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50 free 1950s Movies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The 1950s gave cinema widescreen, 3D, the method actor, the teenage rebel and the nuclear monster. Ben-Hur won a record eleven Oscars, Marilyn Monroe stood over a subway grate, James Dean died a month before Rebel Without a Cause opened, and a man in a rubber suit flattened a miniature Tokyo. This quiz covers the Best Picture winners and the films that should have been (Singin' in the Rain was treated as a routine musical), Hitchcock's run from Strangers on a Train to North by Northwest, Billy Wilder's comedies, the westerns of Ford and Zinnemann, Kurosawa and Bergman, Disney's return to fairy tales, and the sci-fi of pods, blobs, giant ants and the Gill-man. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so it works as a classic film round, a movie night warm-up or a test for anyone who knows what "nobody's perfect" is the last line of.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1959 epic won a then-record eleven Academy Awards?
Ben-Hur
Its nine-minute chariot race used some of the 2,500 horses and 10,000 extras on the production.
Q 02Who co-directed and choreographed Singin' in the Rain with Stanley Donen?
Gene Kelly
MGM treated it as a routine musical and it was only a modest hit on release in 1952.
Q 03What transition in Hollywood history is Singin' in the Rain set during?
Silent films to talkies
Producer Arthur Freed built it around his own back catalogue of songs written in that period.
Q 04Rebel Without a Cause was released how long after James Dean's fatal car crash?
Nearly a month
It was the only one of his films in which he received top billing.
Q 05Which future Easy Rider star made his film debut in a minor role in Rebel Without a Cause?
Dennis Hopper
He also appeared alongside Dean in Giant the following year.
Q 06Who plays the two musicians who disguise themselves as women in Some Like It Hot?
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon
Wilder first wanted Sinatra for Jerry, and Jerry Lewis turned the part down because he would not do drag.
Q 07What is the famous final line of Some Like It Hot?
"Well, nobody's perfect!"
Osgood says it after Jerry finally admits he is a man.
Q 08Which 1958 Hitchcock film was the first to use the disorienting dolly zoom?
Vertigo
It conveyed Scottie's fear of heights and received mixed reviews before becoming Hitchcock's magnum opus.
Q 09In which city is Hitchcock's 1958 film about a detective with a fear of heights set?
San Francisco
Mission San Juan Bautista and the redwoods of Big Basin also appear.
Q 10Rear Window is shot almost entirely from where?
Inside one apartment
Made for $1 million, it grossed $27 million on first release.
Q 11Who designed the opening title sequence of North by Northwest?
Saul Bass
It was the first film to make extended use of kinetic typography in its credits.
Q 12Which crime novelist's 1950 book did Hitchcock adapt as Strangers on a Train?
Patricia Highsmith
Raymond Chandler worked on the screenplay; the plot hinges on two men "exchanging" murders.
Q 13Dial M for Murder was originally intended to be shown in what format?
3D
By its 1954 release interest in 3D had faded, so most cinemas showed it flat.
Q 21Shane is set during which real conflict between homesteaders and ranchers?
The Johnson County War
Alan Ladd's drifter turns out to be a gunfighter; Jack Palance plays the hired killer.
Q 22For The Quiet Man, John Ford won his record how-manyeth Best Director Oscar?
Fourth
No other director has won more than three.
Q 23Seven Samurai's farmers hire the samurai to defend against whom?
Bandits coming back after the harvest
At ¥210 million it was the most expensive Japanese film made to that point.
Q 14Sunset Boulevard stars Gloria Swanson as which faded silent star?
Norma Desmond
Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton appear as themselves in the film.
Q 15What Oscar record did All About Eve set when it was nominated 14 times?
Four female acting nods
Bette Davis and Anne Baxter competed for Best Actress, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter for Supporting.
Q 16Which composer wrote his only original film score for On the Waterfront?
Leonard Bernstein
The film won eight Oscars, including Best Actor for Marlon Brando.
Q 17On the Waterfront deals with corruption among which workers?
Longshoremen
It was inspired by a Pulitzer-winning New York Sun series on the Hoboken docks.
Q 18Who played Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire?
Marlon Brando
He, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden reprised their Broadway roles; Vivien Leigh replaced Jessica Tandy.
Q 19What distinctive structural device does High Noon use?
The plot unfolds in real time
Gary Cooper won Best Actor as the marshal waiting for a gang of killers.
Q 20Which film did the American Film Institute name the greatest American Western in 2008?
The Searchers
John Wayne spends years hunting for his abducted niece, played by Natalie Wood.
Q 24Rashomon's story comes from which author's short stories "In a Grove" and "Rashōmon"?
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Several witnesses give contradictory accounts of a samurai's murder in a forest.
Q 25In The Seventh Seal, what game does the knight play against Death?
Chess
Max von Sydow's Antonius Block is returning from the Crusades to a Sweden ravaged by plague.
Q 26Who is the only actor ever to win Best Actor for The African Queen, his sole Oscar?
Humphrey Bogart
Katharine Hepburn co-starred under John Huston's direction in Technicolor.
Q 27Roman Holiday's blacklisted screenwriter only received full credit in 2011; who was he?
Dalton Trumbo
Ian McLellan Hunter fronted for him when the film won the Oscar for Best Story.
Q 28Which Frenchman who spoke no English won the screenplay Oscar for River Kwai?
Pierre Boulle
The real writers, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were blacklisted and got their Oscars posthumously.
Q 29From Here to Eternity is set on which US territory in the months before Pearl Harbor?
Hawaii
Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed both won supporting Oscars, and the beach kiss became notorious.
Q 30Which 1955 Best Picture also won the Palme d'Or, a double matched only three times since?
Marty
Ernest Borgnine won Best Actor in Paddy Chayefsky's expansion of his own teleplay.