Emulsion Compulsion Movie Trivia Quiz

October 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Keaton & Chaplin

What Charlie Chaplin feature did Buster Keaton appear in?

Johnny, tell them what they win…

Nothing. Just my undying respect.

Jim Hemphill can’t play. He was probably around when I originally came up with most of these questions. For once, I dis-invite David Elliott from playing along. And something tells me Bushido John knows too much. The rest of you may leave your answers in the comments section.

Unlike the beloved Hitler on Film Quiz there will be no published answer key. I tried my best to make the answers unsearchable on imdb. I will gladly confirm correct answers and take the rest to the grave. Particularly when it comes to the final question which was tossed in my lap by Lloyd Sachs when he was writing at the Chicago Reader. In the era before the internet, it took me days of research to find the answer and I did it without help. So there!

Remember, this is your last chance to beat the other couples!

1. What film’s opening credit sequence misspells Katharine Hepburn’s name?

2. What film studio was the first ever to pay a star a million dollars for a single role?

3. In American Graffiti, John Milner’s (Paul LeMat) yellow coup has a unique license plate number. Name it.

4. What specifically do these three Shelly Winters films have in common: A Place in the Sun, Night of the Hunter and The Poseidon Adventure.

5. What is the only Bob Hope and Bing Crosby “Road” picture that ends with the violently insane Hope going off with Dorothy Lamour?

6. Frequently characters are shown standing outside theaters and/or going to the movies. Match the following movies with the films they appear in:

a. Ben-Hur                                   1. Goodbye, Columbus
b. Tess and Hardly Working         2. Dirty Harry
c. Dementia 13                            3. The Godfather
d. Problem Child 2                  4. The Big Picture
e. Pickup on South Street          5. The Collector
f. Rosemary’s Baby                    6. Mean Streets
g. The Sorrow and the Pity          7. American Graffiti
h. Play Misty for Me    8. The Last Picture Show
i. The Searchers                          9. Cape Fear
j. The Bells of St. Mary’s            10. Annie Hall
k. Father of the Bride               11. The King of Comedy

7. Match these fictional films being made and/or screened with the movies that spawned them:

a. Hey, Hey in the Hayloft             1. Love and Death on Long Island
b. Meet Pamela                              2. The Bad and the Beautiful
c. Grapes of Winter                       3. Matinee
d. Day the World Ended                4. Sherlock, Jr.
e. Curse of the Cat Men            5. The Oscar
f. Pearls of the West                     6. CQ
g. Mant!     7. Barton Fink
h. Hot Pants College II           8. Sullivan’s Travels
i. Dragonfly         9. Day for Night
j. Devil on the Canvas             10. The State of Things

Continue reading Emulsion Compulsion Movie Trivia Quiz

Tags: Emulsion Compulsion, Games, movie games, movie trivia, movie trivia quiz, Quiz, tough trivia

Filed Under Uncategorized

Complete 1964-65 Bargain Town U.S.A. (Toys R Us) Toy Catalog

March 10th, 2008 by Scott Marks

I want this one and this one and that one…

Bargain Town USA, founded in 1957, was a small chain of stores scattered across Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit that lasted through the 1960s. Around the same time, a similar chain of stores named Toys R Us started up in the east coast. In the early 1960s, Bargain Town U.S.A. and Toys R Us formed a deal allowing the two chains to buy in larger quantities and offer their merchandise at discount prices. In 1967, Toys R Us was purchased by the retail giant Interstate Stores, Inc. Two years later, Interstate also bought Bargain Town U.S.A. and eventually the two chains merged. After Interstate went bankrupt in the early 70s, the chain lived on under the name Toys R Us, and eventually won over 25 percent of the huge U.S. toy market.

Etch-A-Sketch

None of the kids on my block ever went to Bargain Town. It was too expensive. Shopper’s World (affectionately nicknamed “Hocker’s World” for it’s high rate of shoplifting) had decent prices, but it was impossible to find a toy still sealed in the box. Their toy department resembled a third world day care center. Wanting to browse in peace, parents would frequently drop their kids off in the toy section while they wheeled their shopping carts around the store hunting for bargains. The wide-eyed tykes would gut every box and turn the aisles into makeshift playrooms.

Cocktails sold to minors. Never too early to train sonny for Vietnam

Their was also Minky’s Bicycles just west on Devon Ave. Minky’s toys and games were as overpriced as the eye-catching Schwinn Apple Crates he sold. Minky was the biggest goniff in Rogers Park. His toys were more expensive than anywhere else and the selection small. Minky’s was still the in-place if for no other reason than the pegboard on the back wall filled with novelty items. It was here where I was introduced to an encyclopedic world of cheap practical jokes: joy buzzers, itching powder, plastic ice cubes with flies in them, latex vomit and of course, the Whoopee (nee: Poo-Poo) Cushion.

Urban legend had it that Minky would send a van with a couple of his goons to the Lincoln Village Theater during a crowded kiddie matinée to do a little side work. They would find where the kids parked their bikes, cut the locks off the rack and bring the desirable ones back to the store so the boss could resell them. (Minky had his own metal logo that he fastened to the front of each bike he sold.) Fact or fiction, it was enough to keep the gang from ever again frequenting the store.

The Niks

My toy store of choice was Cut Rate Toys located on Devon just west of Western Ave. in Rogers Park. They had the most competitive prices on the north side, but it was run by Marvin Hecht, a devout tempermentalist who displayed a deep rooted mistrust for children. If a kid so much as wrinkled a header card, Marv was on them like a cheap Ben Cooper Halloween costume.

It was the first store of any kind that I remember being equipped with surveillance cameras to prevent adolescent shoplifting. They were located at the check out and you can bet your life that the only ones that ever touched the store’s cash register were Marv and his wife Renee.

Marv was a clenched little Jewish guy who sported the most blatantly hilarious, ill-fitting toupee this side of Rip Taylor. He wore half glasses and smoked cheap, stinky Garcia Vega cigars. Occasionally a kid who felt wronged would stand up against menacing Marv and call him on his noggin schmate. Rest assured, Marv stored a mental picture of the wise guy’s face and banished him permanently from his sacred toy house.

The Cleveland made Barbie & Ken Steamers

Marv had an ineffectual stooge in his employ whose job it was to keep watch on potential seven-year-old shoplifters. We generally laughed in his face. Once you’d been tongue-lashed by Marv, all other authority figures pale in comparison.

After years of being ripped off, Marv adopted a new tactic. When you walked in the front, it was now necessary to enter the shrine through a gated door upon which hanged a big handwritten cardboard sign that cautioned: CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 17 MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT. The world’s only R rated toy store.

We were zany kids. There was nothing funnier than going to Mr. Marvorium’s Paranoid Emporium, finding the Etch-A-Sketches and writing filthy words on them for others to find. One aisle of the store was devoted to beauty supplies and assorted drug store items. This was long before tamper proof packaging and I can’t say for sure whether or not I ever neatly unwrapped a Nestles Crunch and substituted it with an identical bar of Ex-Lax. For weeks I was a hero on the block, but for the poor kid who fell victim to my enlightened comedic resourcefulness, N-E-S-T-L-E-S made the biggest mess.

Marv’s new digs further east on Devon in Forest Glen

As an adult I returned to Cut Rate in search of Pee-Wee Herman toys and sure enough Marv and his sugar bowl toupee were still manning the counter. “You know,” I bravely said, “you used to scream at me when I came here as a kid.” “Keep it up,” Marv said chomping on the end of his cigar “and I’ll do it again!”

Cut Rate Toys is still around, possibly being run by Marv and/or Renee and/or their daughter Jackie. According to a 2001 Chicago Sun-Times article the then 73 Marvin Hecht was still going strong, working every day after almost 50 years in the store. I thought of calling to see if he was still behind the counter, but was afraid that Marv would answer the phone and yell at me.

That’s toy biz!

I may hate sports, but I was a whiz at Bas-Ket.