100 Fun Facts About Flowers for Algernon

Under what one-word title was Flowers for Algernon filmed in 1968, its poster printing the R backwards?

Charly, stylised CHAЯLY on its posters, won its star the Academy Award for Best Actor; he had bought the film rights himself to be sure of the part.

Which actor bought the film rights to Flowers for Algernon after playing Charlie Gordon on television in 1961?

Cliff Robertson bought the rights because television parts he had created, such as Days of Wine and Roses, went to other actors on film. The gamble won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

What name does Charlie give his finding that artificially raised intelligence fades in proportion to its increase?

The Algernon–Gordon Effect is Charlie's own discovery, made in a race against time: the mouse is already failing, and the paper tells Charlie his own mind will go the same way.

Where does Charlie Gordon work in the 1959 Flowers for Algernon novelette, before the novel moved him to a bakery?

A factory is the novelette's setting for Charlie's menial job, where co-workers Joe Carp and Frank Reilly pose as his friends while mocking him.

Which sitcom's 2013 episode 'Flowers for Charlie' puts its janitor on an intelligence pill, parodying Keyes's novel?

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia handed the script to Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and the pill makes Charlie quit his janitor job.

Who teaches Charlie Gordon's reading and writing class at Beekman College, and recommends him for the experiment?

Alice Kinnian's recommendation, plus Charlie's eagerness to improve, gets him chosen over smarter pupils; she later becomes his lover, then finds she can no longer relate to him.

Which personality test frustrates Charlie Gordon, a scene Keyes drew from his own anxious college years?

The Rorschach test baffled Keyes when he took it as a college student probing the causes of his anxiety, and he handed Charlie the same frustration.

What contest does Charlie repeatedly lose to Algernon before his surgery in the 1968 film, then finally win afterwards?

Racing through mazes pits Charlie's paper puzzles against models Algernon runs, and the researchers later screen that test footage at a scientific convention.

Which diner worker's humiliation makes Charlie Gordon realise he has become one of the mockers he once endured?

A teenage dishwasher, a disabled 16-year-old, is laughed at by Charlie before he rounds on the patrons in the boy's defence, ashamed of forgetting his own past.

What did a disabled pupil ask Keyes in 1957, the request that sparked Flowers for Algernon?

To join an ordinary class if he worked hard and became smart was the boy's hope; Keyes also watched another pupil lose everything he had learned after leaving regular lessons.

Which element of Flowers for Algernon do most library challenges in America and Canada object to?

Its sexual content, Charlie's struggle to understand and express desire, drives most challenges, even as the book is taught in schools around the world.

Where is Charlie last seen as the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon ends?

With children in a playground is where his teacher last sees the regressed Charlie, after he had asked her never to visit him again.

Which literary effect does Charlie Gordon's early narration create, as readers grasp his plight better than he does?

Dramatic irony arises because Charlie's low intelligence makes him an unreliable narrator, until his awareness overtakes the reader's and he becomes a reliable one.

Where does Charlie Gordon choose to live at the end of the Flowers for Algernon novel?

The Warren State Home is Charlie's escape from the pity of people who knew him as a genius; he had toured it while his mind was still sharp, expecting to end up there.

Where is Algernon buried, the grave Charlie Gordon's final postscript asks someone to put flowers on?

His own backyard at his former residence holds Algernon, whom Charlie buried himself after the mouse's intelligence collapsed and he died.

What term describes the form of Flowers for Algernon, assembled from dated progress reports rather than chapters?

Epistolary novels are built from documents, and here the spelling and grammar of each report track Charlie's mind from a few days before the operation to his regression.

Which 2012 action sequel, its soldier hero reliant on pills to keep his intelligence, echoes Flowers for Algernon?

The Bourne Legacy centres much of its action on securing a supply of the soldier's drugs, and one scene captures his fear of slipping back to his former state just as Charlie does.

Which country produced television drama adaptations of Flowers for Algernon in both 2002 and 2015?

Japan's 2002 version aired on Fuji Television and the 2015 one on Tokyo Broadcasting System. Keyes said all his books had stayed in print there, and he won Japan's Seiun Award in 1993.

With which Samuel R. Delany novel did Flowers for Algernon share the 1966 Nebula Award for Best Novel?

Babel-17 shared the honour in only the Nebula's second year, and Delany won the next year's award outright for The Einstein Intersection.

Which magazine published the Flowers for Algernon novelette in 1959, after a rival's editor demanded a happy ending?

Fantasy & Science Fiction ran the novelette in its April 1959 issue after Keyes refused Galaxy's demand that Charlie stay a genius, marry and live happily ever after.

Which prize did the Flowers for Algernon novelette win in 1960, before the Nebulas even existed?

The Hugo Award went to the novelette in 1960 for short fiction. Keyes then spent three years expanding it into the novel, which was a best-novel finalist at the 1967 Worldcon.

Who played Charlie's night-school teacher, the woman he comes to love, in the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon?

Claire Bloom's teacher sharply rejects Charlie's first confession of love, then the pair consider marriage before his decline sets in.

Which composer of Annie wrote the music for the 1978 stage musical of Flowers for Algernon?

Charles Strouse saw the show reach Broadway in 1980 and close after only 17 performances, while his Annie was still running there on its way to 2,377.

Which animated sitcom borrowed from Flowers for Algernon in 2001, making its father clever by removing a crayon from his brain?

The Simpsons called the episode 'HOMR'; Homer's raised IQ teaches him that being clever is not the same as being happy, and the episode won an Emmy.

Who played Charlie Gordon in the 2000 CBS television film of Flowers for Algernon, shot in Toronto?

Matthew Modine's Charlie buries Algernon in secret to stop the mouse being dissected, then asks his teacher to bring flowers to the grave.

Which free-spirited artist, Charlie Gordon's neighbour in Manhattan, becomes his lover in the Flowers for Algernon novel?

Fay Lillman lives across the hall from the flat Charlie takes after running off with Algernon, and their affair eases his loneliness while he races to finish his research.

Which relative does the regressing Charlie Gordon reconnect with, the one now caring for his mother with dementia?

His sister Norma, who resented Charlie as a child, now looks after their mother in the family's old home, while their father Matt fails to recognise him at all.

In which city is the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon set, relocating Charlie from the novel's New York?

Boston's historic sights 'have never been more lovingly filmed', Time magazine allowed, while mocking the director's split screens and slow motion.

Which publisher's advance did Keyes return when it, too, insisted he change the ending of Flowers for Algernon?

Doubleday got its advance back, and five more publishers turned the novel down over the next year before Harcourt printed it, ending intact, in 1966.

Which Victorian poet's first name did Daniel Keyes borrow for the laboratory mouse in Flowers for Algernon?

Swinburne, the Victorian poet, supplied the name, while the mouse himself was inspired by a university dissection class.

From which work does Flowers for Algernon take its epigraph on the eye's bewilderment when 'coming out of the light'?

Plato's Republic, Book VII, warns that the mind's eye is bewildered both by entering the light and by leaving it, the arc Charlie's rise and fall traces.

Which career did Daniel Keyes's parents push him toward in 1945, a conflict he traced Flowers for Algernon back to?

Medicine was the pre-med path his parents wanted, and Keyes felt his education was driving a wedge between them, which set him wondering about raising a person's intelligence.

Which ancient thinker's claim that tragedy needs a highborn hero did Keyes set out to test with Charlie Gordon?

Aristotle's Poetics says a tragic fall needs a great height, so Keyes raised a 'lowborn' man to genius before taking it all away.

Which Robert A. Heinlein novel beat Flowers for Algernon for best novel at the 1967 Worldcon?

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress beat Keyes's book in the 1967 vote, months after Galaxy's critic Algis Budrys had named it the best novel of the year.

Which organisation ranked Flowers for Algernon 43rd among the 100 most challenged books of the 1990s?

The American Library Association placed it 43rd for 1990–1999, and schools in Emporium, Pennsylvania, and Plant City, Florida, are among those that have dropped it from the curriculum.

Which Galaxy editor suggested Flowers for Algernon end with Charlie keeping his intelligence and marrying his teacher?

Horace Gold had approached Keyes in 1958 for a story, but Keyes refused the change and sold the tale to a rival magazine instead.

Who directed and produced the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon, having earlier made Lilies of the Field?

Ralph Nelson's Lilies of the Field had won Sidney Poitier the Best Actor Oscar in 1964, and his film of Keyes's story did the same for its own star five years later.

Which musician composed the music for the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon, a year after playing the Monterey Pop Festival?

Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar master, had reached Western pop audiences through his association with George Harrison of the Beatles, which helped bring Indian music to the West's attention.

What was Daniel Keyes teaching to disabled students in 1957 when a pupil's question sparked Flowers for Algernon?

English classes were Keyes's day job in 1957, the year before Galaxy magazine invited him to write a story and the elements 'fell into place'.

In which borough does Charlie Gordon's mother still occupy the family's old home when he visits during his decline?

Brooklyn's old family house is where Rose, now suffering from dementia, recognises her son only briefly.

In which city does Charlie Gordon, displayed like a specimen at a scientific convention, flee with Algernon?

Chicago hosts the psychology convention where Charlie, angry at being treated as a lab specimen, frees Algernon from his cage and flies back to New York with him.

Where did the Flowers for Algernon novelette finish when SFWA members ranked 132 pre-1965 stories in a retroactive poll?

Third out of 132 nominees earned the story a place in the 1970 anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, volume one of the Hall of Fame series.

Which future Phantom of the Opera star played Charlie in the 1979 West End musical of Flowers for Algernon?

Michael Crawford sang one number with a trained white mouse running from hand to hand across his shoulders, a trick he later repeated in The Woman in White.

Which 1981 Tony nomination did the musical Charlie and Algernon earn despite closing after 17 Broadway performances?

Best Original Score was the nod for a show that opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on September 14, 1980 and closed a fortnight later; the Tony went to Kander and Ebb's Woman of the Year.

What do bakery workers tell Charlie to do in the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon, hoping he fails?

Run a complex machine is the dare, and Charlie operates it flawlessly, so his co-workers get up a petition and have him fired.

Which world's fair did critics invoke to mock the split-screen tricks in the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon?

Expo 67 was Vincent Canby's jibe, calling the direction 'neo-Expo 67', while Time said the director seemed determined to prove he had learned 'how to be new and now' there.

Which novelist first scripted the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon before Stirling Silliphant replaced him?

William Goldman was hired on the strength of his novel No Way to Treat a Lady and paid $30,000 from the star's own pocket before being let go.

Which unsubmitted comic-book synopsis from Keyes's Atlas days grew into Flowers for Algernon?

Brainstorm began 'The first guy in the test to raise the I.Q. from a low normal 90 to genius level', and Keyes felt it 'should be more than a comic book script'.

Which Spider-Man villain stars in a 2001 comic story whose title is modelled on Flowers for Algernon?

Rhino has his intelligence boosted in 'Flowers for Rhino', written by Peter Milligan and drawn by Duncan Fegredo, then finds he misses his simpler, stupider life.

Where does Charlie Gordon find his estranged father working when he visits him without being recognised?

A barbershop is where Matt Gordon serves his own son as a customer without knowing him, and Charlie leaves without managing to say who he is.

Which animated series won an Emmy for its Flowers for Algernon homage, in which a crayon is pulled from the dad's brain?

The Simpsons has Homer's IQ jump fifty points once the crayon is out, then has him beg to have it put back because being clever has made him an outcast.

Which Marvel legend was Daniel Keyes's boss at Atlas Comics when he first outlined the story of Flowers for Algernon?

Stan Lee ran Atlas, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel Comics, and let Keyes handle its horror and sci-fi scripts. Keyes held his one-paragraph idea back, sensing it deserved more than a comic book.

In which city do scientists parade Charlie Gordon as their star exhibit at a convention, before he flees to New York?

Chicago hosts the scientific conference where Charlie, tired of being shown off like a specimen, slips away with Algernon in his pocket and drops out of sight.

Which Oscar did the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon win, the only category in which it was nominated?

Best Actor went to a star who had bought the screen rights himself so that nobody else could take the part, then played it for a fee of just $25,000.

What does Charlie Gordon most hope the intelligence surgery will bring him, a wish his later genius only makes harder?

More friends is all Charlie wants from being smart, yet his coworkers turn on him once he changes and genius leaves him lonelier than before.

Which classic novel do critics hear echoed in Flowers for Algernon's warning about forbidden knowledge?

Frankenstein is the model critic Thomas Clareson named, arguing that Charlie combines the mad scientist and the creature he makes in a single figure.

Whom does the brilliant Charlie Gordon sense watching him whenever a romantic evening turns intimate?

His old self, the Charlie from before the surgery, haunts him like a face at a window. The first time, at an outdoor concert, he takes the vision for a real boy and gives chase.

What does Charlie Gordon do on stage to throw the scientists' proud presentation of their experiment into chaos?

Charlie sets Algernon loose from his cage in mid-lecture, then pockets the mouse while the hall is hunting for him and catches a flight home.

How do Joe Carp and Frank Reilly, long Charlie Gordon's tormentors, react when a new bakery worker bullies him late on?

They defend him and tell him to come straight to them if anyone bothers him again, a final reversal from the men who once got him drunk for laughs.

Which institution does Charlie Gordon tour while still a genius, knowing he will probably end up living there?

Warren State Home is the place a bakery job had long kept him out of, and he checks himself in at the end so that nobody who knew him has to pity him.

Which scientist leading Charlie Gordon's experiment treats him as a laboratory specimen rather than a person?

Nemur, the senior scientist who devised the technique, talks as if he had created Charlie; his partner, the surgeon, shows far more concern for the man himself.

Which free-spirited painter across the hall begins an affair with Charlie Gordon while he hides from the scientists?

Fay Lillman first reaches his flat by crawling along the window ledge, and her round of drinking and dancing is the only carefree stretch of his new life.

Which adventure novel is the first hard book Charlie Gordon reads after surgery, upset that its story simply stops?

Robinson Crusoe is the hardest book he has ever met, read with his teacher's help. He is desperate to learn what happens to the castaway afterwards and distressed that nobody can tell him.

Which relative took in the young Charlie Gordon and later arranged his job at Donner's Bakery?

His uncle, Herman, also shielded him from neighbourhood bullies. Donner promised Herman he would look out for Charlie, and kept his word for years after Herman died.

What does the kindly bakery worker Fanny Birden alone refuse to do when Charlie Gordon's coworkers turn on him?

Fanny will not sign the petition that gets him fired, the only worker to hold out, yet even she wonders whether he has made a deal with the devil.

Which biblical story does the nurse Hilda raise after Charlie Gordon's surgery, the day before she is replaced?

Adam and Eve were punished for tasting knowledge, and Hilda fears the surgeons are defying God in the same way. A coworker later gives Charlie the very same warning.

Which bakery worker does Charlie Gordon catch cheating Mr. Donner, forcing his first real moral decision?

Gimpy has been undercharging customers and pocketing kickbacks. Charlie confronts him alone and gives him the chance to stop before the owner hears of it.

What kind of business does Charlie Gordon's father own when Charlie visits as a customer and goes unrecognised?

A barbershop had been his father's dream through years of selling barbers' supplies. Charlie sits for a haircut, cannot bring himself to say who he is, and leaves.

What does Charlie Gordon's confused mother come at him with during his adult visit, ending their brief reunion?

A knife is what she seizes, just as she had threatened him with one on the childhood night his father took him away from the house for good.

When does the television-like device given to Charlie Gordon after surgery play its lessons to him?

While he sleeps, the device is meant to teach his subconscious. He grumbles that it keeps him awake, but one night it stirs up a forgotten memory.

What does Daniel Keyes's doomed genius call his finding that artificially raised intelligence fades as fast as it came?

The Algernon-Gordon Effect is the name Charlie himself gives it when he reports the flaw: the more intelligence the surgery adds, the faster it drains away.

Which epic poem does the declining Charlie Gordon rip apart after finding he can no longer follow a book he loved?

Paradise Lost had delighted him only a short while earlier; now the lines mean nothing to him, and he tears his copy to pieces in frustration.

Which clinical assessment has Charlie Gordon invent stories about pictures of strangers, a task he sees as lying?

Thematic Apperception Test is one of the terms Charlie copies down to learn; he tells the tester that as a child he would have been hit for making things up.

Where in New York does Charlie Gordon meet a lonely stranger at night, then flee when she screams?

Central Park is where a sad stranger confides in him; when she mentions she is pregnant, a memory of his mother overwhelms him, she screams and he runs.

Which skill does Dr. Strauss suggest Charlie Gordon learn when he complains his progress reports take too long?

Typing solves it for a while, and before long he is dictating the reports into a tape recorder instead, beginning on the flight to the scientists' convention.

Which language is the journal article written in that Charlie Gordon cites, only to find his doctors cannot read it?

Hindi is beyond both men, though one of them claims six languages; Charlie, who has picked up more than that since his surgery, storms off calling them frauds.

What does Algernon start doing to the people who handle him, an early warning that the surgery will not last?

Biting them is a change Charlie cannot ignore: the mouse who once solved every puzzle grows restless and hostile, and Charlie knows his own mind may go the same way.

Where does the regressed Charlie Gordon turn up by mistake, having forgotten he no longer belongs there?

His old classroom at the adult night school is where he sits down as if nothing had happened; his teacher sees he has forgotten everything and runs out weeping.

Which quality persuades the scientists to pick Charlie Gordon for surgery over brighter pupils at his night school?

His motivation impresses the teacher who recommends him, and one doctor calls it a great advantage while the other fears the change could make him ill.

Which part of Charlie Gordon, by his own diagnosis, fails to keep pace with his soaring intellect after the surgery?

His emotional growth trails years behind his IQ, a gap he blames for a hallucination of his own and one that no amount of reading can close.

Which feature of Charlie Gordon's progress reports lets readers watch his intelligence rise and fall on the page?

His spelling begins as a small child's, turns flawless within weeks of the surgery and then crumbles again, so the page itself charts his climb and his decline.

In which subject did Daniel Keyes take his first degree, after dropping a journalism course at New York University?

Psychology was the degree he paid for partly by selling encyclopedias door to door, and its tests and therapy sessions later ran all through Charlie's story.

What does Charlie Gordon race to finish before his mind fails, hoping it will help other people like him?

His own research absorbs him so completely that he all but moves into the laboratory, and the paper he finishes proves that his decline cannot be stopped.

What do Joe Carp and Frank Reilly do to Charlie Gordon at a bar, once they tire of making him dance?

They abandon him there, drunk and far from home; too trusting to see the joke, Charlie laughs along and still thinks the world of them.

Which defendant, the first American acquitted of a major crime over multiple personalities, did Daniel Keyes profile?

Billy Milligan agreed to work with Keyes only after several of his personalities had read Flowers for Algernon and decided they could trust the man who wrote it.

Which 1968 film beat the movie of Flowers for Algernon to Worldcon's prize for best film or television production?

2001: A Space Odyssey took the 1969 prize; the other beaten finalists were Rosemary's Baby, Yellow Submarine and the final episode of The Prisoner.

Which rock band's keyboardist, Tony Banks, began his solo album A Curious Feeling as a version of Flowers for Algernon?

Genesis was on a short break when Banks recorded the album at ABBA's Polar studios; he had planned a faithful retelling before deciding to change the story.

Which object on a flight unsettles Charlie Gordon, stirring a childhood memory of a quack doctor's treatments?

A seat belt brings back the straps of the table where a sham healer, at his mother's insistence, tried to make him clever; by landing, the fear has left him.

Which book does Dr. Strauss give Charlie Gordon soon after surgery, along with therapy sessions he cannot yet fathom?

A dictionary comes with a first lesson on the conscious and subconscious mind; within weeks its owner is devouring books from every academic field.

Which actor, later one of 1970s television's best-known fathers, plays Bert in the 1968 film of Flowers for Algernon?

Dick Van Patten, credited as Richard, appears nearly a decade before Eight Is Enough made him a household name as Tom Bradford.

Which shipboard post did the young Daniel Keyes hold on oil tankers, years before he wrote Flowers for Algernon?

Ship's purser was his post in the U.S. Maritime Service, which he entered before he turned eighteen; his leftover sea pay later kept him while he wrote a first novel that no publisher wanted.

Which European film festival hosted the 1968 world premiere of the film of Flowers for Algernon, months before New York?

Berlin screened it first, with its director in the running for the Golden Bear; American audiences had to wait until late September.

Where did Daniel Keyes teach creative writing from 1966, the year Flowers for Algernon became a novel?

Ohio University, in the town of Athens, kept him until he retired in the early 1990s; he had arrived from Wayne State in Detroit.

What did a childhood companion spitefully rewrite for young Charlie Gordon, forcing him to change schools?

A Valentine he meant for a girl at school was reworded so nastily that her brother was furious; the incident comes back to him only once the surgery starts to work.

Which British New Wave film star led BBC Radio 4's 1991 play of Flowers for Algernon?

Tom Courtenay starred in a dramatisation by Bert Coules, whose script was afterwards published as a book in its own right.

Which foundation funds the intelligence experiment and later frees Charlie Gordon from reporting to its lead scientist?

The Welberg Foundation is also the guest of honour at the cocktail party where a drunken Charlie offends everyone and finally has it out with the man in charge of the experiment.

In which Canadian city did the stage musical of Flowers for Algernon have its world premiere in December 1978?

Edmonton's Citadel Theatre staged it first; the show reached London's West End six months later and Broadway in 1980, where it closed within two weeks.

Which publisher finally issued Flowers for Algernon as a novel after a year of rejections from rival houses?

Harcourt took the novel with the unhappy ending that an earlier publisher had wanted changed, and three decades later it had still never been out of print.

Which playwright adapted Flowers for Algernon for the stage in 1969, then wrote the words for its 1978 musical?

David Rogers wrote the book and lyrics as well as the earlier full-length play; his musical tried out in Canada before London and New York.

Which country's television made a 2006 film of Flowers for Algernon, after American screen versions in 1968 and 2000?

France had staged the story as a play in Marseille back in 1982, and a Polish stage version followed three years later.