59 Fun Facts About Rosemary's Baby

Which book does the dying Hutch leave to Rosemary to warn her about her neighbors?

All of Them Witches reaches her at his funeral; Guy later throws it in the garbage, saying he didn't want her upsetting herself.

Which rating did the US Catholic film office give Rosemary's Baby when it opened?

Condemned, the office ruled, citing its nudity and its mockery of Christian beliefs; the C rating did nothing to stop the film becoming a major hit.

Rosemary's Baby author Ira Levin later wrote which of these novels, also filmed as a chiller?

The Stepford Wives followed in 1972: once again a newcomer senses a conspiracy among the neighbors, this time the husbands of a Connecticut town whose wives are all eerily submissive.

Who plays Rosemary Woodhouse in the 1968 film?

Mia Farrow also sings the wordless lullaby over the opening titles: the producers auditioned professional vocalists, then used her own voice instead.

Who plays Rosemary's actor husband, Guy Woodhouse?

John Cassavetes also made films of his own: he paid for the independent drama Faces out of his own pocket, and it opened the same year as Rosemary's Baby.

Which Rosemary's Baby cast member won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 1969 ceremony?

Ruth Gordon had made her first film in 1915; collecting the statuette at 72, she told the audience she didn't know why it had taken her so long.

What is the name of the Gothic New York building the Woodhouses move into?

The Bramford owes its name to Bram Stoker: when a magazine review misprinted it, the author wrote in to say he had chosen it in memory of Dracula's creator.

Which real Manhattan building provided the exteriors for the Gothic apartment house in Rosemary's Baby?

The Dakota is so recognizable that it is often taken for the novel's model too, but the author's family says he based his building on the ornate Alwyn Court.

What is the surname of Rosemary's elderly, meddlesome next-door neighbors?

The Castevets, Minnie and Roman, come across at first as merely nosy; the film's dark joke is that they turn out to be, almost literally, the neighbors from hell.

The foul-smelling pendant Minnie gives Rosemary as a good-luck charm supposedly contains what?

Tannis root is an invented herb that betrays the plot twice: Hutch grows suspicious when he tries to look it up, and its smell later gives Rosemary's doctor away.

What dessert does Minnie bring the couple on the night they plan to conceive?

Chocolate mousse, or 'chocolate mouse' as Minnie calls it: Rosemary tastes something chalky and throws most of it away, which is why she half-wakes during what follows.

When Rosemary phones Donald Baumgart, the actor who mysteriously went blind, whose voice answers?

Tony Curtis recorded the part without credit; at the next Academy Awards he was the presenter who handed the film's supporting actress her Oscar.

Which producer of gimmicky low-budget horror secured the film rights to Rosemary's Baby before the novel was published?

William Castle, the showman who wired cinema seats to buzz during The Tingler, hoped to direct; the studio let him produce only, and he settled for a cameo by a phone booth.

Rosemary cracks Hutch's dying clue, 'the name is an anagram', by shuffling the pieces of which game?

Scrabble tiles get her nowhere with the title of the book he left her, so she tries her neighbor's name instead, and the letters fall into place.

Rosemary works out that her neighbor Roman's full name is an anagram of which name, his real one?

Steven Marcato is the son of Adrian Marcato, a self-proclaimed sorcerer once mobbed outside the building; Guy shrugs that with a father like that, no wonder he switched his name around.

Which veteran actor, later a scheming Duke brother in Trading Places, plays Rosemary's obstetrician, Dr. Sapirstein?

Ralph Bellamy's smooth society doctor takes Rosemary off vitamin pills, puts her on a daily herbal drink mixed by Minnie, and warns her not to read books or listen to friends.

When Rosemary finally sees the child, what does Roman say to explain how it looks?

'He has his father's eyes,' Roman says; when Rosemary protests that Guy's eyes are normal, he tells her that Guy is not the father at all.

Which studio released Rosemary's Baby in 1968?

Paramount Pictures ranked ninth among Hollywood's studios when Robert Evans took over production; this hit was among the first to revive its fortunes.

According to François Truffaut, which director was offered Rosemary's Baby first and turned it down?

Alfred Hitchcock passed for lack of interest in the material, by Truffaut's account, and the job went to a European director who had never made a film in America.

Which star did Roman Polanski and his producer both want as Guy Woodhouse before the deal fell through?

Robert Redford was the man both wanted, but he never signed: by one account, talks collapsed when the studio's own lawyers served him with a subpoena over another film.

Along with Tuesday Weld, which actress did Roman Polanski originally have in mind to play Rosemary?

Sharon Tate was his own partner, and he later said he had hoped someone else would suggest her, since proposing her himself felt improper.

Midway through filming Rosemary's Baby, its star was served divorce papers on set by a lawyer for which husband?

Frank Sinatra wanted her to walk off the overrunning shoot and join him on his own film The Detective; she stayed to finish, and his lawyer arrived with the papers.

Which jazz pianist, who had scored Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, wrote the lullaby theme of Rosemary's Baby?

Krzysztof Komeda did not live to build on it: months after the release he suffered head injuries in a fall, slipped into a coma, and died in Poland in 1969.

Which well-known piano piece, practiced by another tenant, is heard in the background of Rosemary's Baby?

Für Elise drifts in from another apartment at breakfast, just as the couple realize that Rosemary's period is days overdue.

When the star walked into real Manhattan traffic for a scene in Rosemary's Baby, who operated the handheld camera?

The director took the camera himself because nobody else would, after assuring her that no driver would hit a pregnant woman.

Which food did the star of Rosemary's Baby, then a committed vegetarian, eat raw on camera, take after take?

Liver: Rosemary's craving has her gulping raw chicken livers at the kitchen counter until she catches her reflection in the toaster, and the actress did it for real.

In 2010, The Guardian ranked Rosemary's Baby the second-best horror film ever made, behind which movie?

Psycho took first place; the paper's entry on the runner-up noted that its success launched a run of devil-baby and satanic-pregnancy films that lasted well into the 1970s.

What was the title of the 1976 made-for-TV sequel to Rosemary's Baby?

Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby was scripted by a television writer; the novelist's own sequel, published two decades later, tells a different story.

Which Oscar-winning former child star played Rosemary in the 1976 television sequel?

Patty Duke had been in the frame for the part back in 1968 and lost it; eight years on she inherited it for television.

Sam O'Steen, who directed the 1976 TV sequel, had held which job on the original Rosemary's Baby?

Editor: Sam O'Steen cut the original and later Chinatown for the same director, and by 1976 was directing television films of his own, this sequel among them.

Who starred as Rosemary in the 2014 NBC miniseries?

Zoe Saldaña, then best known for Avatar and Star Trek, did double duty: she and her two sisters are also credited as producers of the four-hour remake.

Unlike every earlier version, the 2014 Rosemary's Baby miniseries moved the story to which city?

Paris replaces Manhattan: the couple move there for a fresh start after a miscarriage, and the whole miniseries was shot on location in the city.

What is the title of the 2024 prequel to Rosemary's Baby?

Apartment 7A is set in 1965, just before Rosemary moves into the building, and went straight to streaming in September 2024 instead of opening in cinemas.

The 2024 prequel to Rosemary's Baby expands the story of which minor character from the original film?

Terry Gionoffrio is the neighbors' young lodger in the 1968 film; the prequel makes her an ambitious dancer, sidelined by an injury, whom the same wealthy older couple take in.

Who plays the young dancer at the center of the 2024 Rosemary's Baby prequel?

Julia Garner, a three-time Emmy winner for Ozark, plays the ambitious dancer the coven sets its sights on in 1965, shortly before Rosemary moves in.

How does the neighbors' young lodger die early in Rosemary's Baby?

A fall from a window: Rosemary and Guy come home to find her body on the sidewalk, an apparent suicide, and that is how they first meet the old couple she lived with.

The success of the novel Rosemary's Baby opened a boom in devil fiction that produced which bestseller of 1971?

The Exorcist followed four years after Rosemary's Baby; Levin, who never believed in the Devil, later admitted to some guilt at having helped start the craze.

Before settling on the Devil, Levin briefly considered making the father of Rosemary's baby what?

An extraterrestrial was his only other idea, but aliens had already fathered children in John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos, so, as he put it, he was 'stuck with Satan'.

On the first edition's dust jacket, Truman Capote compared Rosemary's Baby to which Henry James ghost story?

The Turn of the Screw was his yardstick, and the author later credited that 'generous quote', printed on the front of the jacket, with much of the book's success.

At the end of the novel Rosemary's Baby, Rosemary renames her son, called Adrian by the coven, as what?

Andrew is her answer to the coven's choice; in the author's 1997 sequel he has grown into Andy, a 33-year-old spiritual leader adored around the world.

Which item of Hutch's goes missing at Rosemary's apartment, giving the coven the means to strike him down?

A glove goes missing during his visit; by the next morning Hutch is in a coma, and Rosemary later reads that a coven needs something belonging to its victim.

Censors under which regime cut passages from a translation of Rosemary's Baby for 'glorifying Satan'?

Francoist Spain passed the novel only with two long passages removed, and Spanish-language editions were still being printed from that censored text in 2019.

Which English rock band wrote the song 'Why Didn't Rosemary?' after seeing Rosemary's Baby at the cinema?

Deep Purple recorded it for their third album in 1969, a blues number whose chorus wonders why Rosemary never went on the pill.

Before Rosemary's Baby, its lead actress was best known as Allison MacKenzie on which TV soap?

Peyton Place had made her a television star: she had left the soap in 1966 and had no hit film to her name when she was handed the lead.

Handed her first Oscar at 72 for Rosemary's Baby, the winner drily called such an award what?

Encouraging was her word: 'I can't tell you how encouragin' a thing like this is,' she said, 54 years after appearing in her first film.

Levin wove real New York events into Rosemary's Baby, including a 1965 visit by whom?

The Pope came to New York on October 4, 1965; Levin, searching old newspapers for the right night for the baby's conception, found the visit and took it as a sign.

Which future comedy star plays Dr. Hill, the young obstetrician Rosemary runs to for help?

Charles Grodin's Dr. Hill hears her story out and promises to help, then quietly telephones the very doctor and husband she is running from.

Although Rosemary's Baby is set in New York, where was most of it actually filmed?

Los Angeles: after a short spell of exteriors in Manhattan, the unit moved to Hollywood, where the apartments had been built on studio sound stages.

Robert Evans baited Roman Polanski with the script for which skiing film, then handed him Rosemary's Baby?

Downhill Racer was the bait for a keen skier; he took the galleys at first for 'a syrupy Doris Day number' and was still reading at four in the morning.

Which of these stars turned down the part of Rosemary?

Jane Fonda chose Barbarella, directed by her husband Roger Vadim; she is reported to have passed on Bonnie and Clyde in the same period too.

Which of these actors was briefly considered for the part of Guy Woodhouse?

Jack Nicholson was considered and passed over, but six years later Roman Polanski cast him as the lead in Chinatown.

Three years after Rosemary's Baby, the actress who played Minnie starred in which cult comedy?

Harold and Maude cast her as a free spirit of nearly 80 who wins the heart of a troubled young man, about as far from Minnie's coven as a part could be.

Which two-time Oscar winner plays the meddling neighbor Minnie in the 2024 Rosemary's Baby prequel?

Dianne Wiest inherits the part that won an Oscar in 1969, playing Minnie as she closes in on an earlier young tenant shortly before Rosemary arrives.

Which veteran Oscar winner took over as Rosemary's neighbor Roman in the 1976 TV sequel?

Ray Milland, an Oscar winner as the alcoholic writer of The Lost Weekend, replaced the first film's Roman, who had died three years before the sequel was made.

Which celebrity hairdresser does Rosemary name when Guy is shocked by her cropped haircut?

Vidal Sassoon was flown from London to trim the star's hair for press cameras on the studio lot; she later said she had cut it short herself two years earlier and called the session a publicity prank.

Which institution chose Rosemary's Baby for its National Film Registry in 2014?

The Library of Congress called it a masterpiece of the horror genre, created when a filmmaker brought his expressive European style to a best-selling American novel.

Which Time magazine cover line does Rosemary read in her obstetrician's waiting room?

'Is God Dead?' was Time's real cover of April 8, 1966, the magazine's first to carry only text and no image, and it drew more than 3,400 readers' letters and angry protests from the clergy.

How does Rosemary finally slip into her neighbors' apartment to look for her baby?

Through a hidden closet door: told her baby was stillborn, she finds the linen closet opens into the neighbors' flat and walks in on the coven gathered round a black-draped cradle.

How does Rosemary react when Guy says they are getting so much in return for the baby?

She spits in his face after Guy insists the coven promised she would not be hurt; moments later she is gently rocking the cradle herself.