Fancy Answers

Interesting to spot AVA GARDNER before her build-up at MGM as a major star, getting to appear fleetingly in a studio short subject subjecting the audience to a quiz in this trifle called FANCY ANSWERS. She's on camera for a couple of brief occasions looking very pretty but it's strictly a bit part with no dialog.

The quiz is a Pete Smith Specialty that poses about ten questions and gives the viewing audience ten seconds to answer each one. All the questions are on the silly side--nothing intellectual here--such as "Are there more red stripes than white stripes on the American flag?" and "Is the Zebra a white animal with black stripes or a black animal with white stripes?" A running joke concerns a musical term about a note called a demi-semi-hemiquaver and whether a Tahitian garment is called a "sarong" or a "pareu".

Not the most original of all the Pete Smith shorts I've seen, strictly a filler that passes time before the feature begins.

P.S. By the way, the quiz answers are "more red stripes" and "white with black stripes" for anyone curious enough to care. And "pareu" is the correct answer.

Fancy Answers (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Pete Smith/MGM short is pretty fun as it asks the viewer all sorts of multiple answer questions and then gives them ten seconds to answer. The questions are from various subjects and includes the American flag, tropical dresses, football sounds, what color a zebra is and so on. There's really nothing too overly special about this film but it does earn some credit for mild charm and Smith's narration is always well done. The most interesting thing is that Ava Gardner made her debut in this film as one of the models at a recital. She looks good but doesn't have any dialogue.

A Smith called Pete asks some questions of his audience, and gives us ten seconds to answer each. There aren't any that are difficult because they're about some aspect of life at the time this was made that you won't know. It's stuff a modern person should know: vocabulary, and so forth. I thought I was a smart guy and I missed out on two of them.

Smith smart-aleck persona is fully on display here, and yes, he is annoying if you take any of it seriously.