Small Talk-Trivia

Small Talk — February 2018

By Stephen Davis · Originally published February 2018 · pp. 35–46

1. What actor played Gen. Robert E. Lee in Ted Turner’s Civil War film, Gettysburg (1993, Ronald Maxwell, director)? 2. Who played General Lee in Turner’s subsequent film Gods and Generals (2003)? 3. Freddy Fields’ Glory (1989) featured the famous Federal charge, July 18, 1863 against what Confederate fort in South Carolina? 4. John Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (1959) was based on what Union cavalry raid

during the war? 5. This World War II veteran launched a Hollywood career playing U.S. soldiers in various war films, including John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage (1951). Who? 6. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) dramatizes the events leading to Congressional approval of what Constitutional amendment? 7. This star of early rock ‘n’ roll found himself improbably cast as a Confederate spy in The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967). Who? (Hint:

he didn’t wear his trademark dark sunglasses.) 8. Buster Keaton’s The General (1927) turns an actual Civil War event into a silent-era comedy. Which event? 9. The epic How the West Was Won (1962) has a Civil War sequence. Who played General Grant? (Hint: think Colonel Potter in MAS*H.) 10. Upon viewing this landmark film by D.W. Griffith in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson declared it was “like writing history with lightning.” Which movie? Answers found on page 46. Steve Davis is the Civil War News Book Review Editor. He can be contacted by email at: [email protected]

Trivia Answers 1. Martin Sheen. 2. Robert Duvall. 3. Fort Wagner, on Morris Island near Charleston. 4. Col. Benjamin Grierson’s cavalry raid through Mississippi and into Louisiana, April–May 1863. 5. Audie Murphy (1925–1971), as Union infantryman Henry Fleming. 6. The XIII Amendment abolishing slavery, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate on April 8, 1864 and by the House of Representatives Jan. 31, 1865. 7. Roy Orbison (1936–1988), who performed eight songs, playing a trick guitar that doubled as a shotgun. 8. The Andrews railroad raid (Great Locomotive Chase), April 12, 1862. 9. Harry Morgan (1915–2011). 10. The Birth of a Nation (1915).