Answers To Quiz

Doing the research for this quiz was much trickier than I thought. People lie about their height, especially celebrities. It's hard to pin down the correct number. I went with the sources I thought were the most reliable. A good rule of thumb is if you hear two different heights, choose the shorter one.

In any case, even if I'm a bit off here and there, who's shorter is usually pretty clear.

1. Alan Alda is pretty tall at 6' 2", but George Plimpton is even taller at 6' 4" If you don't think Alda is tall, it might be because his costars on M*A*S*H, Wayne Rogers and Mike Farrell, were taller.

2. Sergeant Alvin York was 6' 0". Cooper was at least 6' 2". (Cooper famously portrayed another six-footer, Lou Gehrig.)

3. Bonnie Parker was short--4' 10"---and plain. Faye Dunaway is tall--5' 7"--and glamorous. While we're at it, 6' 1" Warren Beatty was about nine inches taller and considerably better-looking than Clyde Barrow. That's Hollywood.

4. Legend has it that William Wallace was a giant of a man. He's usually listed at 6' 7". This may be an exaggeration, but it's hard to believe he was under 6 feet. Mel Gibson, on the other hand, is 5' 9" (on a good day).

5. Ben Kingsley is a not-too-tall 5' 7". Gandhi was a compact 5' 3". Maybe he didn't eat enough.

6. "Evita" may be a diminutive, but Eva Peron was 5' 5". Another one-name superstar, Madonna, is somewhere between 5'3" and 5' 4".

7. Steve McQueen was 5' 9". Papillon was 6' 0".

8. Gary Oldman is 5' 8". Beethoven was around 5' 4", as was Mozart. (Tom Hulce, who played Mozart in Amadeus, is about the same height as Oldman.)

9. T. E. Lawrence was short and dark, closer to Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman than Peter O'Toole. Lawrence was 5' 5 1/2", O'Toole is 6' 2".

10. Tie one for the Gipper. Reagan and Gipp were both 6' 1".

11. Mickey Rooney, at 5' 1", was one of the shortest adult male film stars. In fact, his height was a major reason he was cast as lyricist Hart, who was somewhere around 4' 8". If you've ever watched his biopic, you might even think Hart died of excessive shortness.

12. At a bit under 6 feet, Geoffrey Rush easily beats the Marquis de Sade, who was no taller than 5' 3".

13. Denzel Washington is 6' 0". He definitely has a better reach than 5' 8" Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

14. At 5' 11", Sigourney Weaver is taller than most women (and men), but she still would have looked up at 6' 2" Dian Fossey.

15. Reese Witherspoon is an adorable 5' 2". June Carter was 5' 5 1/2"--same as Lawrence Of Arabia.