Miscellaneous Arts and Literature Trivia Questions and Answers.

Arts and Literature trivia questions and answers.

Who is the subject of the unauthorized 1997 biography entitled The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly?
A: Clint Eastwood. The bio was written by his ex-girlfriend Sondra Locke.

What famous author wrote under the pen names Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Sergeant Fathom and W. Apaminondas Adrastus Blab before switching to the name with which he gained fame?
A: Samuel Clemens, who finally settled on the name Mark Twain.

What famous woman entrepreneur provided the money to help artist Marc Chagall and his wife flee the Nazis and move to New York City in 1941?
A: Cosmetics queen Helena Rubinstein.

When The Joy of Cooking was revised and republished in 1997, it contained 4,500 recipes. How many were in the original Joy, self-published by Irma Rombauler in 1931?
A: 1,195. The original sold for $3; the new edition the sixth, was priced at $30.

What is the chief oil in the oil paints used by artists?
A: Linseed oil--made from the seed of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum.

What Shakespearean character was based on a London doctor who served as Queen Elizabeth I's chief physician--until he was arrested and hanged for conspiring to kill her?
A: Shylock, the money-lender in The Merchant of Venice. The Doctor's name was Roderigo Lopez.

Hamlet--with 1.530 lines--is the longest speaking part in all of Shakespeare's plays. What is the second longest?
A: Richard III, with 1,164 lines.

What popular American comic strip is known as Radishes in Denmark?
A: Peanuts.

What happened to the parents of Batman's sidekick, Robin, a.ka. Dick Grayson?
A: The Boy Wonder's parents-circus performers known as theFlying Graysons--died in a trapeze accident.

For what famous writer was the drink known as the Brandy Alexander named?
A: Alexander Woollcott, drama and literary critic and Algonquin Round Table regular.

What was the name of the broken-down, partially blind old horse Ichabod Crane rode in Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow?
A: Gunpowder.

What famous poet was known to his close friends by the nickname Junkets?
A: John Keats.

All told, how many novels did the Bronte sisters--Anne, Charlotte and Emily-write?
A: Seven. Emily wrote one, Wuthering Heights; Anne wrote two, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; and Charlotte wrote four, Jane Eyre, The Professor, Villette, and Shirley.

What was Jeeve's first name in humorist P. G. Wodehouse's stories about Bertie Wooster and his resourceful valet?
A: Reginald.

In the folk tale about Rumpelstiltskin, how long did it take the miller's daughter to guess his name?
A: Three days.

What famous English writer, while living in Vermont, invdented snow golf--painting his golf balls red so he could find them?
A: Rudyard Kipling.

What is the name of Babar the Elephant's wife?
A: Celeste.

Who owned the land on Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau built a cabin and wrote the essays that became his book Walden Pond, or Life in the Woods?
A: Ralph Waldo Emerson.

What famous rock star returned a $5 million advance on his memoirs, explaining that he "couldn't remember" significant details of his own life?
A: Mick Jagger.

In Mad magazine's spoofs of Superman, what names were used for the Man of Steel and his newspaperman alter ego?
A: Superduperman and Clark Bent. Lois Lane was Lois Pain.