70s TV Trivia
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This 70s TV trivia quiz has 118 free questions with answers and covers the decade when television grew up and got weird at the same time. There are questions on Norman Lear's empire (All in the Family and every show that spun out of it), the MTM shows, M*A*S*H and its record-breaking finale, Happy Days and its spin-offs, and the Aaron Spelling hits: Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island. The cop and detective shows get their due too, from Kojak's lollipops and Columbo's Peugeot to Starsky, Rockford and CHiPs, along with the sci-fi (Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Battlestar Galactica), the family dramas (The Waltons, Little House), the miniseries Roots, the first night of Saturday Night Live, The Muppet Show's British backer, Soap, Taxi, Dallas and the Dukes. Easy questions suit anyone who remembers the theme tunes; the hard ones ask which brewery Laverne worked at and which precinct Barney Miller ran. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 118 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01All in the Family, which premiered on CBS in January 1971, was based on which British sitcom?
Till Death Us Do Part
Till Death Us Do Part, Johnny Speight's BBC sitcom about bigoted Alf Garnett, was Norman Lear's model; he moved the patriarch from London's East End to Queens.
Q 02Which actor played the loudmouthed bigot Archie Bunker on All in the Family?
Carroll O'Connor
Carroll O'Connor. Norman Lear first offered Archie to Mickey Rooney, who turned him down; O'Connor took the part and the show topped the Nielsen ratings for five straight seasons.
Q 03What was the Bunkers' address in Astoria, Queens?
704 Hauser Street
704 Hauser Street was the Bunkers' Astoria address; Norman Lear's 1994 spin-off 704 Hauser took its title from it, with a new family in the house.
Q 04Which 1972 NBC sitcom about a Watts junk dealer was adapted from a British series?
Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son transplanted the BBC's Steptoe and Son to Watts, with Redd Foxx as junk dealer Fred Sanford, forever faking heart attacks for his late wife Elizabeth.
Q 05The Jeffersons, who moved 'on up' to Manhattan, made their money from what business?
A chain of dry cleaners
A chain of dry cleaners: George Jefferson's Jefferson Cleaners stores funded the move from Queens to a deluxe Manhattan apartment; the show ran eleven seasons, 1975-85.
Q 06Good Times was a spin-off of which show, itself a spin-off of All in the Family?
Maude
Maude: Florida Evans, played by Esther Rolle, had been Maude Findlay's housekeeper before Good Times gave the Evans family its own show in 1974.
Q 07The Evans family in Good Times lived in a project implied to be which Chicago development?
Cabrini-Green
Cabrini-Green was never named on air, but its towers fill the opening and closing credits, and the show's co-creator Eric Monte had grown up in the project himself.
Q 08Which actor played the fussy Felix Unger in the 1970s TV version of The Odd Couple?
Tony Randall
Tony Randall. Jack Lemmon had been the film's Felix; Randall's version won him his only Emmy in 1975, after ABC had already cancelled the series.
Q 09In which country was the 4077th, the army hospital of M*A*S*H, stationed?
South Korea
South Korea. The 4077th sat near Uijeongbu during a war that lasted three years; the series kept it going for eleven seasons, until February 1983.
Q 10Which M*A*S*H star directed and co-wrote its two-and-a-half-hour 1983 finale?
Alan Alda
Alan Alda. CBS sold 30-second ads in the finale for $450,000, more than that year's Super Bowl, and about 106 million people watched, a US record no broadcast beat until 2010.
Q 11Which four M*A*S*H characters appeared in all eleven seasons?
Hawkeye, Mulcahy, Houlihan, Klinger
Hawkeye, Mulcahy, Houlihan and Klinger lasted all eleven seasons, though Jamie Farr was hired as Klinger for a single day's work; Trapper, Blake, Burns and Radar left, and Potter, B.J. and Winchester came later.
Q 12Which song from the 1970 film M*A*S*H became, without its words, the theme of the TV series?
Suicide Is Painless
Suicide Is Painless. Robert Altman's teenage son Mike wrote the lyrics, and Altman later said the boy earned more than $1 million from the song while he got just $70,000 for directing the film.
Q 13Mary Richards worked as an associate producer at which fictional Minneapolis TV station?
Q 21Robin Williams first appeared as Mork in a 1978 episode of Happy Days that riffed on which 1960s sitcom?
My Favorite Martian
My Favorite Martian: the episode was titled 'My Favorite Orkan'; Mork tries to take Richie to Ork as a specimen and is foiled by Fonzie.
Q 22Which producer created both The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island?
Sherwood Schwartz
Sherwood Schwartz created both. The Brady Bunch never came near the top of the ratings in its 1969-74 run and found its devoted audience later, in afternoon reruns; it also never said what became of Carol's first husband.
Q 23What was the name of the Brady boys' dog?
Tiger
WJM
WJM-TV. In the 1977 finale a new station manager, out to lift the news show's dismal ratings, fires the whole newsroom except Ted Baxter, the bumbling anchorman everyone blames for them.
Q 14Who played Sue Ann Nivens, The Mary Tyler Moore Show's 'Happy Homemaker'?
Betty White
Betty White. The script called for a sickly sweet 'Betty White type', so the producers ended up asking White herself; the part won her two Emmys, among the show's 29.
Q 15Lorenzo Music, the voice of Rhoda's rarely seen doorman Carlton, later voiced which cartoon cat?
Garfield
Garfield. Music was developing Rhoda as a writer and had no intention of acting, but the producers liked his sleepy voice for Carlton; in 1982 it won him the part of the comic-strip cat.
Q 16Bob Newhart's character in The Bob Newhart Show had what profession?
Psychologist
Psychologist. Bob Hartley's Chicago practice had a second life: the 1990 finale of Newhart, in which he played a Vermont innkeeper, revealed that whole series to be a dream Hartley was having.
Q 17Happy Days began life as an unsold pilot shown on which ABC anthology series in 1972?
Love, American Style
Love, American Style aired the segment 'Love and the Television Set' in February 1972, with Ron Howard already playing Richie Cunningham; ABC ordered the series after American Graffiti hit.
Q 18In which city was Happy Days set?
Milwaukee
Milwaukee, the hometown of executive producer Thomas L. Miller; in 2008 the city returned the favour with the 'Bronze Fonz', a riverside statue that Henry Winkler helped unveil.
Q 19Little House on the Prairie was set in which Minnesota town?
Walnut Grove
Walnut Grove. Michael Landon ended the saga with a bang: in the 1984 farewell film the townspeople dynamite their own buildings rather than hand them to a land tycoon, and the real set went with them.
Q 20Laverne and Shirley capped bottles at which brewery?
Shotz
Shotz Brewery. Laverne and Shirley capped its bottles until the sixth season, when new automated machinery cost them their jobs and the show sent everyone west to Burbank, California.
Tiger. The dog who played him was run over and killed early in the first season, and his stand-in proved hard to work with, so Tiger faded out during season two; the doghouse stayed in the yard.
Q 24The Partridge Family was loosely based on which real-life family band?
The Cowsills
The Cowsills. The producers considered casting the real family, whose mother sang with her children, but the plan fell through and Shirley Jones took the mother's part.
Q 25Who provided the voice of the never-seen Charlie Townsend on Charlie's Angels?
John Forsythe
John Forsythe. He was a last-minute substitute: first choice Gig Young arrived too drunk to read his lines, so Aaron Spelling rang Forsythe in a late-night panic to take over the unseen role.
Q 26Who replaced Farrah Fawcett on Charlie's Angels after she left at the end of season one?
Cheryl Ladd
Cheryl Ladd joined as Kris, Jill Munroe's kid sister, after Farrah Fawcett quit to make films; ABC and the producers sued over her contract, and Fawcett later came back for a few guest episodes.
Q 27Three's Company was adapted from which British sitcom?
Man About the House
Man About the House. Its spin-offs crossed the Atlantic too: George and Mildred and Robin's Nest were remade for America as The Ropers and Three's a Crowd.
Q 28Which former Andy Griffith Show star joined Three's Company in 1979 as building manager Ralph Furley?
Don Knotts
Don Knotts, Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, arrived as Ralph Furley when the Ropers left for their own spin-off; he stayed until the series ended in 1984.
Q 29Martin Caidin's 1972 novel Cyborg was the basis for which 1970s TV series?
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man. In Caidin's book Steve Austin's new eye was only a hidden camera and one bionic finger fired poison darts; television gave him telescopic sight and dropped the dart gun.
Q 30Before her skydiving accident, what was Jaime Sommers' profession in The Bionic Woman?
Tennis player
Tennis player. Jaime died on the operating table in her 1975 debut when her body rejected the bionics, but the writers revived her the next season and gave her a new life as a schoolteacher.