Another Academy Awards Quiz

Question: Who sculpted the Academy Awards statuette?

Answer: The design for the Academy Award statuette—a knight standing on a reel of film and holding a sword—is credited to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer art director Cedric Gibbons. Sculptor George Stanley was commissioned to create the original statuette based on Gibbons’s design.

Question: Who won an Academy Award in 1958 and played the role of Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)?

Answer: Alec Guinness’s notable films included The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won a best actor Academy Award; The Horse’s Mouth (1958), in which he played the artist Gulley Jimson; and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), in which he played Prince Feisal. In 1980 he won a special Academy Award for memorable film performances.

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 went backstage and offered her the title role of the magical proper English nanny in his Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won an Academy Award.

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

Answer: The 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). Starring film offers thereafter did not come readily, though she did appear in Island in the Sun (1957). One of her most important roles was that of Bess in Preminger’s Porgy and Bess (1959).

Question: For which film did Sean Connery win the Oscar for best supporting actor in 1988?

Answer: Two films in the mid-1980s reestablished Sean Connery as a major star, after his success in James Bond films of the 1960s. He won a British Academy Film Award for his portrayal of a monk-turned-detective in the film adaptation of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1986) and followed this with a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a veteran Chicago cop in pursuit of Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987).

Question: Who was the first actor to receive two consecutive Academy Awards for best actor?

Answer: Spencer Tracy was the first to receive two consecutive Academy Awards for best actor, for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). It was not until 1930 that Tracy was cast in a leading role, but his performance in The Last Mile on Broadway so impressed movie director John Ford that he featured Tracy in Up the River (1930), which launched Tracy’s film career.