Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: it's comedy today. That's your extra-credit question. Name the source of my little opener here, and my headline.
Remember: as our regular bunch knows, these are absolutely not trivia quizzes, and I take Himalayan umbrage at any such suggestion. These are knowledge quizzes. Sometimes there's overlap but there's a difference, as you'll see in the very first question. So we're doing some history here and things like that, and we're trying to split the questions pretty evenly between British and American. Well, it leans American, but I think most of what I'm asking about here has crossed the ocean. It will be interesting to see. Let's go.
1. A two-part question. First: William Congreve's Love for Love and William Wycherly's The Country Wife are examples of what genre of theater? Second: why did that genre take the name it did?
a. Reformation comedy; because the Catholic church had frowned upon unserious and impious theater
b. Restoration comedy; because it accompanied the Restoration, and theater had been banned by the Puritans
c. Jacobite comedy, because it closely followed the Jacobite Succession
2. What 19th-century figure gave us this rather insightful quote: "The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter"?
a. Mark Twain
b. W.S. Gilbert
c. Edwin Booth
3. What famous American wit, upon learning of the death of President Calvin Coolidge, paused and reflected: "How could they tell"?
a. S.J. Perelman
b. George Jean Nathan
c. Dorothy Parker
4. Who warned the fictional Mrs. Worthington in song:
Don't put your daughter on the stage.
The profession is overcrowded,
And the struggle's pretty tough,
And admitting the fact
She's burning to act,
That isn't quite enough.
She has nice hands,
To give the wretched girl her due,
But don't you think her bust is too
Developed for her age?
a. Noel Coward
b. Lorenz Hart
c. Lionel Monckton
5. From what classic comedy film is this dialogue, between a head of state and one of his ministers, taken?:
--Awfully decent of you to drop in today. Do you realize our army is facing disastrous defeat? What do you intend to do about it?
--I've done it already.
--You've done what?
--I've changed to the other side.
--So you're on the other side, eh? Well, what are you doing over here?
--Well, the food is better over here.
a. The Great McGinty
b. Horse Feathers
c. Duck Soup
6. What American stand-up comic originated these lines?
A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.
I played a great horse yesterday! It took seven horses to beat him.
A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says, "You're crazy." The man says, "I want a second opinion!" Doc says, "Okay, you're ugly too!"
I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.
a. Milton Berle
b. Henny Youngman
c. Bob Newhart
7. Spike Milligan created the Goon Show, and everybody knows that Peter Sellers was a regular. Who was the third regular, long-standing member?
a. Archie Rice
b. Freddy Lennon
c. Harry Secombe
8. Match the comic character to its creator(s):
The 2,000-year-old Man
Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson
Georg and Yortuk Festrunk
Carnac the Magnificent
Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone
Johnny Carson
Joanna Lumley
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks
Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd
9. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Husker Du are among the many bands who've covered "Love Is All Around," the famous, saccharine theme song of this classic 1970s American sitcom.
a. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
b. Happy Days
c. The Last Time I Saw Richard
10. In what American television series last year did the recently separated protagonist start dating a wheelchair-bound woman out of guilt, and warm to the situation considerably after it dawned on him that as long as he was with her he could park in handicapped spaces?
a. The Office
b. Curb Your Enthusiasm
c. Get Smart
Let's go below the fold.
Answers: 1-b; 2-a; 3-c; 4-a; 5-c; 6-b; 7-c; 8: 2K man, Reiner and Brooks; "Two Sheds," Python; Festrunks, Martin and Aykoyd; Carnac, Carson; Patsy Stone, Lumley; 9-a; 10-b.
Notes:
1. I read some Congreve in college, and Wycherly a little later.
2. This is the one I wouldn't have known today. Gilbert (as in and Sullivan) and Booth are both good dodges.
3. Parker and Perelman were both in the Algonquin Roundtable. Nathan was a theater critic.
4. Love Coward, love this song.
5. The reference to the army should have told you the answer, assuming you've seen it.
6. Henny cracks me up. I don't care how ancient they are. The wife one should have tipped you off. More here.
7. Archie Rice is the name of the Olivier character in The Entertainer, and Freddy Lennon was John's dad. The name evokes the era nicely somehow.
8. Here, I'll be interested to see whether our US characters are as known to Brits as the other way around. Every American knows MPFC and AbFab. Did you folks get wind of "two wild and crazy guys"? And Carson did Carnac for years and years. Hilarious.
9. I would have to assume this one has somehow worked its way across the pond. Answer c is a great Joni Mitchell song, and I have no idea why it popped into my head. Thinking of cool 70s women I guess.
10. Ditto. No? At any rate it's such a misanthropic anecdote it had to be David.
Oh and by the way, extra credit, my opener: Of course that's from "Comedy Tonight," from Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which is dated in places but still hilarious in others.
