TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.
PROBLEM: Passage: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, child vaudevillian Buster Keaton stays in boarding houses, rides in train boxcars, and performs with his mother and father in a knock-about (physical comedy) act called The Three Keatons. As a young man Keaton travels on his own to Hollywood and tricks his way onto the grounds of silent-film studio Famous Studio as a workman carrying a board, as in one of his trademark comic bits. 
Sneaking onto a set, he attracts the attention of a young casting director, Gloria Brent. He demonstrates his type of physical comedy to a director Kurt Bergner, whom he does not impress. But Gloria recognizes his talent and recommends him to studio head Larry Winters, who offers him a contract. Keaton begins to get small parts in other people's pictures. As his comic talent becomes more apparent and his fame and money-making power grows, he is offered a contract to direct and star in his own silent films.
Dissatisfied with not sharing the profits of his films, he is told that he must invest in his own pictures in order to profit-share. He does in "The Gambler", which is released at the same time as Al Jolson's blockbuster talkie, "The Jazz Singer", reducing public interest in it. Buster struggles to adapt to performing in talking pictures.

SOLUTION: What is the full name of the person who fails to impress Kurt Bergner?

PROBLEM: Passage: I was told that I did not learn respect at school. I learned one thing: I learned about self-respect and self-regard for Australia—not about some cultural cringe to a country which decided not to defend the Malayan peninsula, not to worry about Singapore and not to give us our troops back to keep ourselves free from Japanese domination. This was the country that you people wedded yourself to, and even as it walked out on you and joined the Common Market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods, and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it.
A fleet was necessary for the defeat of Japan, and eventually a sizeable one, the British Pacific Fleet, did go to the Far East, where it fought alongside the United States Pacific Fleet. The closer relations that developed between the two navies prior to the outbreak of war with Japan, and the alliance that developed from it afterwards, became the most positive and enduring strategic legacy of the Singapore strategy.The Singapore Naval Base suffered little damage in the fighting and became the Imperial Japanese Navy's most important facility outside of the Japanese home islands. The 15-inch guns were sabotaged by the British before the fall of Singapore, and four of them were deemed beyond repair and scrapped by the Japanese. The floating dry dock was scuttled by the British, but raised by the Japanese. It was damaged beyond repair by a raid by Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in February 1945, and ultimately towed out to sea and dumped in 1946. The Royal Navy retook possession of the Singapore base in 1945.

SOLUTION: What did the Royal Navy retake possession of in 1945?

PROBLEM: Passage: Lawrence Morton, in a study of the origins of The Rite, records that in 1907–08 Stravinsky set to music two poems from Sergey Gorodetsky's collection Yar. Another poem in the anthology, which Stravinsky did not set but is likely to have read, is "Yarila" which, Morton observes, contains many of the basic elements from which The Rite of Spring developed, including pagan rites, sage elders, and the propitiatory sacrifice of a young maiden: "The likeness is too close to be coincidental". Stravinsky himself gave contradictory accounts of the genesis of The Rite. In a 1920 article he stressed that the musical ideas had come first, that the pagan setting had been suggested by the music rather than the other way round. However, in his 1936 autobiography he described the origin of the work thus: "One day [in 1910], when I was finishing the last pages of L'Oiseau de Feu in St Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision ... I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of the Sacre du Printemps".By May 1910 Stravinsky was discussing his idea with Nicholas Roerich, the foremost Russian expert on folk art and ancient rituals. Roerich had a reputation as an artist and mystic, and had provided the stage designs for Diaghilev's 1909 production of the Polovtsian Dances. The pair quickly agreed on a working title, "The Great Sacrifice" (Russian: Velikaia zhertva); Diaghilev gave his blessing to the work, although the collaboration was put on hold for a year while Stravinsky was occupied with his second major commission for Diaghilev, the ballet Petrushka.In July 1911 Stravinsky visited Talashkino, near Smolensk, where Roerich was staying with the Princess Maria Tenisheva, a noted patron of the arts and a sponsor of Diaghilev's magazine World of Art. Here, over several days, Stravinsky and Roerich finalised the structure of the ballet. Thomas F. Kelly, in his history of the Rite premiere, suggests that the two-part pagan scenario that emerged was primarily devised by Roerich. Stravinsky later explained to Nikolai Findeyzen, the editor of the Russian Musical Gazette, that the first part of the work would be called "The Kiss of the Earth", and would consist of games and ritual dances interrupted by a procession of sages, culminating in a frenzied dance as the people embraced the spring. Part Two, "The Sacrifice", would have a darker aspect; secret night games of maidens, leading to the choice of one for sacrifice and her eventual dance to the death before the sages. The original working title was changed to "Holy Spring" (Russian:  Vesna sviashchennaia), but the work became generally known by the French translation Le Sacre du printemps, or its English equivalent The Rite of Spring, with the subtitle "Pictures of Pagan Russia".

SOLUTION:
What is the first name of the person who said "The likeness is too close to be coincidental?"?