Take a Trivia Quiz About Frankenstein

Answer a series of forehead-slapping anecdotal factoids. It's up to you to weigh each fact in each anecdotal factoid. They're tricky. One might seem like total B.S. until it's revealed to be strangely and disturbingly "True." Another anecdotal factoid might seem to contain all solid and verifiable facts until it's revealed to be yet one more big fat garden variety "Bald-Faced Lie." And here's the trickiest part: an anecdotal factoid might even be "Half-True"; in other words, a mishmosh of truths and bald-faced lies, where you don't know where one ends and the other begins, much like the usual slop served by Madison Avenue, Washington D.C., and the Internet in its entirety.

Category: "The Quiz is Alive! It's Alive!"

Decide for yourself, and mark "T" for "Truth", "F" for "Bald-Faced Lie" or "TF" for "Half-Truth" in the blank slot next to each factoid.

The answers will be revealed on the next page.

1) __ Bela Lugosi played the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man, and Dr. Frankenstein's deranged assistant Igor in the 1943 film "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man."

2) __ In 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft and her lover, poet Percy Shelley, stayed at fellow poet Lord Byron's Swiss villa. When Byron challenged his guests to write a ghost story, Mary's story became the basis for her novel, "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus."

3) __ Boris Karloff's last association with the Frankenstein monster was in the 1958 film, "I was a Teenage Frankenstein." In this film, he played Dr. Victor von Frankenstein. The monster was played by Michael Landon of "Little House on the Prairie" fame.

4) __ The first film version of "Frankenstein" was made in 1910 and produced by inventor Thomas Edison. Dr. Frankenstein's lab scenes took place in Edison's real-life West Orange, New Jersey laboratory.

5) __ Lon Chaney Jr. was the only actor to play all four of the classic Universal Studios monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man.

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Here are the answers for "The Quiz is Alive! It's Alive!"

Answers:

A reminder: "T" is for "Truth", "F" is for "Bald-Faced Lie" or "TF" is for "Half-Truth".

1) TF: This anecdote is both true and false. It's true that Bela Lugosi played the Frankenstein monster "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man." It was the one and only time that he played the Monster.

It's false that he played the Wolf Man. Lon Chaney Jr. was the Wolf Man. It's also false that Lugosi played Igor in the 1943 film. The character Igor wasn't in the movie.

A side note: Chaney was originally cast to play both monsters, but decided against it because of the time demands required for makeup.

2) T: It's true that Mary Wollstonecraft's novel "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" evolved from a ghost story told at poet Lord Byron's Swiss villa. The tale, however, originally came to her in nightmare.

3) TF: This anecdote is both true and false. It's false that Boris Karloff appeared in the 1958 film, "I was a Teenage Frankenstein." The last time that Karloff dressed as the Frankenstein monster was in a guest role in an episode on the television series, "Route 66."

It's true that Michael Landon starred as the monster in "I was a Teenage Frankenstein."

4) TF: This anecdote is both true and false. It's true that the first film version of "Frankenstein" was made in 1910 and produced by inventor Thomas Edison. It's false that the Dr. Frankenstein lab scenes took place in Edison's real-life laboratory.

5) T: It's true that Lon Chaney Jr. played all four of the classic Universal Studios monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man. Actually, in "Son of Dracula", he played "Count Alucard" ("Dracula" spelled backwards).

SOURCES:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021884/trivia

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000472/bio

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_birth.html

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_celluloid.html

"Edison's Frankenstein", Rich Drees, Film Buff Online, URL: (http://www.filmbuffonline.com/Features/EdisonsFrankenstein1.htm)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001033/bio

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035899/trivia