Initially Speaking Trivia Quiz

Answer: B

Cecil B. (Blount) DeMille was one of America's finest filmmakers, directing social dramas, comedies, Westerns, and farces during the silent era before creating some of the biggest box-office successes of the modern era.

He became famous as a creator of epic films with his first being the biblical "The Ten Commandments" in 1923. The Bible continued to prove to be fruitful ground for him, providing the basis for a biography of Jesus ("King of Kings") in 1927, "The Sign of the Cross" in 1932, and 1949's "Samson and Delilah", which became the highest grossing film of 1950.

The triumph of "Samson and Delilah" opened the door to DeMille's most successful period, the 1950s. Though he released only two films during this time, "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952) and a remake of "The Ten Commandments" (1956), they were massive box-office winners, with the latter listed, in 2024, as the eighth biggest grossing film, of all time, after adjustments for inflation. Both films were nominated for Best Picture Oscars with the former taking home the prize.

DeMille was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 1950, and received the Irving G Thalberg Award three years later. Cecil passed away in 1959, at the age of 77, leaving behind a legacy of 70 films, the sobriquet as "The Father of Hollywood Motion Pictures" and having created the highest grossing film of the year on five separate occasions. To this point, only the masterful Steven Spielberg has bettered that total.

Answer: B

With the middle initial being for Brooks, White, an extraordinary author of children's books, was better known with his Christian name initials, being listed before his surname i.e. E.B. White. A contributing editor to the New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide "The Elements of Style" (1959), White, later gained fame for his creations of "Stuart Little" (1945), the remarkable "Charlotte's Web" (1952), and the serene "The Trumpet of the Swan" (1970).

A winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder medal for his contributions to children's literature, White was a shy man who disliked publicity. As a testament to his skill, "Charlotte's Web" was voted the best children's novel in a 2012 survey conducted by the School Library Journal. The journal's editor proclaimed "It is impossible to conduct a poll of this sort and expect [White's novel] to be anywhere but #1".

Answer: B

D.B. Cooper is the alias adopted by an unknown individual that hijacked a Boeing 727 on November 24, 1971. The plane was scheduled to fly from Portland to Seattle. Cooper disclosed that he had bomb, which he threatened to detonate unless he was paid a ransom of $200,000 and provided with four parachutes. The plane landed in Seattle, where Cooper released the passengers and then ordered the plane to fly to Mexico City. Not long after take-off, Cooper opened the aft doors and parachuted out. He or his body have never been found.

He initially used the alias of Dan Cooper but, a misprint by a reporter, had him recorded as D.B. (accordingly, there is no name for the B) Cooper and the sobriquet has stuck ever since.

Answer: B

William Butler Yeats, stylized W.B. Yeats, is an Irish poet and author who is considered to be one of the foremost figures in literature during the 20th century. His early works bore the influences of John Keats and William Blake and were built around the Irish legends that had fascinated him as a child. This led to his first volume of work being published in 1889.

A decade later his style shifted, becoming more robust and political in nature, producing such classic works as "Cathleen ni Houlihan" (1902), "Deirdre" (1907), "The Wild Swans at Coole" (1919), and "The Tower" (1928). The latter was his first major work after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Answer: C

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was more than author. He was an engineer, a futurist, and a humanist. When he passed away at the age of 90 in 2008, he'd left behind a legacy that had bridged the worlds of science and the arts. He contributed articles to scientific journals, the most poignant being "Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage" ("Wireless World", October 1945), which pushed forward the idea of geostationary satellites, where the satellite completes one orbit in the same 24 hours of the world turning. Whilst the idea was not original, it was Clarke's article that made the boffins pay attention.

However, Clarke's most important contributions were his science fiction writings. He, along with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, were the "Big Three" of his generation, riding the waves of sci-fi like giants. With novels such as "Childhood's End" (1953) and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) and the short story "The Nine Billion Names of God" (1953), Clarke can lay claim to some of the genre's best works in the 20th century.

Answer: C

George C. (Campbell) Scott was tall, dark and handsome. He was also a heavy drinker, willful, violent, unmanageable, and competitive. Above all, he was a seriously good actor. Scott made a name for himself in films such as "Anatomy of a Murder"(1959) and "The Hustler" (1961). He was nominated for (and denied) an Oscar for both of those performances, disappointments he seemingly carried with him throughout his career. Beyond that, he was both brilliant and funny as General "Buck" Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove", likeable as the confidence trickster Mordecai Jones in "The Flim-Flam Man" (1967), and driven as the ocean scientist in "The Day of the Dolphin" (1973).

However, the role he will be most remembered for was that of the World War II leader General George S. Patton Jr. in Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 biopic "Patton". Scott was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance, but he'd warned the Academy beforehand to exclude him from the contest as he deemed the Oscar race "offensive", a legacy of his earlier disappointments. He also stated that it was "barbarous and innately corrupt". Consequently, it became difficult to discern which caused the greatest surprise; Scott's non-attendance to the ceremony and refusal of the award or Goldie Hawn's shock in announcing "Oh my God! The winner is George C. Scott".

Answer: C

The birthnames of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher were Maurits Cornelis, a man who'd made a name for himself for his many pieces of woodwork, lithographs, and mezzotints. Even though he was not a talented mathematician, a lot of his work and designs were based on the subject, including reflection, symmetry, hyperbolic geometry, tessellations, and his most famous workings of impossible objects. It is said that he drew inspiration from regular meetings with the likes of mathematicians such as George Polya, Roger Penrose, and Donald Coxeter.

Some of Escher's notable impossible images include the lithographs "Cube with Magic Ribbons" (1957), "Belvedere" (1958), and "Waterfalls" (1961). Other notable works include "Hand with Reflecting Sphere" (1935), "Drawing Hands" (1948), and "Relativity" (1953). Sadly, his work was not recognized until a retrospective exhibition of his work was held. He was 70 at the time and he passed away a mere three years later.

Answer: C

William Claude Dukenfield became W.C. Fields on the stage. This highly versatile performer started his showbiz career in vaudeville, became the featured comedian for the "Ziegfeld Follies", and his performance as the colourful confidence man in the Broadway musical "Poppy" in 1932 made him a star. He acted in a little over forty movies, most of them through Paramount Studios, the first of which was "Pool Sharks" in 1915.

He portrayed himself as a suspiciously natured man who enjoyed a fair bit more than a quiet drink of alcohol. He supposedly had a hatred for children, but this rails against the love he had for his son. He died on Christmas morning in 1946 at the age of 66 after enduring several years of illness. He has been rated alongside Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers as one of the six great comic geniuses of the 20th century.

Answer: D

J.D. Salinger, the 'D' stands for David, first came to acclaim with the publication of his short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in 1948. However, that initial success had been hard won. Despite being described by Ernest Hemingway as "a helluva talent", Salinger had struggled to get many of his initial works published, including his 1941 short story "Slight Rebellion off Madison", which showcased a young man named Holden Caulfield for the first time.

The novel that Salinger is best known for was his first, "A Catcher in the Rye", published in 1951. It was met with reactions that ranged from "unusually brilliant" to "immoral and perverse". It became compared to Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884), established a counter culture called the "Catcher Cult", became the most censored novel across the United States and was a "must read" book for "brooding adolescents". It came with another catch - unwanted publicity - so much so that Salinger became a recluse. "Catcher in the Rye" would be Salinger's only published novel. Beyond that, there would only be a number of short story collections in which his readers could revel.

Answer: D

Her name is Kathryn Dawn Lang, but she prefers to stylize it as k.d. lang as her stage name. Note that it is all recorded as lower-case. Lang is a mezzo-soprano whose performances and recordings have seen her claim both Juno and Grammy Awards.

She first gained serious attention in 1987. Initially, with a cover of the Joe South's 1967 penned song "Rose Garden", which she followed up soon after with "Crying", a duet with Roy Orbison. Her major breakthrough would come in 1992 with the release of her album "Ingenue" and its supporting single "Constant Craving". Her follow-up single "Miss Chatelaine" consolidated her arrival on the US charts.

Outside of recording, lang has been an active supporter of animal rights, LGBTQ, and Tibetan human rights.

Answer: D

Texas born Dwight David Eisenhower, known by the sobriquet "Ike", would become the 34th President of the United States, serving his country in that capacity from 1953 to 1961.

Earlier, Eisenhower had made a name for himself by supervising two of the most significant campaigns of World War II. The first was Operation Torch, an action to secure victory in North Africa, which would then allow the US to begin their fight against Nazi Germany. After being promoted to the status of a five star general, he was appointed the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe and supervised the Normandy Invasion of 1944.

His two presidential campaigns would see him defeat Adlai Stevenson II on both occasions, the second being a landslide. His goals in office were to halt the spread of communism, though he covertly opposed the actions of Joseph McCarthy, eventually putting an end to his workings by invoking executive privilege. Domestically he set about reducing the country's deficit, continuing with the New Deal agencies and expanding the Social Security system.

Answer: D

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was one of the richest men of modern history. In 1870 he founded an oil refining operation called the Standard Oil Company. Soon after, kerosene and gasoline became two of the most sought after products in the United States, if not, the world. Rockefeller's wealth skyrocketed. By 1900, after a series of takeovers and buyouts, Standard Oil was in control of 90% of the oil production in States. By this time Rockefeller had retired, was still the company's largest shareholder and had become America's first billionaire.

Despite the operation being dismantled in 1911, due to its violation of antitrust laws, and separated into 34 new entities, some of these, such ExxonMobil and the Chevron Corporation, remain as some of the largest revenue generating organizations in the world. Rockefeller, for his part, decided to give back to the world, devoting a significant part of his fortune to philanthropic causes. He'd founded the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University, as well as helping to establish the Central Philippine University in the Philippines. In addition, he'd set up foundations that supported causes such as medicine, education, and scientific research.

Answer: G

Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States, had the rather unusual middle name of Gamaliel. He started his career by purchasing the "Marion Star" newspaper in 1884, and turning a once struggling operation into a highly successful business. His foray into political life began as a second lieutenant in the Ohio State Senate from 1900 to 1904. Defeated in his quest for State Governor, he focused his attention on, and was elected to, the US Senate in 1914. He stood as the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and, despite only conducting a front porch campaign (letting the people come to him), he won the election in a landslide on the promise that he'd "return the country to the normalcy it had enjoyed prior to World War I."

Harding's tenure as President was short, sitting in the chair from March 1921 to August 1923, falling prey to a major heart attack, that soon took his life. At the time of his passing though, he was one of the most popular presidents in the history of the United States. However, the uncovering of a number of scandals, such as the "Teapot Dome" and an extramarital affair with Nan Britton, put a massive dent in that reputation.

Answer: G

Herbert George Wells was a man of extraordinary talents. He was a futurist who'd commenced his career training as a biologist. He was a socialist, a pacifist, and a social critic. Forward thinking, he predicted the likes of space travel and a global enterprise that would resemble the internet. But, foremost, he was an author, and a prolific one at that.

We may know Wells as the creator of such iconic works of science-fiction as "The Time Machine" (1895), "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (1896), "The Invisible Man" (1897), and "The War of the Worlds" (1898), but his literary stable was so much more than that. Along with fifty works of fiction and numerous short stories he also produced a wealth of books and essays that covered topics as varied as politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. The above does not include countless articles of social commentary.

Wells, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize on four occasions, was also a diabetic, which provided him the impetus to co-found the charity The Diabetic Association (Diabetes UK) in 1934.

Answer: G

Born in 1881, Sir P.G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse was, primarily, a comic novelist, though he also wrote lyrics, film scripts, plays, and short stories. Best known for his creation of the gentleman's gentleman known as Jeeves, he started his working life as a banker with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank but found that role befuddling.

He began the first of his ninety novels, writing stories set in public schools, the initial one being "The Pothunters" in 1902, before progressing to creating light romance stories. However, it wasn't until 1915, and with fifteen novels under his belt, that he finally discovered his superpower - writing farce. The book was "Something New" ("Something Fresh" in the UK) and a clear direction in his writing emerged. Armed with vivid imagery, far-fetched ideas, a strong command of slang and a great command of the English sentence, Wodehouse was able to delight his readers with highly complicated and carefully planned plots. His creations of the highly eligible Bertie Wooster and his manservant, who was vastly superior to his master in many ways, Jeeves, were a piece of genius. In a stroke of accidental symmetry, the first story "The Man with Two Left Feet" was published in 1917 and the last, "Much Obliged, Jeeves" was released in 1971. In between those two years the pair never aged.

Wodehouse had spent a number of years living and working between London, Paris and New York. He was captured by the Germans during World War II, and managed to make five radio broadcasts from Berlin, but all of them to the United States. This created a sense of resentment from his home nation which, at the time was fighting for its existence under the continual bombardment from Germany's war machine. As a consequence, Wodehouse moved to the States after the war and became a US citizen in 1955. All was eventually forgiven by Great Britain and Wodehouse was knighted for his services to literature in 1975.

Answer: G

William Gilbert Grace was the greatest cricketer during Victorian England. His feats with the bat, in first class cricket, were so prodigious that there is argument to compare the man with the incredible Sir Donald Bradman. Consider, for example, three consecutive innings that the young Grace put together during August of 1876; he scored 344 out of 546 for the Marylebone Cricket Club against Kent, 177 out of 262 for the Gloucestershire county team against Nottinghamshire, and 318 not out for Gloucestershire versus Yorkshire - a remarkable 839 runs at an average of almost 420.

To add weight of his achievements, we should be mindful of the fact that (a) the modern day principles of technical batting evolved, mostly, from the great mind of Grace and (b) the majority of his runs were scored on wickets that were so rough and unpredictable that modern day cricketers would refuse to play on them. Age did not weary him nor reduce his appetite for the game... he even opened the batting for the English Test team when he was 50 years old and played his last first class innings at the age of 66. In all, he scored in excess of 54,000 runs and took a little over 2,800 wickets in his career.

Sadly, despite his greatness and his prolonged influence on the game, he is rarely mentioned in the history books. The high watermark of this omission is, perhaps, by the eminent historian Sir Robert Ensor's in his work "England 1870-1914" (1936), which represents Volume XIV of the "Oxford History of England" series, edited by Sir George Clark. Grace is mentioned, but only briefly. First on page one where it is told that he made his first class debut in 1864 (it was, in fact, 1865) and then, on page 165 there is a "moot" suggestion that "Grace made cricket watching a popular craze". Even the photographs that are shown of Grace are those of an aged and heavy-set man (thanks to his gluttonous eating habits), which belie the fact that he was an extremely athletic young man... he once made 224 not out in a match for England that he left halfway through to win a quarter-mile hurdles championship at the Crystal Palace.