Sunday, December 12, 2004

Musicals Quiz: Drop That Name!

In a shameless act of recycling (and we all know that recycling is wrong), I'm going to re-post a quiz I made up on a musicals newsgroup a couple of years ago. On this newsgroup, people would sometimes post a "lyrics quiz" where they'd post various lines from musical-theatre songs, and you had to identify the song and the show that each line came from. My contribution was a quiz consisting of 30 excerpts from song lyrics, each one mentioning the name of a famous person. Name the song, the show, and the individual's claim to fame.

It's an overly tough quiz -- the product of listening to a lot of relatively obscure cast albums -- but I think it's kind of fun to see how many famous names have been mentioned in musical-theatre songs. In a day or two I'll post the answers.

1. Missus Sheridan's Ann

2. When J.P. Morgan bows, I just nod

3. Truman Capote's balls

4. A fellow named Ben Hogan

5. Marilyn Miller in SUNNY

6. Grover Whalen and his hat

7. Jesse James could shoot

8. The Joe DiMaggio of love

9. Buying tickets for Rosalind Russell

10. Refined L.B. Mayer

11. We got Adam Clayton Powell

12. I'm tired of Richard Dix

13. He fell in love with Oscar Hammerstein

14. Shakespeare will be shakin'

15. Peggy Joyce has a business

16. All men but Bernard Shaw

17. I'm Carmen Miranda

18. C. Aubrey Smith and those other codgers

19. Mr. Havelock Ellis

20. If I looked like Aimee MacPherson

21. Rudy Vallee's megaphone

22. I'll go back to Billy Rose

23. The one with Andrew Jackson

24. The verity of Gene O'Neill

25. You're not Edwin Booth

26. Write to Mayor Lindsay

27. Old John L. Lewis

28. Tommy Manville's love

29. Elizabeth Arden to do your face

30. A Cole Porter tune

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