50 Fun Facts About The Boys in the Boat

The Seattle boathouse where the Boys in the Boat trained in the 1930s was built in 1918 as what?

A Navy seaplane hangar went up on the campus shore during World War I, but the war ended within months and the Navy handed it to the university. The rowers moved in and stayed until 1949.

Which star, earlier the director of The Monuments Men, made the 2023 film The Boys in the Boat?

George Clooney both produced and directed it, taking over an adaptation that had been in development since 2011, two years before the book was even published.

Besides a medal, the Boys in the Boat and other 1936 Olympic champions were given which living prize?

An oak sapling, a year old, went with each of the 130 gold medals. Winners carried the trees home and planted them at schools, stadiums and parks.

Which nation's eight took silver behind the Boys in the Boat in 1936, just ahead of host Germany?

Italy finished six-tenths of a second behind the Americans, with Germany another four-tenths back, after a race lasting almost six and a half minutes.

In which country were the Seattle and Berlin regatta scenes of the film The Boys in the Boat shot?

England stood in for both: lakes at the Cotswold Water Park near Swindon became the campus waterfront and the Olympic course, with Oxford college rowers crewing the rival boats.

Which American sprinter sailed to Germany on the same liner as the Boys in the Boat and won four golds?

Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and 4 x 100 metres in Berlin, the same four events Carl Lewis swept at the 1984 Games.

Which aircraft maker employed Joe Rantz of The Boys in the Boat as a chemical engineer for 35 years?

Boeing kept him for 35 years, and there he devised a dust-free "safe room" that was a forerunner of the modern cleanroom used in aerospace and medicine.

What do rowers like the Boys in the Boat call the error of getting an oar blade trapped in the water?

Catching a crab turns the trapped blade into a brake on the whole boat, and a severe one can throw the rower clean out of the seat.

Which author based the 2013 bestseller The Boys in the Boat on his talks with the elderly Joe Rantz?

Daniel James Brown had taught writing at San Jose State and Stanford and worked as a technical editor before his third book spent more than three years on the bestseller lists.

Publishers Weekly called The Boys in the Boat a nautical version of which Olympic film?

Chariots of Fire, the Best Picture winner about British sprinters at the 1924 Games, became the stock comparison. Another reviewer summed the book up as that film with oars.

On which holiday did the film The Boys in the Boat open in US cinemas, the same day as Ferrari?

Christmas Day brought it $5.7 million, about double the forecast, though that was only good for eighth place at the box office.

Which British actor, later seen in Masters of the Air, plays Joe Rantz in the film The Boys in the Boat?

Callum Turner was the first name attached to the cast, in November 2021, three months before the actors playing his crewmates and coach were announced.

Which lasting Olympic tradition began at the 1936 Berlin Games, the climax of The Boys in the Boat?

The torch relay was devised for Berlin, carrying a flame lit at Olympia in Greece through seven countries. The same Games were the first shown on live television.

In the sport of The Boys in the Boat, what is a long, narrow racing boat such as an eight properly called?

A shell is extremely narrow for its length, and the eight is the biggest of them: it always carries a coxswain because of its size, weight and speed.

Which German director filmed the Boys in the Boat for Olympia, the documentary of the 1936 Games?

Leni Riefenstahl made Olympia with money that came entirely from the Nazi government, yet its camera techniques went on to shape how sport is filmed for cinema and television.

Which rival of the Boys in the Boat had supplied the previous two Olympic champion eights?

California had won Olympic gold in 1928 and 1932 under Ky Ebright, a former Washington coxswain who knew his old school's methods from the inside.

Drawing on the rowers' own journals and memories, The Boys in the Boat belongs to which genre of book?

Narrative nonfiction tells a true story with a novelist's pacing, and its author writes nothing else: his other books cover a firestorm, a pioneer disaster and a wartime regiment.

Which Australian actor, Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, plays the head coach in The Boys in the Boat?

Joel Edgerton plays the tight-lipped coach who gambles his job by sending his second-string boat to the national championship ahead of his experienced senior crew.

What handicap did German officials give the Boys in the Boat, the fastest qualifiers, in the 1936 final?

The most exposed lane, far out in the wind, went to the Americans, while the slowest qualifiers, the hosts among them, drew the sheltered water. An American protest got nowhere.

The author of The Boys in the Boat first heard the story because Joe Rantz's daughter was his what?

Neighbor Judy Willman told him her father was a fan of his books and wanted to meet him. Their talk about hard times in the 1930s soon turned to rowing.

In a crew like the Boys in the Boat, what is the sternmost rower, who sets the rhythm, called?

The stroke sits in seat eight, face to face with the coxswain, and every oar behind follows that blade. The seat at the opposite end is simply called bow.

What do the Boys in the Boat call the rare feeling when all eight oarsmen row in perfect unison?

Swing only comes when every rower drives and finishes together, and the film's two Washington eights spend their training chasing it. A later Washington coach called it simply the sweet spot.

Which head coach led the University of Washington crew of The Boys in the Boat to Olympic gold in 1936?

Al Ulbrickson had rowed for Washington himself and coached there from 1927 to 1959, winning six national championships and a second Olympic gold in 1948.

Which British-born craftsman built the Boys in the Boat their racing eight in a loft above the boathouse?

George Pocock learned the trade from his father, and by the 1930s nearly every college crew in America raced in boats and pulled oars from his workshop.

Which coxswain, the only senior in the crew, steered the Boys in the Boat to Olympic gold in 1936?

Bobby Moch, a high-school valedictorian from Montesano, later coached at MIT, took a Harvard law degree and won a case before the US Supreme Court.

Which oarsman set the rhythm for the Boys in the Boat in the 1936 final despite being ill all week?

Don Hume was so sick that the coach pulled him from workouts, until crewmates asked to have him back, saying they would haul him down the course if he just gave them his rhythm.

Which New York town hosted the national collegiate regatta that the Boys in the Boat won in 1936?

Poughkeepsie staged a four-mile varsity race on the Hudson, and in 1936 Washington also won the freshman and junior varsity events, the first time a West Coast school took all three.

Which college sweetheart did Joe Rantz of The Boys in the Boat marry in 1939, a union that lasted 63 years?

Joyce Simdars and Joe had five children and stayed married until her death in 2002. He died five years later at the home of one of their daughters.

In the 2023 film The Boys in the Boat, where is the penniless student Joe Rantz living when the story begins?

An abandoned car is his home, with canned food for meals and tuition due in two weeks, which is why a rowing seat that comes with a job and a bed matters so much to him.

The Boys in the Boat race in which branch of the sport, where each athlete pulls a single oar?

Sweep rowing gives each athlete one long oar held in both hands, so a crew has to balance its port side against its starboard. Scullers hold two smaller oars apiece.

Which team nickname, adopted in 1922 in place of Sun Dodgers, did the Boys in the Boat race under?

Huskies replaced a name that joked about Seattle's rain, and the crew's gold-medal boat carries the mascot too: it was christened the Husky Clipper.

In the film The Boys in the Boat, what must the newly qualified crew raise $5,000 to pay for?

Their passage to Europe has to be covered or a richer crew will go in their place, so the city chips in, and the last of the money comes from their greatest rival.

The publisher pitched The Boys in the Boat to readers of which bestseller about another 1936 Olympian?

Unbroken tells of Louis Zamperini, a distance runner in Berlin who later survived a Pacific plane crash, 47 days on a raft and more than two years in prison camps.

From what moving grandstands did 1930s fans follow the big collegiate regattas rowed by the Boys in the Boat?

Observation trains carried bleachers on flatcars along the riverbank and kept pace with the crews, which gave their passengers the best view of a race four miles long.

Which long-running PBS history series retold The Boys in the Boat as the documentary The Boys of '36?

American Experience built its film around interviews with the book's author, rowing historians and the surviving children of the 1936 crew.

Which Northwest wood did the builder of the Boys in the Boat's racing eight pioneer for its thin outer skin?

Cedar skins were his best-known innovation. He had gone back to building racing boats full time in 1922, when aircraft makers began to give up wood for metal.

Which ocean liner carried the Boys in the Boat and the rest of the US Olympic team to Germany in July 1936?

SS Manhattan sailed for Hamburg with 334 members of the American team aboard and the crew's racing eight stowed up on the boat deck.

In which Washington town did Joe Rantz of The Boys in the Boat fend for himself as a teenager?

Sequim, on the Olympic Peninsula, is where he worked the hay fields and sold timber he had felled along the Dungeness River to put himself through high school.

The author of The Boys in the Boat earlier wrote The Indifferent Stars Above about which pioneer group?

The Donner Party book follows Sarah Graves, a young bride who left Illinois in 1846 and was among the few to try hiking out of the snowbound Sierra Nevada.

Which composer, an Oscar winner for The Grand Budapest Hotel, scored the film The Boys in the Boat?

Alexandre Desplat has a second Oscar for The Shape of Water, and had already worked with the film's director on earlier pictures including The Midnight Sky.

Which actress, the lead of Moxie, plays Joe Rantz's college sweetheart in the film The Boys in the Boat?

Hadley Robinson had appeared in Little Women and I'm Thinking of Ending Things before playing the classmate Joe starts dating once he has a place on the crew.

Years before The Boys in the Boat, its director made which 2008 comedy about 1920s professional football?

Leatherheads cast him as the captain of the struggling Duluth Bulldogs in 1925, playing opposite Renée Zellweger and John Krasinski.

Which US official defeated calls to boycott the 1936 Berlin Games, where The Boys in the Boat ends?

Avery Brundage argued that politics had no place in sport and carried the Amateur Athletic Union vote to send a team. He later ran the International Olympic Committee for twenty years.

Where did the Boys in the Boat win the 1936 US Olympic trials, overhauling a Pennsylvania club crew?

Princeton, New Jersey, staged the trials two weeks after the national championship, and Washington trailed all three rivals before winning by a length.

At which Berlin regatta course did the Boys in the Boat win Olympic gold, with Hitler looking on?

Grünau lies on the Langer See in the south-east of the city. Its course also staged the canoeing, and German crews won five of the seven rowing golds there.

Which British director was first attached to film The Boys in the Boat, two years before the book came out?

Kenneth Branagh was named in March 2011, when a studio bought the screen rights before the book was in print. The project then changed hands and waited nine years for its eventual director.

The man who built the Boys in the Boat's racing eight was the son of the boatbuilder at which school?

Eton College at Windsor employed his father as head boatbuilder, and prize money from his own sculling races paid for his move to Canada in 1911.

Sportswriters gave the stern, unsmiling head coach of the Boys in the Boat which nickname?

The Dour Dane rarely let his face move. A reporter who watched him as his crew came from far behind to win the 1936 national title wrote that it never so much as quivered.

Mark L. Smith, screenwriter of The Boys in the Boat, earlier co-wrote which 2015 frontier film?

The Revenant was written with its director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and drew partly on a novel by Michael Punke. Smith later wrote Twisters too.

Which bow-seat rower, raised in Seattle's Fremont district, was the last of the Boys in the Boat to die?

Roger Morris rowed at the front of the boat, graduated in mechanical engineering and spent his career on large dredging projects around Seattle. He was 94.