100 Fun Facts About 1960s Movies

Who plays the shy motel proprietor Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)?

Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates, a role he returned to in Psycho II (1983); Hitchcock shot Psycho in black and white with the crew of his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Which Billy Wilder comedy, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, won Best Picture for 1960?

The Apartment won Best Picture for 1960; Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine starred, and it inspired the 1968 Broadway musical Promises, Promises.

Who replaced the original director of Spartacus (1960) after Kirk Douglas removed him?

Stanley Kubrick was hired after Kirk Douglas fired Anthony Mann; it was the only film he directed without complete artistic control, a lack he complained about during the shoot.

Which 1961 musical won 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, from 11 nominations?

West Side Story won 10 of its 11 nominations; co-director Jerome Robbins was dismissed when the film ran over budget, yet he and Robert Wise still shared the Best Director Oscar.

Who wrote 'Moon River' with Henry Mancini for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)?

Johnny Mercer wrote the words to Henry Mancini's tune; a Paramount executive wanted the song taken out after a preview, yet it stayed in and won the Best Original Song Oscar.

Which actor made his debut as James Bond in Dr. No (1962)?

Sean Connery was not what Ian Fleming had pictured, but the author changed his mind after Dr. No and gave Bond a Scottish father in a later novel.

Who played T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962)?

Peter O'Toole got the part after Albert Finney, David Lean's first choice, reportedly turned it down; it brought the first of his eight Best Actor nominations.

Gregory Peck won his Best Actor Oscar for playing which lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)?

Atticus Finch was based on Harper Lee's own father, an Alabama lawyer who once defended two Black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper; both were hanged.

Elizabeth Taylor signed on to Cleopatra (1963) for what record-setting salary?

Elizabeth Taylor was paid $1 million plus a share of the gross for Cleopatra; the shoot began at Pinewood in 1960, shut down, and restarted in Rome under Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1961.

Which 1963 Best Picture winner starred Albert Finney as Henry Fielding's roguish foundling?

Tom Jones won four Oscars from ten nominations; Albert Finney had taken 10% of its earnings, and the film's success let him produce his own next picture, Night Must Fall.

Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is set in which northern California town?

The Birds is set in Bodega Bay, a fishing village on the Sonoma County coast where Hitchcock shot on location; it introduced Tippi Hedren, and Evan Hunter built a new story around Daphne du Maurier's premise.

Who became the first Black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar, for Lilies of the Field (1963)?

Sidney Poitier won Best Actor for 1963 as Homer Smith, a handyman who builds a chapel for East German nuns in the Arizona desert; he was the first Black winner of that award.

Steve McQueen's motorcycle jump is the famous stunt from which 1963 POW film?

The Great Escape's motorcycle jump was actually performed by stuntman Bud Ekins, McQueen's friend; McQueen won Best Actor at the 1963 Moscow International Film Festival for the role.

Ray Harryhausen animated a sword fight against seven skeleton warriors for which 1963 film?

Jason and the Argonauts sets its hero and two of his men against seven skeletons, a fight that took Ray Harryhausen over four months to animate; he regarded the film as his best.

In Dr. Strangelove (1964), how many different characters does Peter Sellers play?

Three roles: President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove himself and RAF Group Captain Mandrake; Peter Sellers was also cast as Major Kong, but a sprained ankle handed that part to Slim Pickens.

Goldfinger (1964) turned which car into the biggest-selling toy of the year via Corgi?

Aston Martin DB5: Fleming's novel gave Bond an older DB Mark III, but the filmmakers fitted the firm's new DB5 prototype with gadgets, and sales of the real car rose after the film.

Mary Poppins (1964) was the feature-film debut of which actress, who won the Best Actress Oscar for it?

Julie Andrews made her film debut as Mary Poppins and won Best Actress for 1964, the same year she had been passed over for the screen version of My Fair Lady, her own Broadway role.

Who played Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 film of My Fair Lady?

Audrey Hepburn played Eliza Doolittle, with Marni Nixon dubbing most of her singing; Rex Harrison repeated his stage Higgins and won Best Actor as the film took eight Oscars for 1964.

Clint Eastwood's first leading role was in which 1964 spaghetti western?

A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone's unofficial remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, gave Clint Eastwood his first lead for a fee of $15,000; Kurosawa's lawsuit won him a share of the worldwide gross.

Who directed the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night?

Richard Lester cut the songs to the beat of the music, a style later seen as the forerunner of the pop video; MTV sent him an award naming him 'Father of the Music Video'.

Which 1965 film overtook Gone with the Wind as the highest-grossing film ever?

The Sound of Music passed Gone with the Wind in 1966 and held the record for five years, until a reissue put Gone with the Wind back on top in 1971.

Doctor Zhivago (1965) could not be shot in the USSR, so which southern European country stood in for snowbound Russia?

Spain: a whole Moscow street was built outside Madrid, but the snow the crew had counted on largely failed to arrive in the country's warmest winter in 50 years.

In which 1960s Bond film does 007 flee by jetpack, then battle frogmen over two stolen atomic bombs?

Thunderball was meant to be the first Bond film, but a lawsuit over its story held it back until 1965 and left the man who sued, Kevin McClory, as its credited producer.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) starred which real-life married pair as George and Martha?

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had married in 1964; to play the 50-year-old Martha, Taylor, still in her early thirties, gained weight and wore a wig, and she won Best Actress.

Who played Sir Thomas More in the 1966 Best Picture winner A Man for All Seasons?

Paul Scofield had played More on the London stage, but the studio wanted a bigger name; director Fred Zinnemann insisted on him, shot on a tight budget, and Scofield won Best Actor.

In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), who plays 'the Ugly'?

Eli Wallach played Tuco, 'the Ugly', alongside Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef; the Italian title, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, actually orders them good, ugly, bad.

Which duo recorded the soundtrack for The Graduate (1967), including 'Mrs. Robinson'?

Simon & Garfunkel's hit began as a sketch Paul Simon called 'Mrs. Roosevelt'; director Mike Nichols heard it and told him it was now about Mrs. Robinson.

Who both produced Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and starred in it as Clyde Barrow?

Warren Beatty produced it at 30 despite the misgivings of studio head Jack Warner; his deal gave him 40% of the profits of what became one of 1967's biggest hits.

Which 1967 Best Picture winner gave us the line 'They call me Mister Tibbs!'?

In the Heat of the Night is set in Sparta, Mississippi, but most of it was shot far to the north in Sparta, Illinois; Rod Steiger won Best Actor as the police chief.

Which actor, who died 17 days after filming ended, made his ninth and final film with Katharine Hepburn in 1967?

Spencer Tracy died on 10 June 1967, 17 days after completing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, his ninth film with Katharine Hepburn; she said she never watched it because the memories were too painful.

In Cool Hand Luke (1967), Paul Newman's convict wins a bet by eating fifty of what in an hour?

Hard-boiled eggs: the feat makes Luke a hero to the other prisoners; the story came from Donn Pearce, who had served time on a Florida chain gang himself.

The Jungle Book (1967) was the last animated feature personally produced by whom?

Walt Disney died in December 1966 while The Jungle Book was in production, making it the last animated feature he personally supervised; Terry Gilkyson's 'The Bare Necessities' was the only song kept from the scrapped first version.

The Dirty Dozen (1967) was inspired by a real WWII demolition unit with what nickname?

The Filthy Thirteen were 101st Airborne demolition men, not convicts: they earned the name by refusing to bathe, and went into Normandy wearing Mohawks and war paint.

Which song does HAL 9000 sing as it is shut down in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)?

Daisy Bell was sung by an IBM computer at Bell Labs in 1961, an early feat of speech synthesis; Arthur C. Clarke heard the demonstration, so HAL sings it as his memory goes.

What ruined landmark does the astronaut hero find at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968)?

The Statue of Liberty shows that the apes' world is Earth after a nuclear war; in Pierre Boulle's novel their planet orbits the distant star Betelgeuse, so the ending is the film's own.

Who plays the newlywed Rosemary in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968)?

Mia Farrow played Rosemary Woodhouse; Frank Sinatra had her served with divorce papers on set during filming, and Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress as the sinister neighbour Minnie Castevet.

Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) was shot mainly in which state?

Night of the Living Dead was shot around Evans City, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh, where the crew rented a condemned farmhouse they were free to wreck; the film calls its monsters 'ghouls'.

Bullitt (1968), with its famous car chase, is set in which city?

Bullitt's chase over the hills of San Francisco took three weeks to film for about ten minutes on screen, with the cars at times topping 100 mph.

Barbra Streisand's Best Actress Oscar for Funny Girl (1968) was unusual for what reason?

It was a tie, the first in Best Actress history: Katharine Hepburn shared the award for The Lion in Winter but stayed away, so that film's director accepted her statuette for her.

Which musical based on Charles Dickens won Best Picture for 1968?

Oliver! won Best Picture for 1968 and Best Director for Carol Reed, who had cast his own nephew, Oliver Reed, as the murderous Bill Sikes.

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau played Felix and Oscar in which 1968 Neil Simon comedy?

The Odd Couple, by Danny Simon's account, grew from his flat-share with another newly single man during his divorce; he began a draft, then handed the idea to his brother Neil.

Jane Fonda played a space traveller hunting Dr. Durand Durand in which 1968 film?

Barbarella was directed by Jane Fonda's then-husband Roger Vadim from Jean-Claude Forest's French comic strip; the villain Durand Durand later gave the band Duran Duran its name.

Who wrote the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)?

William Goldman researched the outlaws on and off for eight years before writing it as his first original screenplay; it won him the first of his two Oscars.

Midnight Cowboy (1969) is the only Best Picture winner to have carried which rating?

X was the rating Midnight Cowboy carried on release; it was re-rated R for a reissue in 1971, and Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman play its hustlers, Joe Buck and 'Ratso' Rizzo.

Easy Rider (1969) earned about $60M worldwide on a budget of roughly how much?

Easy Rider cost roughly $400,000 and took about $60 million; that return helped spark the New Hollywood era, as studios changed the way they chased the youth market.

In which Italian city does Michael Caine's gang steal the gold in The Italian Job (1969)?

The heist takes place in Turin, where the Minis race through the city and across the rooftop test track of the Fiat Lingotto factory; Noel Coward made his last film appearance as Mr Bridger.

Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) ends with its ageing outlaws battling which country's army?

Mexico: in 1913 the gang robs a US Army arms train for General Mapache's Federal troops, then turns its guns on them when he kills one of their own.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was released in the middle of which real-world Cold War standoff?

The Manchurian Candidate opened on 24 October 1962, in the second week of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Angela Lansbury, barely older than Laurence Harvey, played his monstrous mother and won a Golden Globe.

Who played jewel thief 'The Phantom' opposite Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther (1963)?

David Niven played Sir Charles Lytton, the gentleman thief known as the Phantom, and was the film's top-billed star; the Pink Panther of the title is a diamond, with the cartoon cat appearing only in the credits.

Which 1962 film cast 14-year-old Sue Lyon in the title role opposite James Mason?

Lolita credits its screenplay to Vladimir Nabokov, although very little of what he wrote was used in the film; he later published a version of his own script.

Who plays Marion Crane, killed in the shower in Psycho (1960)?

Janet Leigh was so shaken by watching the scene that she avoided showers afterwards, taking one only when she absolutely had to.

Which 1960 John Sturges Western is an Old West remake of a 1954 Akira Kurosawa film?

Kurosawa's Seven Samurai had itself first been released in the United States under the title The Magnificent Seven.

In The Hustler (1961), Jackie Gleason plays which legendary pool player?

Jackie Gleason played Minnesota Fats, the champion Paul Newman's Fast Eddie Felson challenges in a marathon match; the real-life hustler Rudolf Wanderone adopted the name Minnesota Fats after the film.

Which screen legend plays a German general's widow in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)?

Marlene Dietrich had renounced her German citizenship in 1939 and spent the war entertaining Allied troops; the film is a fictional version of the 1947 Judges' Trial of Nazi-era jurists.

Which 1962 epic cast Richard Todd in a battle he had fought, at Pegasus Bridge?

The Longest Day cast Richard Todd as Major John Howard, whose glider troops seized Pegasus Bridge; on the real D-Day, Todd parachuted in to reinforce Howard and met him on the bridge.

Lee Marvin won the Best Actor Oscar for a dual role in which 1965 Western comedy?

Cat Ballou won Lee Marvin Best Actor as a drunken gunfighter and the hired killer he faces; accepting it, he said half of the award belonged to a horse.

Which Academy Award did Mel Brooks win for his directorial debut, The Producers (1967)?

Best Original Screenplay went to Mel Brooks for a script he called Springtime for Hitler; his backer Joseph E. Levine made a new title his one condition, fearing distributors would refuse it.

John Wayne won his only competitive Oscar for playing which marshal in True Grit (1969)?

Rooster Cogburn, the one-eyed marshal, won John Wayne Best Actor; accepting it, he said that had he known, he would have put that patch on 35 years earlier.

Which young filmmakers helped Leone plot Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)?

Sergio Leone worked out the story with the young Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci before Sergio Donati wrote the script; Charles Bronson took the lead after Clint Eastwood declined, and the shortened U.S. cut flopped.

Who composed the score for Zorba the Greek (1964)?

Mikis Theodorakis gave Greece a musical trademark with 'Zorba's Dance', yet the military junta that took power in 1967 jailed him and banned his music until it fell in 1974.

Who plays both twins in The Parent Trap (1961)?

Her double-tracked single 'Let's Get Together', credited to 'Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills', reached number 8 on the US charts.

Who played Blanche opposite Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)?

Joan Crawford was not nominated, but when Bette Davis lost Best Actress to the absent Anne Bancroft, it was Crawford who walked on stage to accept the Oscar in Bancroft's place.

Who played the vengeful ex-convict Max Cady in the original Cape Fear (1962)?

Robert Mitchum played Max Cady, who stalks Gregory Peck's lawyer Sam Bowden; Mitchum returned as a different character, Lieutenant Elgart, in Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake with Robert De Niro as Cady.

What is unusual about every line of dialogue in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)?

It is entirely sung: Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand set even casual conversation as recitative, and the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1964.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965) adapts a novel by which author?

John le Carré's 1963 novel, written while he was serving as an MI6 officer, was filmed by Martin Ritt; its burnt-out agent Alec Leamas is sent to East Germany on a mission that turns out to be a cynical double-bluff.

In the Beatles' Help! (1965), which band member do an Eastern cult and two mad scientists chase?

Ringo Starr wears the sacrificial ring of the goddess Kaili, sent by a fan, and Clang's cult chases the band from the Austrian Alps to the Bahamas, with mad scientist Foot also after the ring.

What racing number does Herbie the Volkswagen Beetle wear in The Love Bug (1968)?

Herbie wears number 53 because producer Bill Walsh, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, borrowed the jersey number of pitcher Don Drysdale, a number the team later retired.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) is set at what gruelling Depression-era event?

A dance marathon on a seaside pier is the setting, with couples shuffling for weeks and periodic 'derbies' eliminating the slowest; Gig Young won Best Supporting Actor as the MC Rocky.

Who played Tracy, the woman Bond marries in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)?

Diana Rigg, fresh from playing Emma Peel in The Avengers, was Tracy di Vicenzo, whom Bond marries near the end of the film; Brigitte Bardot had been approached first but chose to make Shalako instead.

Inherit the Wind (1960) is a fictionalized account of which real 1925 court case?

The Scopes 'Monkey' Trial of 1925 convicted Tennessee teacher John Scopes of teaching evolution; the playwrights retold it as a parable aimed at McCarthyism.

Who co-starred with Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas (1964)?

Ann-Margret played Rusty Martin opposite Elvis's racing driver Lucky Jackson; the pair began a widely reported romance during filming, and she remained a friend until his death in 1977.

Born Free (1966) follows Joy and George Adamson raising which orphaned animal in Kenya?

A lioness named Elsa, orphaned as a cub when George Adamson shot her mother, was raised by the Adamsons and released into the wild; Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, a real married couple, played them.

Which process let One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) skip hand-inking its cels?

Xerography, adapted by Ub Iwerks with a modified Xerox camera, transferred the animators' pencil drawings straight onto cels, skipping the inking department and giving the film its sketchy line.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), which star plays the lawyer wrongly credited with the shot?

James Stewart's Ransom Stoddard rises to senator on the legend, though John Wayne's rancher Tom Doniphon fired at the same instant and killed Valance; hence the film's line 'print the legend'.

How the West Was Won (1962) was one of only two dramas shot in which three-strip process?

Cinerama ran three film strips side by side on a deeply curved screen, and the joins between them showed; the only other story film shot this way was The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.

Who won an Oscar at 16 for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962)?

Patty Duke had played Helen on Broadway yet nearly lost the film role, judged too old at 15 to play a seven-year-old; at 16 she became the youngest competitive Oscar winner to that date.

What does the title of Fellini's 8½ (1963) refer to?

His tally of films directed: Fellini reckoned his previous output at seven and a half, counting shorts and a co-directed film as halves, so this became his eighth and a half; the working title was La bella confusione.

Clouseau's manservant Cato, who ambushes him at home, first appears in which 1964 film?

A Shot in the Dark, the second Clouseau film, introduced both Burt Kwouk's Cato and Herbert Lom's Commissioner Dreyfus; it was adapted from a stage farce that originally had no Clouseau at all.

In Wait Until Dark (1967), criminals hunt a blind woman’s doll stuffed with what?

Heroin is sewn inside the doll, which a drug courier passed to the heroine's photographer husband at an airport; Alan Arkin plays Roat, the killer who terrorises blind Susy Hendrix in her darkened home.

Which children's author wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice (1967)?

Roald Dahl, a friend of Ian Fleming, kept little of the novel beyond its Japanese setting; he then wrote the screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), also from a Fleming book, for the same producer.

Which Oscar-winning song came from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)?

'The Windmills of Your Mind' replaced the Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever', which the director had used as a temporary track on the glider scene; Noel Harrison sang it.

Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) shot its interiors in how many days?

Two days (plus a night) was all Corman spent on the interiors, using sets left standing from A Bucket of Blood; a young Jack Nicholson plays the pain-loving dental patient Wilbur Force.

In Where Eagles Dare (1968), the Schloss Adler fortress can be reached only by what?

A cable car is the only way up to the Schloss Adler, and a fight on its roof is one of the film's big stunts; the mission to free a captured general is really a ploy to expose double agents inside MI6.

The Misfits (1961) was the last completed film for Marilyn Monroe and which leading man?

Clark Gable died of a heart attack in November 1960, days after filming wrapped and before the February 1961 premiere; Arthur Miller, then Monroe's husband, wrote the script.

Zulu (1964) depicts which 1879 battle between a small British garrison and the Zulu army?

Rorke's Drift saw just over 150 defenders hold off 3,000 to 4,000 Zulus and win eleven Victoria Crosses; Michael Caine, first put up for a Cockney private, was cast as an upper-class officer.

Which British director's career was badly damaged by the reception of Peeping Tom (1960)?

Michael Powell, co-creator of The Red Shoes with Emeric Pressburger, was so vilified for Peeping Tom that his career was seriously damaged; since the 1970s it has been reappraised as a classic.

Who plays Catherine, the woman at the centre of the love triangle in Jules and Jim (1962)?

Jeanne Moreau's Catherine comes from a novel François Truffaut found by chance, second-hand, in Paris; its author, Henri-Pierre Roché, had published this first novel at the age of 74.

Who won Best Actress as the housekeeper Alma in Hud (1963), opposite Paul Newman?

Patricia Neal won Best Actress as Alma; in 1965 three brain aneurysms left her having to relearn how to walk and talk, yet she came back to earn another nomination for The Subject Was Roses.

Who played shoe-blade villain Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love (1963)?

Lotte Lenya, widow of composer Kurt Weill, is the 'Miss Lotte Lenya' of 'Mack the Knife': Louis Armstrong slipped her name into the lyric at a recording session she attended.

Which 1964 Lumet nuclear thriller was held back so Dr. Strangelove could open first?

Fail Safe, Sidney Lumet's adaptation of the Burdick and Wheeler novel, was bought by Columbia after a plagiarism suit by the makers of Dr. Strangelove and released in October 1964, months after Dr. Strangelove's January opening.

Who directed The Battle of Algiers (1966)?

Gillo Pontecorvo directed and co-wrote the score with Ennio Morricone; the newsreel look was so convincing that US prints carried a notice that 'not one foot' of newsreel footage was used.

Which band, with Jeff Beck smashing a guitar, plays a club scene in Blow-Up (1966)?

The Yardbirds were not the first choice: Antonioni had wanted The Who for Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing routine, so Jeff Beck wrecks his guitar instead, in a studio replica of the Ricky-Tick club.

Steve McQueen's only Oscar nomination came for which 1966 film?

The Sand Pebbles are the sailors of the gunboat San Pablo, a pun on her name; the film, set on China's Yangtze in the 1920s, earned eight Oscar nominations, among them McQueen's only one.

What home does the family build in Swiss Family Robinson (1960)?

A treehouse, complete with a water wheel, is the family's home; the film was shot on the Caribbean island of Tobago, and two years later a copy of the house opened as a theme-park attraction.

Stunt pilot Paul Mantz was killed filming which 1965 film about a crashed cargo plane?

The Flight of the Phoenix's makeshift aircraft, the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1, broke apart during a touch-and-go pass for the cameras on 8 July 1965, killing Paul Mantz; the film carries a dedication to him.

In Breathless (1960), Jean Seberg's Patricia sells which newspaper on the Champs-Élysées?

The New York Herald Tribune is what Patricia hawks on the Champs-Élysées; Godard, on his first feature, wrote the script as he went along, and its jump cuts caught the world's eye.

How many credited directors worked on the 1967 Bond spoof Casino Royale?

Five directors, John Huston among them, each shot a segment; producer Charles Feldman, unable to come to terms with the makers of the official Bond films, had turned Fleming's novel into a satire.

Which 1969 Costa-Gavras film was up for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film?

Z comes from a Greek protest slogan, 'Zei', meaning 'he lives', which appeared on walls after the politician Grigoris Lambrakis was killed in 1963; in the film the junta bans even the letter.

Why did Charade (1963) fall into the US public domain the moment it was released?

Its copyright notice was defective: it gave the year and the companies' names but no word 'copyright' or © symbol, as US law then required for protection.

In The Time Machine (1960), which underground race preys on the gentle Eloi in the year 802,701?

The Morlocks summon the Eloi below ground with air-raid sirens, the same sound that sends Londoners to their shelters earlier in the film; its time-lapse effects won an Oscar.