60 Fun Facts About John Steinbeck

In which California town was John Steinbeck born in 1902?

His turreted Victorian boyhood home now serves fixed-menu lunches, and the National Steinbeck Center is two blocks away.

Steinbeck's paternal grandfather helped found Mount Hope, a short-lived farming colony in which region?

It broke up after Arab attackers killed his brother; Steinbeck visited the site in Tel Aviv in 1966.

Harvesting which crop with migrant workers gave Steinbeck material for Of Mice and Men?

At the Spreckels Sugar Company he sometimes worked in the laboratory, which gave him time to write.

Which university did Steinbeck attend, leaving without a degree in 1925?

He studied English literature there, then tried and failed to make it as a writer in New York.

Steinbeck met his first wife Carol Henning while working as a tour guide and caretaker where?

They married in 1930 in Los Angeles, where he briefly tried a doomed manufacturing venture with friends.

What did Steinbeck and his friends try to manufacture in Los Angeles in 1930 to make money?

The money ran out in six months and the couple retreated to his father's cottage in Pacific Grove.

During the Depression, Steinbeck claimed to live on garden vegetables and what he gathered from the sea, namely what?

When that failed the couple accepted welfare and occasionally stole bacon from the local market.

Which marine biologist became Steinbeck's mentor from 1930 and the model for 'Doc' in Cannery Row?

Ricketts sold biological specimens from a lab on the coast and sometimes played music to calm Steinbeck down.

What was Steinbeck's first novel, published in 1929, about the privateer Henry Morgan?

Morgan's adventures had captured his imagination as a child; the book centres on the sack of Panamá Viejo.

Steinbeck's never-published 1930 novel Murder at Full Moon features what kind of killer?

He considered it unworthy of publication and it has stayed in the vault ever since.

Which 1935 novel about young paisanos on the California coast gave Steinbeck his first critical success?

The 1942 film starred Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr; the proceeds built him a summer home in Los Gatos.

Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men with what format in mind, after watching troupes perform for workers in Mexico?

He refused to see the New York production, telling George S. Kaufman the play in his head was already 'perfect'.

Which actor played Lennie in the 1939 film of Of Mice and Men, having played him on stage?

Burgess Meredith played George and became one of Steinbeck's close friends for the next two decades.

Who played Lennie opposite Gary Sinise's George in the 1992 film of Of Mice and Men?

Randy Quaid had played Lennie in a 1981 TV version with Robert Blake as George.

Which newspaper sent Steinbeck to the San Joaquin Valley Hoovervilles in 1936, research that fed The Grapes of Wrath?

His article series for the paper was called The Harvest Gypsies.

How many copies of The Grapes of Wrath were in print by February 1940, under a year after release?

It was the best-selling book of 1939 and won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Who played Tom Joad in John Ford's 1940 film of The Grapes of Wrath?

Fonda was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award; Jane Darwell played Ma Joad.

What did Steinbeck buy for his safety after The Grapes of Wrath brought him threats?

He wrote that landowners were spreading a rumour that the Okies wanted to kill him for lying about them.

Which California county banned The Grapes of Wrath from its schools and libraries from 1939 to 1941?

The book was also burned in his hometown on two occasions, and a Mississippi school board banned it in 2003 for profanity.

Which First Lady defended The Grapes of Wrath in her 'My Day' column, saying it was not exaggerated?

She was already a fan of Of Mice and Men.

Sea of Cortez (1941), Steinbeck's book with his biologist friend, describes a collecting trip to which body of water?

It sold badly, published just as the US entered the war; Steinbeck reissued the narrative half in 1951 under his name alone.

Which country awarded Steinbeck the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross for his occupation novel The Moon Is Down?

The novel never names the country, but everyone assumed it was Norway and the occupiers were German.

Which Hollywood star led the 'Beach Jumpers' commando raids Steinbeck joined in 1943?

On one raid off Italy he used a Thompson submachine gun to help capture Italian and German prisoners.

Steinbeck asked to have his name removed from which 1944 Hitchcock film he had written?

He believed the finished film had racist undertones.

Steinbeck's 1944 novel Cannery Row was a 'love letter' to which city?

Ocean View Avenue was renamed Cannery Row in 1958; the Hovden Sardine Cannery site next to Doc's lab became the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 1984.

Steinbeck first heard the folk tale that became The Pearl in which Mexican city, in 1940?

He described it in The Log from the Sea of Cortez as 'so much like a parable that it almost can't be'.

Steinbeck's screenplay Viva Zapata!, directed by Elia Kazan, starred which actor as Emiliano Zapata?

Anthony Quinn co-starred; Steinbeck was inspired to write it while in Cuernavaca for the filming of The Pearl.

Which photographer accompanied Steinbeck to the Soviet Union in 1947 for the book A Russian Journal?

They visited Moscow, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Batumi and Stalingrad; the KGB suspected Steinbeck of being an American agent.

How did Steinbeck's friend and mentor, the biologist behind 'Doc', die in May 1948?

Steinbeck rushed back to California but arrived hours too late, then sank into a year of depression.

Over how many days in 1952 did Steinbeck write the first draft of East of Eden?

He wrote a letter to his editor every day while working, later published as Journal of a Novel.

Which family in East of Eden is based on Steinbeck's own maternal ancestry?

The Trasks replay the story of Adam and his sons; the 1955 film version launched a famous screen career.

Whose film debut was the 1955 adaptation of East of Eden, directed by Elia Kazan?

The Hollywood Reporter called it 'bound to be one of the year's important contributions to screen literature'.

In 1959 Steinbeck rented a cottage in Somerset, England, to research his retelling of which legend?

He could see Glastonbury Tor from the cottage; the unfinished book appeared in 1976 as The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.

What breed of dog was Charley of Travels with Charley?

Charley was blue-grey; Steinbeck's son said the trip was made because his father knew he was dying and wanted to see the country once more.

What did Steinbeck name the camper truck he drove across America in 1960?

It is Don Quixote's horse; the restored truck sits in the National Steinbeck Center.

What was Steinbeck's last novel, published in 1961?

Reviewers wanted another Grapes of Wrath; the Swedish Academy cited it favourably a year later.

In which year did Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

A Swedish newspaper called it 'one of the Academy's biggest mistakes' and the New York Times sneered at his 'tenth-rate philosophising'.

Asked on the day of the announcement whether he deserved the Nobel Prize, what did Steinbeck reply?

He published no more fiction in the six years left to him after the prize.

Which Danish author was on the shortlist Steinbeck beat as a 'compromise choice' for the Nobel Prize?

Robert Graves, Lawrence Durrell and Jean Anouilh were the others; one member wrote there were 'no obvious candidates'.

Which cartoonist did Steinbeck call in 1953 'possibly the best writer in the world today'?

Capp created Li'l Abner; at his Nobel press conference Steinbeck named Hemingway's stories and 'nearly everything Faulkner wrote' as favourites.

Which president awarded Steinbeck the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964?

Their friendship is said to have shaped his hawkish views on Vietnam, from where he reported in 1967.

For which publication did Steinbeck go to Vietnam in 1967 to report on the war?

He was allowed to man a machine-gun post overnight at a firebase while his son's platoon slept.

How many times did Steinbeck marry?

Carol Henning, Gwyn Conger and Elaine Scott, who had just divorced actor Zachary Scott when they wed in 1950.

How old was Steinbeck when he died in New York City in December 1968?

A lifelong smoker, he died of heart disease during the 1968 flu pandemic; his ashes lie in the family plot in his hometown.

Which agency's files, released in 2012, showed Steinbeck offered it his services in 1952 before a European tour?

Director Walter Bedell Smith was eager to accept; what he actually did, if anything, is unknown.

According to his son, J. Edgar Hoover harassed Steinbeck by having which body audit him every year?

Steinbeck wrote to the Attorney General in 1942 asking him to make 'Edgar's boys' stop stepping on his heels.

Which playwright did Steinbeck publicly back in 1957 for refusing to name names to HUAC?

Steinbeck called it one of the 'strangest and most frightening times a government and people have ever faced'.

The title The Grapes of Wrath is a reference to which song?

The Joads are sharecroppers driven from their land by the Dust Bowl.

How many books did Steinbeck write in his career?

They include 16 novels, six non-fiction books and two story collections, plus the one co-written with his biologist friend.

Steinbeck's 1979 US postage stamp was the first in a Postal Service series honouring what?

It was issued on 27 February, the 77th anniversary of his birth.

A reporter who retraced Travels with Charley in 2011 using Steinbeck's diaries concluded what?

Scholars and Steinbeck's own son John backed the finding.

What public office did Steinbeck's father hold?

His mother, Olive Hamilton, met his father in King City in the 1890s.

Who played Lennie in the hit original stage production of Of Mice and Men?

Wallace Ford played George; Steinbeck refused to leave California to see any performance.

Steinbeck's third wife Elaine had just divorced which actor when they married in December 1950?

They met at a Carmel restaurant in June 1949; the marriage lasted until his death.

In which year were Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday adapted into a film?

Both books centre on a marine biologist among sardine canneries in Monterey.

Which weapon did Steinbeck reportedly use during a Beach Jumpers raid on an island off Italy?

He accompanied Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s small-unit diversion operations against German-held Mediterranean islands.

Which Soviet republic did Steinbeck visit in 1963 at President Kennedy's request?

He sat for a portrait by Martiros Saryan and met the poet Hovhannes Shiraz in Yerevan.

Where were Steinbeck's ashes interred in March 1969?

He lies with his parents and maternal grandparents; his wife Elaine joined him in 2004.

Which of Steinbeck's childhood friends, later a film actor, inspired The Red Pony?

Wagner was the brother of Jack Wagner, another Steinbeck associate.

Where is the restored Rocinante camper truck from Travels with Charley on display?

NEA chair Dana Gioia called the center 'the best modern literary shrine in the country'.