50 Fun Facts About Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

What do Nick and Honey finally learn about the son George and Martha describe in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

They invented him: unable to have children, the couple made the boy up early in their marriage and kept him going as a private game. George ends it once Martha mentions him to an outsider.

When George aims a gun at Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, what pops out of the barrel?

A Chinese parasol springs from the gun, and everyone finds it extremely funny. Moments earlier George had slipped away while Martha told an embarrassing story about him.

In the 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the title song is sung to which nursery-rhyme melody?

Mulberry Bush carries the words in the film and in most stage versions: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is in the public domain, unlike the Disney tune the title parodies.

Which Cold War standoff began just three days after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf opened on Broadway?

The Cuban Missile Crisis began on 16 October 1962, three days after opening night at the Billy Rose Theatre, so the play's first weeks on Broadway coincided with the nuclear standoff.

What happened after the Pulitzer drama jury chose Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the 1963 prize?

No award was made: the advisory board objected to the play's profanity and sexual themes and overruled its own jury. Both jurors resigned in protest.

The studio boss who bought the film rights to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf first promised which star as Martha?

Bette Davis was to star opposite James Mason, and the playwright was delighted. He later said that pairing would have made a less flashy and ultimately deeper film.

How did Elizabeth Taylor prepare to play the frumpy, fifty-ish Martha in the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Taylor gained about 30 pounds, wore a wig and used makeup to look older and tired. Casting one of the world's most glamorous stars in the part had surprised many.

What is unusual about the name of Nick, the young husband in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Nobody ever says it: Nick is never addressed or referred to by name in the play or the film. The film credits just four actors in all.

Which former comedy partner of Elaine May made his film directing debut with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Mike Nichols, until then known for comedy and Broadway hits, earned a Best Director nomination for his first film. He and May later played the lead couple themselves on stage in New Haven.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the leads of the Virginia Woolf film, fell in love while making which epic?

Cleopatra brought the pair together in 1962 while both were married to other people. They wed in 1964, two years before playing a warring husband and wife.

Which American playwright, later the author of Seascape and Three Tall Women, wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee based his warring couple on two married friends, a literature professor and an experimental filmmaker whose drinking salons ran from Friday afternoon into Monday.

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, George is an associate professor in which department of the college?

History is George's subject, which sets him against his younger guest Nick, a scientist he comes to see as a threat.

The title Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf puns on a song from which 1933 Disney cartoon?

Three Little Pigs introduced Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, a best-selling single that became something of an anthem of the Great Depression.

Where did the playwright say he first saw the phrase Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf scrawled in soap?

On a bar mirror in a New York saloon, he recalled, where he was having a beer one night. It struck him as a typical university intellectual joke.

The director of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf won an Oscar for his very next film, which 1967 release?

The Graduate won him Best Director a year after his debut. Between them, his first two films earned 20 Oscar nominations.

How was the 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf photographed, winning an Oscar for its camera work?

In black and white, it won the last Oscar handed out for that kind of cinematography before the two camera categories were combined into one.

Which Fred Zinnemann film beat Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf to the Best Picture Oscar?

A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars in all, including Best Actor for Paul Scofield, who beat Richard Burton's George to the award.

Which episode of The Office, with Jim and Pam as trapped guests, was originally titled Virginia Woolf?

Dinner Party parodies the play: Michael invites the new couple over, and the evening slides into a chaotic display of his tense relationship with Jan.

What Oscar first did the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf achieve with its four credited actors?

Every cast member nominated was a first: Taylor and Burton in the lead categories, their two co-stars in supporting. Sleuth repeated the feat in 1972.

Virginia Woolf, the English author whose name the play borrows, wrote which novel set on a single day?

Mrs Dalloway follows a wealthy London woman through the day she prepares to host an evening gathering. The play uses Woolf's name only for its pun.

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Martha is the daughter of the man holding which post where George teaches?

College president is the post her father holds, and he once expected George to follow him. Martha taunts her husband for lacking the ambition to do it.

Where have George and Martha spent the evening just before the action of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf begins?

A faculty party is where Martha met Nick and Honey and invited them back for a drink. She tells George only once the two of them are home.

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, George says the son died swerving his car to avoid which animal?

A porcupine is the detail George gives, the exact wording he used earlier in the evening in a story about a boyhood classmate.

Which actress, later a celebrated acting teacher, originated Martha on Broadway in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Uta Hagen won her second Tony for the part and went on to write Respect for Acting, used as a textbook in many college acting classes.

Which actress, in only her second film role, won an Oscar as Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Sandy Dennis took Best Supporting Actress as the fragile, neurotic young wife, one of two acting Oscars the picture won.

Which actor, a comedy lead of the 1970s, was Oscar-nominated as Nick in the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

George Segal lost Best Supporting Actor to Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie. Decades later he played the grandfather, Pops, on the sitcom The Goldbergs.

The uproar over the screen version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf helped push Hollywood to adopt what in 1968?

The film rating system took effect on November 1, 1968, after this picture and Blow-Up convinced the industry's new chief that the old Production Code was finished.

Which 1980s Hollywood star played Martha in the 2005 Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Kathleen Turner, the star of Body Heat, beat a score of other contenders to the part, and the production moved on to London's Apollo Theatre the following year.

Elizabeth Taylor's Virginia Woolf Oscar was her second; which 1960 film, in which she played a call girl, won her first?

BUtterfield 8 won Taylor the award even though she disliked the role. It was her last film for MGM.

In the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the young newcomer Nick teaches in which department?

Biology is Nick's field, and George, guessing the guest is the blond, athletic new professor, is reluctant to have him over at all.

George's final game in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf shares its name with which Cary Grant screwball comedy?

Bringing Up Baby is the game in which George at last talks openly about the son. The 1938 comedy of that name features a leopard called Baby.

What title does the playwright give the third and final act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Exorcism follows a second act called Walpurgisnacht, the name of an annual witches' meeting. An exorcism is the driving out of an evil spirit.

What is the title of the first act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which the guests arrive?

Fun and Games covers the guests' arrival and ends with a broken bottle and Honey running to the bathroom to be sick.

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Nick admits to George that he married Honey believing what about her?

She was pregnant, he believed, but it proved a false alarm. George later retells the confession to the whole room in a thinly veiled story.

George's unpublished novel in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf concerns a boy who accidentally kills whom?

Both his parents die by accident in the book, and Martha's father would not let it be published. Martha tells the tale while dancing with Nick.

Whose permission did the playwright reportedly seek before putting Virginia Woolf's name in his title?

Her widower, Leonard, is said to have granted it by letter some twenty years after her death, and to have enjoyed the play when he saw it in London.

Which kind of production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf did its author refuse Henry Fonda in 1970?

An all-male cast was the plan: Fonda and Richard Burton tried to recruit Warren Beatty and Jon Voight before permission was refused.

Because Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ran so long, which unusual step did its first Broadway producers take?

They hired a matinee cast, led by Kate Reid and Shepperd Strudwick, to play twice a week. Those performances sold out as well.

Which Hollywood studio released the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966 with an adults-only warning?

Warner Bros. put the warning on every advertisement, and its contracts barred cinemas from admitting anyone under 18 without an adult.

Most exteriors for the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf were shot at which Massachusetts women's college?

Smith College in Northampton supplied the campus, though the director later called the location shoot an error that added nothing artistically.

The play never leaves the house; which setting did the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf add for its dance scene?

A roadhouse was added for the screen, and its owner and his wife were played by the film's gaffer, Frank Flanagan, and his own wife, Agnes.

Which English actress played Martha opposite Conleth Hill in a 2017 West End run of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Imelda Staunton, the screen's Dolores Umbridge, led the Harold Pinter Theatre production and went on to play Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown.

Which Pulitzer-winning playwright won a 2013 Tony for acting, as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Tracy Letts, who wrote August: Osage County, was making his Broadway acting debut. The revival opened 50 years to the day after the original.

Which screenwriter of North by Northwest both produced and adapted the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Ernest Lehman refused to change the dialogue that had shocked New York theatregoers four years earlier, and prevailed despite serious opposition.

Which cinematographer won an Oscar for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and a second for Bound for Glory?

Haskell Wexler shot In the Heat of the Night the following year, and his second Oscar film was the first feature to use the newly invented Steadicam.

Which Canadian actor won a Tony as the original Broadway George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Arthur Hill took the 1963 Tony for the part, but when Hollywood filmed the play his role went to Richard Burton.

The author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf wrote which first play in three weeks, premiered in Berlin?

The Zoo Story, a one-act about two men who meet on a Central Park bench, was staged in Berlin in 1959 before reaching off-Broadway the next year.

The author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was adopted into a family whose fortune came from what?

Vaudeville theatres made the family rich: his adoptive grandfather was a vaudeville magnate, and the boy grew up in Larchmont, New York, before leaving home in his late teens.

In the third act of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, George arrives at the door carrying which flowers?

Snapdragons come in with George after the doorbell rings, along with a string of literary jokes that Martha seems to enjoy.

Which actress, later a two-time Oscar nominee, made her Broadway debut as Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Melinda Dillon earned a Tony nomination for the part and later played the mothers in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and A Christmas Story.