Clue Watch: National Film Registry

Jeopardy! has had categories relating to the National Film Registry 4 times since the year 2000. Two of them were in 2014, and you know what that means– they’re due for some clues. The Library of Congress just added 25 films to the National Film Registry this past October. So we decided to put a clue watch on the category and also the films that might appear in it and we added some trivia from IMDB for each one.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) Undersea footage in the 1954 Disney film of the same name was shot in the same location as this one
Lost Horizon (1937) Two characters were added, one for romance and one for comic relief, that were not in the James Hilton novel.
East of Eden (1955) First color film directed by Elia Kazan
The Birds (1963) The London premiere was attended by real birds, including 6 penguins
Blackboard Jungle (1955) Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier were past age 25 when they played 2 juvenile delinquents
Funny Girl (1968) Frank Sinatra missed out on a role because Barbra Streisand didn’t like him
The Breakfast Club (1985) They used parmesan cheese for dandruff and oregano for marijuana
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) It’s considered bad luck to have a question mark in a movie title. (Don’t laugh– The Library of Congress doesn’t seem to know this)
The Princess Bride (1987) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was offered the role played by André the Giant
Thelma & Louise (1991) Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin were among the actors considered for the role that went to Brad Pitt
The Lion King (1994) Adult Simba’s mane was supposedly inspired by Jon Bon Jovi’s hair

The name of the last category to appear on Jeopardy! was “2014 Additions to the National Film Registry.” They never got around to the 2015 additions, probably because they had 2 categories on the topic in 2014. So possibly these additions from 2015 could show up in clues, too:

The Mark of Zorro (1920) – Bruce Wayne was inspired to become Batman because of this film
Imitation of Life (1959) Lana Turner’s profit-sharing deal earned her over $2 million for her role
Ghostbusters (1984) Huey Lewis and the News sued Ray Parker, Jr. over the Ghostbusters theme song
Top Gun (1986) inspired by a 1983 article about the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) A Mozart selection is played over the prison loudspeakers
L.A. Confidential (1997) Many crimes in the film were based on real life events

We included silent films “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mark of Zorro” as the most likely to get a clue, but who knows? They might want to write one for “Dream of a Rarebit Fiend” (1906). And then there’s the “Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze” from 1894. All of those are on youtube, in their entirety (that’s 22 seconds for the sneeze).

See the sortable list of all films in the National Film Registry on the Library of Congress website.