40 Fun Facts About An Affair to Remember

At which New York landmark do Nickie and Terry vow to meet in six months in An Affair to Remember?

The Empire State Building date comes with a condition: each must first end an engagement and start earning a living. The same rooftop promise had driven the plot of the 1939 original.

In An Affair to Remember, what stops Terry McKay from reaching Nickie on the day of their reunion?

A car hits her as she jumps out of a taxi with her eyes fixed on the skyscraper where Nickie is waiting. With her doctor unsure she will walk again, she refuses to contact him until she can.

Which Scottish-born star of The King and I plays Terry McKay in An Affair to Remember?

Deborah Kerr was nominated six times for the Best Actress Oscar and never won a competitive one. The Academy gave the Glasgow-born star an honorary award in 1994.

Which Meg Ryan comedy has its heroine weep over An Affair to Remember and copy its rooftop date?

Sleepless in Seattle shows clips of the 1957 film and reuses its theme song. Its lovers finally meet on the very observation deck where Terry never arrived.

Which object in Terry's bedroom finally reveals her secret to Nickie in An Affair to Remember?

His own painting hangs on her wall: his dealer had given it away to an admirer in a wheelchair who could not afford it. Nickie works out mid-sentence that the admirer was Terry.

On which night of the year does Nickie turn up at Terry's apartment in An Affair to Remember?

Christmas Eve finds Terry lying on her couch, where she stays for the whole scene so that Nickie cannot see she is unable to walk. She dodges every question about the missed date.

Which director remade his own romance Love Affair, almost scene for scene, as An Affair to Remember?

Leo McCarey reused the 1939 script at Cary Grant's urging. Grant had hung around the set of the original and wished the lead had been his.

Which relative of Nickie's do he and Terry visit when the ship stops in An Affair to Remember?

His grandmother Janou wins Terry over at her hillside villa, where she plays the piano while Terry sings. She confides that she hopes Terry will be the one to settle Nickie down.

Which screen legend made her last big-screen appearance in the 1994 remake of An Affair to Remember?

Katharine Hepburn, then 86, played the hero's aunt after the film's leading man personally lobbied her to take the part. It was her first big-screen role in nearly ten years.

Which comedy duo did An Affair to Remember's director first team up at the Hal Roach studio?

Laurel and Hardy were teamed at his suggestion while he was their supervising director from 1927 to 1930. He also slowed their comedy from the frantic silent-era pace to a more natural one.

Which film beat Love Affair, the 1939 original of An Affair to Remember, to the Best Picture Oscar?

Gone with the Wind won eight Oscars that night, a record at the time. Love Affair had six nominations, and its leading lady later said she never stood a chance against it.

Which real-life married couple starred in Love Affair, the 1994 remake of An Affair to Remember?

Beatty and Bening were husband and wife, and Beatty also produced and co-wrote the film. Its stopover moved to the South Pacific, with scenes shot on Tahiti and Moorea.

Which studio, home of the CinemaScope widescreen process, released An Affair to Remember?

20th Century Fox released it for producer Jerry Wald, whose Peyton Place earned a Best Picture nomination the same year. The 1939 original had been an RKO picture.

Which director's war epic beat An Affair to Remember to the Oscars for cinematography and score?

David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven Oscars that night, Best Picture among them. An Affair to Remember converted none of its four nominations.

Which singer, Natalie Wood's voice in West Side Story, sang for Terry in An Affair to Remember?

Marni Nixon had ghosted for the same star a year earlier in The King and I. She later stepped in front of the camera herself as a nun in The Sound of Music.

Which crooner, praised by Frank Sinatra for his voice, sings An Affair to Remember's opening theme?

Vic Damone, whose voice Sinatra rated the best in the business, also performed the song at the Academy Awards, where it was up for Best Song.

In which city does Terry McKay resume her singing career after the voyage in An Affair to Remember?

Boston is where she goes back to singing for a living while Nickie works to prove he can support a wife. She flies to New York when the six months are up.

What is Lois Clark, whose engagement to Nickie Ferrante makes headlines in An Affair to Remember?

A wealthy heiress, among the richest in America, Lois is the fiancée Nickie is sailing home to marry. He gives her up, and the fortune with her, to prove he can earn a living himself.

Which lost item of Nickie's is Terry carrying when the two first speak in An Affair to Remember?

His cigarette case is what first makes him notice her. She hands it back, then answers his flattery with a sarcastic remark about his reputation.

Which keepsake of Janou's does Nickie hand to Terry in the final scene of An Affair to Remember?

Her lace shawl was promised to Terry as the ship's horn called them back from the villa. Nickie collects it on a last visit after Janou's death.

Janou's hillside villa in An Affair to Remember stands above which town on the French Riviera?

Villefranche-sur-Mer has one of the deepest natural harbours in the Mediterranean, so big ships can anchor in its bay just east of Nice. The 1939 original set the same visit on Madeira.

Which English actress, about 15 years older than Cary Grant, played Janou in An Affair to Remember?

Cathleen Nesbitt had been engaged to the poet Rupert Brooke, who wrote love sonnets to her before his death in 1915. She was still acting on Broadway in her nineties.

Which French star first played the playboy role Cary Grant took over in An Affair to Remember?

Charles Boyer played him as Michel Marnet in 1939. His turn as the thief Pepe le Moko in Algiers a year earlier was the model for the cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew.

Which actress, called the First Lady of Hollywood, played Terry McKay before An Affair to Remember?

Irene Dunne earned one of her five Best Actress nominations for the part in Love Affair. She picked the film's signature song, Wishing, herself, and it became one of 1939's most popular tunes.

Which screwball comedy first teamed Cary Grant with An Affair to Remember's Oscar-winning director?

The Awful Truth made Grant an A-list star, even though the improvised shooting unsettled him so much that he tried to leave the production. It won its director the Oscar.

Which studio owned the title Love Affair, forcing the remake to be renamed An Affair to Remember?

Columbia held the rights to the name, so the remake dropped its working title early in 1957. The 1994 version got the old title back.

Why was The Philadelphia Story's Oscar-winning writer left off the credits of An Affair to Remember?

He was blacklisted in 1950 and moved to England the following year. Because the remake reused the 1939 script, Donald Ogden Stewart's old work reached the screen without his name.

In which English city was Cary Grant, the star of An Affair to Remember, born Archibald Leach?

Bristol unveiled a statue of Grant by its harbour in 2001, and in 2014 the city launched a biennial festival called Cary Comes Home.

Which habit had hypnotherapy turned Cary Grant against while he filmed An Affair to Remember?

Smoking lost its appeal after hypnotherapy sessions with his wife, and he was reportedly grumpy on set as a result. He also had a lump removed from his forehead during the shoot.

Which Frank Sinatra song beat An Affair to Remember's title number to the Best Song Oscar?

All the Way was introduced in The Joker Is Wild and won for Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn. The losing title song went on to become a jazz standard.

Which writer-director built a hit Tom Hanks comedy around her love of An Affair to Remember?

Nora Ephron admitted she once thought it the greatest movie she had ever seen. She called the 1957 film a running character in her own, where it reduces several women to tears.

Which film tops the AFI list of the greatest love stories, with An Affair to Remember fifth?

Casablanca leads the 2002 list of 100 love stories. Cary Grant shares the record of six films on it, and An Affair to Remember is the highest-ranked of them.

Until what hour does Nickie wait in vain at the top of the skyscraper in An Affair to Remember?

Midnight arrives with a torrential rainstorm breaking over the city, and Nickie finally gives up. He never notices the ambulance sirens far below and assumes she has rejected him.

After her accident in An Affair to Remember, Terry McKay takes a job teaching music to whom?

Orphaned children become her pupils while she stubbornly refuses to contact Nickie until she can walk. In the 1939 original the orphans' singing was dubbed by a professional boys' choir.

Which Bollywood star played the playboy hero of Mann, a Hindi film based on An Affair to Remember?

Aamir Khan starred opposite Manisha Koirala in the 1999 film, which follows the Hollywood one almost scene by scene. An earlier Indian version, Bheegi Raat, had appeared in 1965.

Which real liner that took Grace Kelly to her Monaco wedding stars in An Affair to Remember?

SS Constitution carried the bride-to-be from New York in 1956. The same liner turns up in I Love Lucy, where Lucy misses the sailing and has to catch up by helicopter.

Which composer of Chattanooga Choo Choo and That's Amore wrote An Affair to Remember's title song?

Harry Warren earned the last of his eleven Best Song nominations for it, having already won three times. The film's own director co-wrote the words.

Which actor, later the Governor in Hawaii Five-O, played Terry's fiancé in An Affair to Remember?

Richard Denning also played Lucille Ball's husband on the radio show that led to her famous sitcom. She insisted that her real husband, Desi Arnaz, take the part on television.

Which Western did Delmer Daves, co-writer of An Affair to Remember's script, direct that same year?

3:10 to Yuma is the most acclaimed of the thirty films he directed. His love story script dated from 1939 and was simply reused for the remake.

Which comedy reunited An Affair to Remember's two stars as an English earl and countess?

The Grass Is Greener, directed by Stanley Donen, was shot in England with Robert Mitchum as the American who comes between them. It was the pair's third film together.