50 Fun Facts About Sweet Home Alabama

Who plays Melanie in the 2002 film Sweet Home Alabama?

Reese Witherspoon won over Roger Ebert, who gave the film three stars as 'a sweet, light-hearted fairy tale' while admitting he was 'so very tired' of its premise.

Which actor plays Jake, the husband Melanie left behind in Alabama?

Josh Lucas plays Jake, who first looks like a stubborn hayseed dodging a divorce and turns out to be the quiet success story of the film.

Which actor plays Andrew Hennings, Melanie's wealthy New York fiancé?

Patrick Dempsey plays Andrew, a JFK Jr. lookalike whose mother is grooming him for the White House, which is why Melanie hides her poor family and her husband from him.

Which Ever After director made the 2002 romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama?

Andy Tennant brought Melanie Lynskey with him from Ever After, casting her as Lurlynn, one of the school friends Melanie left behind when she fled to New York.

What is the name of Melanie's Alabama hometown in the film?

As 10-year-olds on its beach, Jake and Melanie inspect the glass left by a lightning strike.

What surname does Melanie use in New York to hide her Southern roots?

Carmichael is the name of the plantation Melanie passes off as her childhood home, so that New York will think she grew up rich; she was born Melanie Smooter.

What is Melanie's job in New York?

Fashion designer, and a famous one before 30: Roger Ebert doubted anyone that driven would trade it for a hometown husband, and argued that this is exactly why the film works as a fantasy.

Which actress plays Kate Hennings, Andrew's mother and Mayor of New York?

Candice Bergen plays the mayor, who ends up telling Melanie's parents to 'go back to your double-wide and fry something'.

Which child star plays the ten-year-old Melanie in the opening scene of Sweet Home Alabama?

Dakota Fanning plays the young Melanie, kissed by a ten-year-old Jake who announces he will marry her one day; the rest of the film is about trying to undo that marriage.

Who plays Melanie's parents, Earl and Pearl Smooter?

Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place play Earl and Pearl; it was Pearl who entered Melanie in pageants and urged her to get out of town for a better life.

Which character does a drunken Melanie out as gay at the bar in Sweet Home Alabama?

Bobby Ray Bailey forgives her fast: when she apologises the next day, he backs up her story to a snooping visitor that his family's mansion is her childhood home.

Which Can't Hardly Wait star plays Bobby Ray in the film Sweet Home Alabama?

Ethan Embry's character lends Melanie his family mansion as a fake childhood home; he and the film's star had first acted together as teenagers in Disney's A Far Off Place.

Barry Lowenstein, sent by the mayor to dig into Melanie's past, poses as a reporter for which newspaper?

The New York Post is only his cover. Melanie fools him with a borrowed mansion, then Andrew arrives to surprise her and uncovers the truth himself.

Why did Jake never sign the divorce papers?

He still wanted to win her back: Jake once followed her to New York, felt outclassed by the city and her success, and went home to make something of himself first.

What does Jake make at the resort Melanie's friends visit?

Glass sculptures: Melanie admires them with her New York friends before learning that the artist, who also owns the resort, is the husband she had written off as a loser.

Who interrupts Melanie and Andrew's wedding with news that she never signed the divorce papers?

Her attorney, Wallace Buford, stops the ceremony: Jake had finally signed, she never had, and handed the papers at the altar she decides she would rather stay married.

Where does Melanie finally find Jake in Sweet Home Alabama?

On the beach planting lightning rods, in a storm: she tells him they are still married, and the sheriff 'arrests' the pair and delivers them to their own reception.

In which famous New York store, opened after hours just for them, does Andrew propose to Melanie?

Tiffany & Co. is the setting: Andrew leads her into the dark store, has the lights switched on, and once she says yes tells her to pick any ring she likes.

Sweet Home Alabama's 2002 debut broke a September box-office record set by which Jackie Chan comedy?

Rush Hour had held the record since 1998 with $33 million. The rom-com beat it on the very weekend Jackie Chan's new comedy, The Tuxedo, opened second with less than half as much.

Which 2012 film finally broke Sweet Home Alabama's September opening-weekend record?

Hotel Transylvania opened to $42.5 million and ended a ten-year reign, then lost the record three years later to its own sequel.

What request to his engineers does the singer make, off the cuff, at the start of 'Sweet Home Alabama'?

'Turn it up' was only a plea for more volume in his headphones before the take. It sounded so right against the opening riff that it stayed in the final mix.

Under which Disney-owned banner was the film Sweet Home Alabama released in 2002?

Touchstone Pictures was the label Disney launched in 1984 with Splash so it could release films too grown-up for the family brand, and a PG-13 comedy about a divorce belonged there.

Much of the film Sweet Home Alabama was actually shot in which other Southern state?

Georgia doubled for small-town Alabama. Even the coon dog cemetery Melanie visits is a replica: the real one, a graveyard for hunting hounds, lies in the north of Alabama.

Which band recorded the song "Sweet Home Alabama"?

Lynyrd Skynyrd were outsiders praising a state they had only toured: two of the song's writers came from Florida and one from California, and they recorded it near Atlanta.

On which 1974 album did "Sweet Home Alabama" first appear?

The album reached No. 12 and went double platinum in 1987.

"Sweet Home Alabama" was written as an answer to songs by which artist?

Neil Young came round to the band's view: in his 2012 memoir he called his own lyrics 'accusatory and condescending' and wrote that he had deserved the shot they took at him.

Which anthem by the 'Sweet Home Alabama' band stalled at No. 19 in the US?

Free Bird came out as a single with its nine minutes cut to under five and peaked eleven places below 'Sweet Home Alabama', which at No. 8 remains the band's highest-charting single.

Which guitarist counts in 'Sweet Home Alabama' and plays its lead guitar, solos included?

Ed King was the one Californian in a band from Florida, so the voice counting 'one, two, three' on the South's best-known rock anthem belongs to a man from Glendale, California.

According to 'Sweet Home Alabama', which Alabama town 'has got the Swampers'?

Muscle Shoals was home to the Swampers, the session players who backed Aretha Franklin. Their nickname was a studio in-joke until this verse made it famous.

Which Alabama governor is referenced in a much-debated line of 'Sweet Home Alabama'?

George Wallace liked the line enough to make the band honorary officers in the state militia, although the singer insisted its 'boo, boo, boo' meant they disapproved of him.

Which singer, famous for her 'Gimme Shelter' duet with the Rolling Stones, has described nearly refusing to sing on 'Sweet Home Alabama'?

Merry Clayton says she first refused to sing anything about Alabama, thinking of the four girls killed in a 1963 church bombing, then made the music her protest. The session's engineer credits another group.

Who produced the original 1974 recording of 'Sweet Home Alabama'?

Al Kooper had discovered the band after moving to Atlanta and signed them to his Sounds of the South label; he produced their first three albums and sings backing vocals here.

Which 2008 Kid Rock hit interpolates "Sweet Home Alabama", with Billy Powell playing on the track?

All Summer Long went to No. 1 in Britain, and its success pulled the 1974 original back into the UK singles chart, 34 years after its release.

Which thrash band worked a 'Sweet Home Alabama'-style riff into the middle of their 1983 song 'The Four Horsemen'?

Metallica rebuilt the song from Dave Mustaine's 'The Mechanix'. He says the middle section began with him playing the Alabama riff as a joke; once fired, he recorded his own version with Megadeth.

Which slogan did 'Sweet Home Alabama' replace on Alabama's licence plates in 2009?

Stars Fell on Alabama, a jazz standard whose title recalls an 1833 meteor shower over the state, gave way to the rock anthem, so one song title replaced another.

Which cable channel named 'Sweet Home Alabama' the greatest Southern rock song in a 2006 countdown?

CMT plays country, and country acts had already paid the song their respects: the group Alabama recorded it for a 1994 tribute album to the band.

Which singer recorded the cover of 'Sweet Home Alabama' that opens the 2002 film's soundtrack album?

Jewel sang it for the album, which leaves out the 1974 original even though the film takes its title from it; Sheryl Crow is on the record too, singing Hank Williams.

Which songwriter mocked 'Sweet Home Alabama' in 1980 with the chorus 'play that dead band's song'?

Warren Zevon dashed off 'Play It All Night Long' as a satire of the hit. Kid Rock later stitched Zevon's own 'Werewolves of London' to the song he mocked and scored a hit with both.

Which Alabama city, rather than the capital Montgomery, does 'Sweet Home Alabama' name alongside the governor?

Birmingham was a pointed choice: the lyric passes over the governor's own capital for the city of Martin Luther King's 1963 campaign and of a Klan church bombing that year.

Which political scandal does the singer of 'Sweet Home Alabama' say 'does not bother me'?

Watergate was still unfolding: the single came out in June 1974, less than two months before Nixon resigned, so the singer was shrugging off the biggest story in the country.

In which Florida city was the band behind 'Sweet Home Alabama' formed?

Jacksonville made them Floridians. They fell for the state next door while touring its clubs and National Guard armories, where, their guitarist recalled, everyone was 'real nice'.

Who sang lead on the original 1974 recording of 'Sweet Home Alabama'?

Ronnie Van Zant also wrote the words, after a bandmate kept picking the same little riff while they waited for a rehearsal to start and he kept saying, 'Play that again.'

Which 1977 tragedy ended the original run of the band behind 'Sweet Home Alabama'?

A chartered plane crash in Mississippi killed the singer and five others, three days after the release of an album whose cover showed the band in flames; the sleeve was withdrawn.

Jake's hounds in the film Sweet Home Alabama are named in tribute to which legendary Crimson Tide football coach?

Bear Bryant gets two dogs: Bear, who died while Melanie was away in New York, and his successor Bryant, the coon hound who still takes to her when she comes back.

Which instrument takes the closing solo of 'Sweet Home Alabama', the hit of a band famous for three guitars?

Piano: Billy Powell's rolling outro so impressed the session's engineer that he called it one of the great rock keyboard performances, all the more for a three-guitar band.

About how much did the film Sweet Home Alabama earn at cinemas worldwide?

$180 million, about $127 million of it in North America, where it out-earned Legally Blonde, the comedy that had made its star bankable only a year earlier.

In Sweet Home Alabama, what does Melanie's old friend Lurlynn bring along to the bar, to Melanie's surprise?

Her baby: 'You have a baby... in a bar,' says Melanie, and Lurlynn replies that she has three more at home and can cart this one anywhere while he is still nursing.

How does Melanie try to force Jake to sign the divorce papers in Sweet Home Alabama?

She empties his bank account, which she can do because the bank still counts her as his wife. It works, in a way: after one furious night he leaves the signed papers on her bed.

Reviewing Sweet Home Alabama, Roger Ebert likened its heroine to which wholesome star of 1950s and 60s comedies?

Doris Day 'would have been' just as lovable in the part, Ebert wrote, before adding that she had in fact already played it, in Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

The Californian who co-wrote 'Sweet Home Alabama' had topped the US chart in 1967 with which psychedelic band?

Strawberry Alarm Clock went to No. 1 with the flower-power single 'Incense and Peppermints'; six years later their guitarist was co-writing the South's best-known rock anthem.