Do you know John Wayne’s real name?
Which actress has won the most Academy Awards?
What are the only three movies ever to score an Academy Award Grand Slam (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay?
In case you don’t know (and even if you do!), you’ll want to hotfoot it to the Talbot County Free Library in St. Michaels at noon Monday, Oct. 1. There, Pete Howell, retired arts & entertainment editor and movie critic at The Star-Democrat, will reveal the answers to these and almost two dozen movie trivia questions. Additional quizzes will be available for those of you who think you know it all.
Ever since 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has awarded the annual Oscars. What movie won the very first Best Picture Oscar? (Scroll down for the answer.) The Academy Awards were the brainchild of movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Mayer hoped to apply a spur to Hollywood’s flank and motivate filmmakers to take it up a notch and make more prestige pictures. The Oscar is Tinseltown’s most coveted accolade, aside, perhaps, from big box office. The cream of the most coveted crop are Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. Together they make up the Academy’s Grand Slam.
In 90 years, only three movies have ever hit a Grand Slam, and Howell will dish the inside scoop on each, including one that almost never made it into production, due to the whims and egos of studio bigshots and big-name actors. In fact, its screenwriter suggested the effort to make this film would have made an even better movie, and it should have been called Uncertainty.
Pete Howell began his career as a movie reviewer in 1979, casting a critical eye on Roger Moore as James Bond in Moonraker. Since then, he has scribbled illegible notes in more dark theaters than he can remember. He is eternally indebted to the Internet Movie DataBase (imdb.com) for helping him to make sense of those notes when the lights came on. (Who was that guy who played Felix Leiter in Casino Royale, anyway?Scroll down for the answer.) Before taking over the arts & entertainment beat at The Star-Democrat in 2000, he created the same position at the Athens Observer, an upstart weekly in northeast Georgia. Now retired, he is more selective about his moviegoing (No Skyscraper for him!), but can still be found on the dark side of the footlights once or twice a week. In addition, he is the Grand Poo-Bah of the Talbot Cinema Society, a local group of movie buffs who meet monthly to watch a movie.
Admission to library programs is free, and light refreshments will be served. For more information, visit tcfl.org or call 410-745-5877.
Wings, starring Gary Cooper and Clara Bow, was the very first Best Picture.
Jeffrey Wright, the first African-American to play the role
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