Last week we unleashed the most impossible Alfred Hitchcock movie quiz ever conceived, diabolically designed around the theme of doubles, inspired by Johan Grimonperez’s Hitchcock puzzle film Double Take. The answers are revealed below – if you haven’t taken the quiz yet, see how many questions you can crack before peeking at the key.
1. In which film did two versions of Hitchcock appear, diegetically speaking?
Lifeboat (1944), wherein Sir Alfred’s image was reduced to the “before” side of a weight-loss ad (but of course within the film’s universe it’s two images of the same man, altered only by girth-reduction).
2. What Hitch bit player was a famous flamenco dancer under another name?
Dolores Ellsworth, as an uncredited Persian dancer in To Catch a Thief (1954), otherwise known as Dolores Del Carmen, frequent partner to Jose Greco during the middle century.
3. What Hitch film featured a pair of real twins?
The only real twins to appear in a Hitch film were Lynn and Jean Romer, as Siamese twins in Saboteur (1942).
4. What bit player showed up in two Hitch movies sans first name?
Ex-Det. Serge. Bishop, as cops in both Blackmail (1929) and The 39 Steps (1935).
5. What Hitch film featured a dancing couple that shared their names with a pair of medieval Oxford colleges?
Balliol and Merton, in Champagne (1928).
6. What comedy duo were first paired in a Hitch film?
Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, as the fussy comedy-relief travelers in The Lady Vanishes (1938), going on to make eleven other movies together over the next eleven years.
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7. In which Hitch film did the two protagonists share the same name?
The two Charlies (Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright) in Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
8. What is the non-Hitch cast connection between Strangers on a Train and Rear Window?
Leo McCarey’s My Son John featured both the former film’s star Robert Walker (using scenes lifted from Hitch after the actor’s death) and the latter’s Irene Winston (Mrs. Thorwald), whose scenes were, in fact, deleted, leaving the McCarey to slip between the two Hitchcocks like a misty two-way mirror…
9. Name the actor who has sported five separate honorific titles in Hitchcock films.
The actor who has sported five separate honorific titles – doctor, captain, sir, senator and professor – in the Hitch oeuvre is Leo G. Carroll, in, respectively, Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), The Paradine Case (1947), Strangers on a Train (1951) and North by Northwest (1959), with an extra “Dr.” from Spellbound (1945) thrown in for good measure.
10. Which Hitch player twice played a famous character in non-Hitch films but only with the lower half of his body?
Anthony Dawson, of Dial M for Murder (1954), whose solar plexus, crotch, and hands twice played James Bond’s Blofeld, in From Russia with Love and Thunderball.
11. What unseen character in a Hitch movie shares a name with a busy “nonsex” porn actor?
Only North by Northwest’s George Kaplan could ever be confused for a porn actor, albeit one who apparently remained clothed throughout a recent 12-year career of appearences that featured such titles as Hung Wankenstein, Cynthia and the Pocket Rocket and, provocatively, Spellbound.
12. How many actors have played the same role twice within the Hitch ouevre?
There are only two: Miles Mander and the mysterious Esme V. Chaplin, reprising their roles from Murder! (1930) for the German-language remake Mary (1931). Betty Bascomb was featured in both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956), but not as the same character.
Michael Atkinson is a film critic and author of two novels:Hemingway Deadlights and Hemingway Cutthroat.
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