two made-for-TV movies between 1978 and 1982, in which they got rescued - twice!

Answer: Shel Silverstein

The story in the book is about a boy who becomes friends with an apple tree. The boy wants certain things, limbs to swing on, apples to eat and the tree obliges, making the boy and the tree happy. As the boy ages he wants more things from the tree, like wood to build a house. At the end, both the tree and the boy, now an old man, have nothing more to give each other. Some people thought it showed a good relationship between the two, others thought it an abusive relationship.

Silverstein was a multi-talented artist. Besides being a cartoonist he wrote poems and stories and wrote songs. His best-known song may be one of Johnny Cash's biggest hits: "A Boy Named Sue."

Answer: Doctor Zhivago

"You guys reeelllly missed it" if you thought it was "The Endless Summer." In Russia it may seem like the endless winter. "Doctor Zhivago" was based on a novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. It starred Omar Sharif as Dr. Omar Zhivago and Julie Christie as Lara Antipova. It was set in Russia during World War I and the Russian Revolution. Zhivago met Antipova before the war, became a battlefield doctor in the war, met Antipova again and had an on again-off again affair with her. The movie delves into personal struggles of the characters set in the chaotic revolution in Russia and some of its aftermath.

Most of the movie was made in Spain because the Soviet Union had banned Pasternak's book and would not allow the movie to be filmed in Russia. The film ended up being 3 hours and 7 minutes long so it included an intermission. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won five. It lost the Best Picture award to "The Sound of Music".