1. JRR Tolkien was born to British parents in South Africa in 1892.
2. JRR stands for John Ronald Reuel.
3. Tolkien fought at the Battle of the Somme in World War I and was
discharged with trench fever
in 1917.
4. The Tolkien Society says Tolkien's name is pronounced Tol-keen,
with equal stress on both syllables.
5. A professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature at Oxford from
1925 to 1959, Tolkien wrote
the first line of The Hobbit on a dull
exam paper in the early 1930s. "In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit."
6. Tolkien's first royalty cheque for The Hobbit, 3,500 pounds , was
more than he earned in a
year at Oxford.
7. The Hobbit was first published in 1937, giving the world its first
taste of Middle-earth.
8. "If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on," Tolkien
said, "it's my wonder and
delight in the Earth as it is, particularly
the natural Earth."
9. The first paperback edition of The Hobbit in the US had an
illustration of a lion and two emus
on its cover as the illustrator
had not read the book beforehand.
10. Tolkien insisted that neither The Hobbit nor its sequels were
intended for children. "It's
not even very good for children," he said
of his first effort. "I wrote some of it in a style for children, but
that's
what they loathe."
11. Tolkien spent 12 years writing The Lord Of The Rings.
12. It is, after all, 500,000 words long. That's 1,200 pages.
13. Tolkien began his epic undertaking as an exercise in "linguistic
aesthetics". "The invention
of language [Elvish] is the foundation,"
he said. "The stories were made to provide a world for the language
rather
than the reverse."
14. First published from 1954 to 1955, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy
was dismissed by critic Edmund
Wilson as a "children's book which has
somehow gotten out of hand". In 1961, The Observer newspaper described
it as
"sheer escapist literature...dull, ill-written and whimsical".
15. The Lord Of The Rings has been read by more than 50 million people
and translated into 25
languages.
16. It was named book of the century and book of the millennium in a
number of international polls.
17. Police in the central Asian state of Kazakhstan continue to crack
down on local Tolkien enthusiasts,
nicknamed the Tolkienisti.
Classified as a bohemian counter-cultural group, they are routinely
imprisoned for up to
three days without charge and frequently have
their wizard costumes and rubber axes confiscated.
18. Director Peter Jackson's previous films include alien invasion
shocker Bad Taste, perverse
Muppet spoof Meet The Feebles and zombie
bloodbath Braindead. With a budget of 190 million, ($A527 million)
Jackson
shot the Rings trilogy back-to-back over an 18-month period.
As hobbits never wear shoes, Jackson worked barefoot throughout.
19. The preferred greeting of the Tolkien Society of America is, "May
the hair on your toes never
grow less".
20. Orlando "Legolas" Bloom said of his director: "He's cool as an
elf, he's got the heart of
a hobbit and he's mad as a wizard."
21. New Zealand was the perfect location for the Kiwi film-maker. "It
has every geographical,
geological formation and landscape," Elijah
"Frodo" Wood said.
22. Cate "Galadriel" Blanchett adds: "The landscape is so young and so
savage, so untamed and
so unruly."
23. Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, changed its name to
Middle-earth for the film's premiere.
24. Christopher Lee, who plays evil wizard Saruman, was the first
actor cast for the trilogy.
He is the only member of the production to
have met Tolkien.
25. Christopher Lee reads The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings every
year. His knowledge of the
books proved invaluable during filming.
26. Neither Viggo "Aragorn" Mortensen or Sir Ian "Gandalf" McKellen
had read the books before
they were cast.
27. David Bowie was originally considered for Elf Lord Elrond, later
played by The Matrix villain
Hugo Weaving, while Daniel Day-Lewis
passed up the chance to play Aragorn.
28. Ian Holm, who plays Bilbo Baggins, played Frodo Baggins in a 1970s
radio production for the
BBC.
29. Frodo falls down, on average, every 10 minutes in The Fellowship
Of The Ring.
30. All but one of the nine fellowship actors commemorated the
experience by getting themselves
tattooed with the Elvish sign for
nine. Only John Rhys-Davies Gimli declined, sending his stunt double
in his place.
31. Peter Jackson later got in on the action by getting himself
tattooed with the Elvish to make
10.
32. Cate Blanchett insists she made the Rings trilogy for the
opportunity to wear pointy elf ears.
When filming ended, Peter Jackson
had them bronzed and now they're on Blanchett's mantelpiece.
33. Peter Jackson also gave Elijah Wood a gift one of the two true
rings used during production.
The other was auctioned off to an
anonymous collector.
34. Inscribed in Elvish, the legend on the ring reads: "One Ring to
rule them all, One Ring to
find them, One Ring to bring them all and
in the darkness bind them."
35. Enthusiastic swordsman Viggo Mortensen broke a tooth while filming
a fight scene.
36. Orlando Bloom admits he's accident-prone and has an injury list to
prove it. He has broken
his back, his ribs, his nose, both his legs,
his arm, his wrist, a finger and a toe, and has cracked his skull
three
times.
37. Miranda Otto, making her Rings debut as the feisty Eowen,
Shieldmaiden of Rohan, in The Two
Towers, is the daughter of veteran
Australian actor Barry Otto.
38. A computer program named Massive generated vast numbers of elves,
orcs and humans, bestowing
each with the ability to think for
themselves and react independently.
39. Every prop and costume seen in the trilogy was made by hand.
Metalworkers hand-forged more
than 10,000 buckles for the orcs alone.
40. After the September 11 tragedy, several people objected to the
title The Two Towers. Peter
Jackson refused to rename the movie.
