Q 01/05

After her murder conviction, how is the Young Woman put to death in the final episode of Machinal?

A) The hangman's noose

B) A firing squad

C) The electric chair

D) The gas chamber

Answer · why

C) The electric chair

The electric chair silences her in the middle of a final cry, a fate borrowed from the real case behind the play.

Q 02/05

Which real-life murderer, executed at the start of 1928, inspired the play Machinal later that year?

A) Ruth Snyder

B) Lizzie Borden

C) Beulah Annan

D) Bonnie Parker

Answer · why

A) Ruth Snyder

Ruth Snyder died that January, and Machinal reached Broadway in September, less than eight months after the execution.

Q 03/05

Which American journalist wrote the play Machinal after attending a sensational murder trial?

A) Edna St. Vincent Millay

B) Lillian Hellman

C) Rachel Crothers

D) Sophie Treadwell

Answer · why

D) Sophie Treadwell

Sophie Treadwell had seven plays staged on Broadway between 1922 and 1941, but Machinal is the one that lasted.

Q 04/05

Which future Hollywood star made his Broadway debut as the lover in Machinal in 1928?

A) Humphrey Bogart

B) Clark Gable

C) Spencer Tracy

D) James Cagney

Answer · why

B) Clark Gable

Clark Gable drew good reviews in the part, and one critic praised him as young, vigorous and brutally masculine.

Q 05/05

What did a newspaperman strap to his ankle at the execution of the woman who inspired Machinal?

A) A miniature camera

B) A hidden microphone

C) A silver hip flask

D) A shorthand notebook

Answer · why

A) A miniature camera

A miniature camera caught the moment for the New York Daily News, which ran the picture on its front page the next day.