HOORAY FOR HOGTOWN!
A Sesquicentennial Quiz of Movie Facts and Fiction concerning Toronto
1. No Griffith ever made The Toronto Hat, or Lubitsch So This is Toronto. Phileas Fogg did not pass through our great city, and Crosby and Hope’s Road never led to this Rome. No one has ever seen films entitled Toronto Belongs to Me, Toronto–Symphony of a Great City, Zoo in Toronto, Mission to Toronto, Night Plane From Toronto, The Toronto Gesture, or Toronto–East of Java. There is, however, a picture called The Man From Toronto. Tell us all you can about it.
2. Many famous film figures began their lives here. Identify these Toronto natives (listed in ascending order of difficulty):
a) Born on the site of Hospital for Sick Children, she was between her first appearance for Griffith and her last, for Borzage, perhaps the most famous heroine of the silent screen.
b) Born a hundred years ago this year, he acted for Griffith, Capra, Clair, Von Sternberg, played two Presidents of the U.S. (Abraham Lincoln, a fictitious one possessed by the Archangel), and won an Oscar for his part in a film directed by his son.
c) Scion of a great Canadian family, he played many an anti-British villain, from Philip of Spain to the Nazis, as well as Abraham Lincoln and Sherlock Holmes.
d) A product of the Stratford Festival, he too played Sherlock Holmes, as well as Rommel and the Iron Duke, though he is no doubt best remembered as an aristocratic and autocratic father in the most successful movie musical of all time.
e) A graduate of Victoria College, he made two of the biggest musical blockbusters of the early ’70’s, having begun as a director of television musical specials, and of two Doris Day pictures, and having won a Best Picture Oscar for a very socially topical film.
f) The director of Canada’s own biggest international hit, based on a famous Canadian novel, he is also credited with beginning, in two films of the early ’70s, the New Wave of Australian cinema.
g) The maker of more than 400 pictures, whose anecdotes formed the basis of Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon, he directed 2a in several films, her husband in even more, Shirley Temple in two, and the present President of the U.S. in two.
h) Playing in her first film opposite both Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan, she soon moved to England, where she played a continuing character in the James Bond series.
i) A talented animator who began his career with the National Film Board, he also moved to England, where he directed a full-length cartoon featuring the Beatles at the height of their popularity.
j) Screen writer for Joseph Losey, before and after they were both blacklisted following HUAC’s investigations, he came back artistically with the script of Jules Dassin’s He Who Must Die.
3. The name of Toronto has been taken, in earnest and in vain, in a variety of film contexts. Identify the speakers of these lines, and the films in which they were heard:
a) –“I’m not in love with you or with anyone else.”
–“That’s fine. See you in Toronto.”
b) –“Remember last winter in Toronto? We called room service and ordered bullshots.”
–“I wasn’t in Toronto last winter.”
–“Sure. I came up for your show. And I ordered a horse and sleigh to take you to the theatre.”
— “I haven’t been in Toronto for three years.”
c) –“Coming home, we stopped off in Toronto. There were crowds, marches, flags–all that bunkum.”
d)–“You’re from Toronto, eh? Tell me, is that Circus Bar still open up there?”
e) –“It’s pretty horrible in a gemutlich kind of way.”
–“I used to have a roommate. Dancer. She was lucky. She married a Canadian. She now lives in Toronto.”
f) –“Comin’ from Toronto?”
–“Yes.”
–“Quite a place, Toronto….Have some Ontario wine. I send the grapes to the winery from my own farm. Got a kick like a mule.”
g) –“Listen. Did he ever tell you where he got that fifteen thousand, and why he has to live on $25 a week when he can go out and come back with that much money? Well, look–‘TORONTO BANK CLERK TOOK TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FROM BANK AND DISAPPEARED’….That’s quite a coincidence. I should say.”
4. And finally, four wider Canadian references too good to miss:
a) “Well, being Canadian, I’m goin’ to have to leave the fighting and arguing up to you fellers. I’m just interested in making a dollar.”
b) –“That’s why I’ve got to take off.”
–“To Canada, I guess, with Jeff. Where that aunt of yours eats dog food.”
–“That’s California.”
–“Well, it’s almost next door.”
c) –“Mother, in about three months’ time I want to go to Canada. I’d like to make the arrangements now.”
–“Canada! Why on earth would you want to go there?”
–“Because I’m pregnant.”
d) “French Canada! We’re busy enough with our own affairs without being bothered with their problems.”
by Barrie Hayne
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Call: R. LeBlanc – Volunteer Coordinator or any director or officer of the Society.
