50 Fun Facts About 1959 Movies

Which star played Sugar Kane, the ukulele-playing singer of an all-female band, in 1959's Some Like It Hot?

Marilyn Monroe won a Golden Globe for the part, which she nearly refused as one more 'dumb blonde'. Director Billy Wilder had first pictured Mitzi Gaynor in it.

Which 1990s blockbuster first equaled the record eleven Oscars that 1959's Ben-Hur had held alone for decades?

Titanic matched the eleven-Oscar haul at the 1998 ceremony, almost four decades after Ben-Hur set the mark. The Return of the King equaled it again six years later.

Which American landmark do Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall scramble across at the climax of North by Northwest?

Mount Rushmore hosts the final chase, yet the only spot in the real park where the crew was permitted to film was its visitor building.

Which horned villain becomes a fire-breathing dragon to fight Prince Phillip in Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty?

Maleficent curses the infant princess after being left off the guest list for her christening. The character got her own live-action film in 2014.

Which future James Bond had his first leading role in Disney's 1959 fantasy Darby O'Gill and the Little People?

Sean Connery was borrowed from 20th Century Fox for the part and even sings a duet in the film, three years before Dr. No made him 007.

What color does the submarine USS Sea Tiger end up painted in the 1959 wartime comedy Operation Petticoat?

Pink was what the crew got by mixing its scarce red and white primer, and Tokyo Rose mocks the odd-looking boat on the radio.

Which director appears in the opening credits of North by Northwest having a bus door shut in his face?

Alfred Hitchcock times the gag so the door slams just as his own directing credit appears, one of the walk-on cameos he made a signature of his films.

What kind of aircraft attacks Roger Thornhill at a lonely Indiana bus stop in the 1959 thriller North by Northwest?

A crop duster armed with a machine gun dives at him in broad daylight. The 'Indiana' prairie scene was actually filmed near Wasco, California.

Which Ed Wood film, seen across America in 1959 with Bela Lugosi's last footage, was later dubbed the worst ever made?

Plan 9 from Outer Space got the 'worst film ever made' label from the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards, after two decades of obscurity on television.

Which actor won the Best Actor Oscar as Judah, a Jewish prince sold into galley slavery, in the 1959 epic Ben-Hur?

Charlton Heston got the part after Burt Lancaster turned it down, calling the script boring. Paul Newman said he lacked the legs for a tunic.

Which actor played the bass player who, as 'Daphne', ends Some Like It Hot engaged to millionaire Osgood Fielding?

Jack Lemmon landed the role after Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and Danny Kaye had all been considered, and it brought him a Best Actor Oscar nomination.

Which singer played Dude, the drunken ex-deputy who sobers up to help John Wayne's sheriff, in 1959's Rio Bravo?

Dean Martin's part was reworked for Robert Mitchum when the same director and star retold the story as El Dorado in 1966.

Which star played Sister Luke, a Belgian nurse sent to the Congo, in the 1959 drama The Nun's Story?

Audrey Hepburn earned a Best Actress nomination for the film, whose African scenes were shot on location around Stanleyville, now Kisangani.

Which Russian composer's 1889 ballet score was adapted for the songs and music of Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty?

Pyotr Tchaikovsky's themes took Disney composer George Bruns three years to rework; the ballet's Garland Waltz became the song 'Once Upon a Dream'.

Which horror star played the pathologist hunting a spine-gripping parasite in William Castle's 1959 film The Tingler?

Vincent Price's film came with a gimmick called Percepto: vibrating devices fitted to some theater seats went off on cue with the action on screen.

Which novelist's 1864 adventure became 1959's Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring James Mason and Pat Boone?

Jules Verne's tale gained new characters on screen, including Pat Boone's student and Gertrud, a pet duck that tags along underground.

Which sport does Sandra Dee's California teenager fall for in Gidget, the 1959 film that began the beach-party genre?

Surfing went mainstream in America largely thanks to the film, whose heroine buys a used board with $21.50 advanced by her parents.

Which actor, later the first Black winner of the Best Actor Oscar, played Porgy in the 1959 film Porgy and Bess?

Sidney Poitier at first turned the part down, and accepted only reluctantly after the film's veteran producer threatened to sue him.

Which sequence in 1959's Ben-Hur took five weeks to film on what was then the largest movie set ever built?

The chariot race cost about $1 million on its own, and seven thousand extras were hired to cheer from the stands of the arena.

Which actress won an Oscar for 1959's The Diary of Anne Frank and later gave the statuette to the Anne Frank House?

Shelley Winters had promised Anne's father, Otto Frank, that she would give the award away if she won, and handed it over in Amsterdam in 1975.

In which state do the disguised musicians of Some Like It Hot hide at a beach hotel actually filmed in California?

Florida's 'Seminole Ritz' was really the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California, picked because it suited the 1920s setting and was near Hollywood.

From which Prohibition-era city do the two musicians of Some Like It Hot flee after witnessing a mob killing?

Chicago's real St. Valentine's Day Massacre inspired the shooting the pair stumble on, which sends them running to join an all-female band.

Which star's voice does Tony Curtis mimic as the fake oil heir 'Junior' in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot?

Cary Grant was Curtis's boyhood hero, and the two went on to co-star later in 1959 in the submarine comedy Operation Petticoat.

Which actor first teamed with Doris Day as the playboy sharing her telephone party line in 1959's Pillow Talk?

Rock Hudson had never made a comedy before, and the film's huge box office revived his career and led to two more pairings with Day.

Which star played both a Michigan defense lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder and an agent in The FBI Story in 1959?

James Stewart's lawyer argues before a judge played by Joseph Welch, a real attorney famous for dressing down Senator Joseph McCarthy on television.

Which jazz bandleader scored Otto Preminger's 1959 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder and also appears on screen?

Duke Ellington wrote the music with Billy Strayhorn and turns up as a character called Pie Eye, with several of his own sidemen around him.

Which 1952 Gary Cooper western did Howard Hawks and John Wayne set out to answer with 1959's Rio Bravo?

High Noon is often read as an allegory of the Hollywood blacklist, and Hawks said plainly that he made his own sheriff-under-siege film because he disliked it.

Which Disney comedy about a teenager transformed by a cursed Borgia ring was the second-highest-grossing film of 1959?

The Shaggy Dog cost less than $1 million and earned $9.6 million in rentals, a better return on its budget than Ben-Hur's. Its hero keeps turning into an Old English Sheepdog.

In which country do Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner await drifting nuclear fallout in the 1959 drama On the Beach?

Australia's Melbourne is the last major city left alive in the story, and the production had to lease the city's showgrounds to use as a studio.

Which British comic played three roles, including a grand duchess, in the 1959 satire The Mouse That Roared?

Peter Sellers was still little known in America; his duchess parodies an elderly Queen Victoria who believes Calvin Coolidge is still president.

Which 1959 François Truffaut film ends on a freeze-frame of the runaway boy Antoine Doinel beside the sea?

The 400 Blows won Truffaut the Best Director prize at Cannes, and actor Jean-Pierre Léaud went on to play Doinel again in four later films.

Which 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama pairs Lana Turner's actress with a Black housekeeper whose daughter passes as white?

Imitation of Life was Sirk's last Hollywood film and one of 1959's ten biggest box-office hits, though many critics at the time dismissed it as soap opera.

Which 1959 romance starring Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue had a theme that gave Percy Faith a nine-week number one?

A Summer Place had its theme written by Max Steiner, and Percy Faith's version became the first instrumental to win the Record of the Year Grammy.

In which country is Black Orpheus set, the 1959 Palme d'Or winner that retells a Greek myth during Carnival?

Brazil's Rio de Janeiro is the backdrop, with long passages shot in a hillside favela, and the film also won the foreign-language Oscar.

Which fictional detective did Peter Cushing play in a 1959 Hammer film and again on BBC television in the 1960s?

Sherlock Holmes nearly lost his deerstalker in the film: a producer wanted it dropped until Cushing insisted that audiences would expect it.

Which director of The Best Years of Our Lives won his third Best Director Oscar for the 1959 epic Ben-Hur?

William Wyler had worked as an assistant on the silent 1925 version of the same story, more than three decades before he directed the remake.

Which Hollywood studio, in deep financial trouble, was rescued by the profits of its 1959 epic Ben-Hur?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cleared more than $20 million on the first release, after television and the forced sale of its theater chain had left it in distress.

For which craft did Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot win its only Oscar, from six nominations?

Costume design brought the award to Orry-Kelly, who made new outfits for the two male leads after the studio's stock dresses fitted them poorly.

Which teen idol from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet played the young gunslinger Colorado in 1959's Rio Bravo?

Ricky Nelson earned a Golden Globe nomination as most promising newcomer, and Howard Hawks credited much of the film's box-office success to him.

Which French star won 1959's Best Actress Oscar as a social climber's married lover in Room at the Top?

Simone Signoret plays Alice Aisgill, and her win was one of two Oscars the British drama took from six nominations, the other for its adapted screenplay.

Which Oscar winner for On the Waterfront played the double agent Roger Thornhill meets on a train in North by Northwest?

Eva Marie Saint was a surprise choice for the femme fatale, picked over dozens of other candidates five years after her Oscar-winning film debut.

Which Hammer horror star played the bandaged Kharis opposite Peter Cushing in the 1959 film The Mummy?

Christopher Lee's silent, bandaged priest is set apart by the BFI from the mummy of Universal's 1932 film for the character's sense of torment.

Which star died of a heart attack after filming a duel for 1959's Solomon and Sheba and was replaced by Yul Brynner?

Tyrone Power had already filmed for two months, so large parts were re-shot, though he can still be glimpsed in some of the wide battle scenes.

Which American bodybuilder became a film star when the Italian epic Hercules opened in US theaters in 1959?

Steve Reeves's sword-and-sandal hit earned $4.7 million in North American rentals that year and was quickly followed by a sequel, Hercules Unchained.

Which song, introduced by Frank Sinatra in the 1959 film A Hole in the Head, won the Oscar for Best Original Song?

High Hopes was sung in the film by Sinatra with child actor Eddie Hodges, and was soon reworked as a campaign song for John F. Kennedy's 1960 run.

Which actor-director played a lawyer modeled on Clarence Darrow in Compulsion, the 1959 Leopold and Loeb drama?

Orson Welles shared the Best Actor award at Cannes with his two co-stars, though he was bitter at not being picked to direct the film himself.

What does Alec Guinness's reluctant spy sell for a living in Carol Reed's 1959 comedy Our Man in Havana?

Vacuum cleaners even supply his fake intelligence: he sketches their parts as a secret rocket base. Fidel Castro visited the Havana shoot in May 1959.

Which Indian director completed his acclaimed Apu Trilogy with the 1959 Bengali-language film The World of Apu?

Satyajit Ray cast newcomer Soumitra Chatterjee as the grown Apu, having earlier judged him too old to play the adolescent Apu in Aparajito.

Which low-budget producer-director shot the 1959 beatnik horror comedy A Bucket of Blood in just five days?

Roger Corman reused the same sets soon afterwards for The Little Shop of Horrors, another quick black comedy written by Charles Griffith.

What is the name of the princess whom three good fairies hide in a forest cottage in Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty?

Aurora spends her childhood in hiding under the name Briar Rose, raised by fairies who give up magic and live as peasants.