Women in Classic Cinema Quiz

Question: Which actress portrayed Lola Lola, the sultry and world-weary female lead, in Germany’s first talking film?

Answer: In 1929 director Josef von Sternberg saw Marlene Dietrich in a show in Germany and cast her as Lola Lola, the sultry and world-weary female lead in Der blaue Engel (1930; The Blue Angel), Germany’s first talking film. The film's success catapulted Dietrich to stardom.

Question: Which was Elizabeth Taylor’s debut film?

Answer: Elizabeth Taylor’s beauty brought her to the attention of a talent scout in Los Angeles, and in 1942 she made her first film, There’s One Born Every Minute.

Question: Who was billed as “the Girl Who Made Vaudeville Famous”?

Answer: The American singing and dancing comedian Eva Tanguay was billed as “the Girl Who Made Vaudeville Famous.” At the turn of the 20th century, she shocked audiences with her scanty costume and her risqué songs, such as “I Don’t Care.” As vaudeville’s emphasis shifted from sentiment to sex in the early 1900s, Tanguay became the highest paid single performer in vaudeville.

Question: Who was the first African American to be nominated for the Academy Award for best actress?

Answer: The American singer and film actress Dorothy Dandridge was the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress. She earned it for the title role she played in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954).

Question: Which actress played two iconic Southerners, Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois?

Answer: Vivien Leigh was awarded the role of Scarlett O’Hara in the David O. Selznick production of Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel Gone with the Wind (1939). Her screen portrayal of Mitchell’s heroine earned her not only international popularity but also an Academy Award. She earned a second Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), the screen version of the Tennessee Williams play.

Question: Which of these roles nearly lured actress Greta Garbo out of retirement?

Answer: Greta Garbo was nearly lured back to the screen twice: once to portray George Sand, the other time to star in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (1947). She instead chose permanent retirement.

Question: Which classic film noir is considered the definitive Rita Hayworth film?

Answer: The definitive Rita Hayworth film is Gilda (1946), in which she appeared opposite Glenn Ford, her frequent costar. A classic of film noir, Gilda featured Hayworth as the quintessential “noir woman,” a duplicitous temptress and an abused victim in equal measure.

Question: For which film did the English actress Julie Andrews win an Academy Award?

Answer: After seeing Julie Andrews’s performance in Camelot, Walt Disney offered her the title role of the English nanny in his Mary Poppins (1964). The picture became one of Disney's biggest moneymakers, and Andrews won an Academy Award.