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60 free Bette Davis trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Bette Davis fought Warner Bros. in court, fought Joan Crawford for thirty years, fought her directors and, by her own account, fought her way to two Oscars and a record ten nominations. This quiz covers her whole career: the Lowell childhood and the Balzac heroine she took her name from, the write-in campaign after Of Human Bondage, Dangerous and Jezebel, the lawsuit she lost in London, the golden run of Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes and Now, Voyager, Margo Channing's bumpy night, and Baby Jane Hudson. It also covers the woman: four husbands, the Hollywood Canteen she co-founded, her stint as the Academy's first female president, the AFI and Kennedy Center honours, the Kim Carnes song, her daughter's tell-all memoir, the last films with Lillian Gish, and the epitaph she chose. Questions run from easy (which film gave us 'Fasten your seat belts') to expert (how much the English court ordered her to pay Warner Bros.). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Davis, her films and the people around her, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Joan Crawford, classic Hollywood and Academy Awards quizzes next.
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Q 01Bette Davis was born in 1908 in which Massachusetts city?
Lowell
Her father Harlow was a law student who became a patent attorney; her younger sister was Barbara, known as Bobby.
Q 02Davis changed the spelling of her name from Betty to Bette after a character by which novelist?
Honoré de Balzac
The character was Bette Fischer of La Cousine Bette.
Q 03Which studio gave Davis her film debut in Bad Sister (1931), before nearly dropping her?
Universal
Studio boss Carl Laemmle wanted her out, but cinematographer Karl Freund said she had 'lovely eyes'.
Q 04Bette Davis signed a seven-year Warner Bros. contract in 1932. How long did she actually stay?
18 years
George Arliss had picked her for the female lead in The Man Who Played God.
Q 05Davis broke through as waitress Mildred Rogers in a 1934 adaptation of which Maugham novel?
Of Human Bondage
She insisted on looking convincingly ravaged in her death scene: 'the last stages of consumption, poverty, and neglect are not pretty'.
Q 06When Davis was left off the 1934 Best Actress shortlist, the Academy allowed what for the only time ever?
Write-in votes
The uproar changed how nominations were made, and Price Waterhouse began tabulating the results independently.
Q 07Davis won her first Academy Award for playing a washed-up Broadway actress in which 1935 film?
Dangerous
She called it a 'consolation prize' for the Of Human Bondage snub; the character was inspired by her idol Jeanne Eagels.
Q 08Bette Davis claimed for life that she nicknamed the Academy Award 'Oscar' because its rear resembled whose?
Her first husband
Harmon Oscar Nelson was a bandleader she married in Yuma, Arizona, in 1932; the Academy tells a different story.
Q 09Who anonymously bought Davis's first Oscar at auction in 2002 and returned it to the Academy?
Steven Spielberg
The statuette had been sold at Sotheby's.
Q 10In 1936 Davis fled to England to make a film outside her contract. What happened when Warner Bros. sued?
She lost and was ordered to pay $80,000
Justice Branson dismissed the claim that she was an 'underpaid slave'; the British press called her overpaid and ungrateful.
Q 11Davis's second Oscar came for playing headstrong 1850s Southern belle Julie Marsden in which 1938 film?
Jezebel
Julie scandalises New Orleans by wearing a red satin dress to a ball where unmarried women wear white.
Q 12Which director of The Letter and The Little Foxes did Davis call 'the love of my life'?
William Wyler
He had once mocked her at a Universal screen test for showing her chest.
Q 13Who played Davis's leading man Preston Dillard in her 1938 antebellum drama?
Henry Fonda
Fay Bainter won Best Supporting Actress; the film was added to the National Film Registry in 2009.
Q 21In Now, Voyager (1942), which actor famously lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis?
Paul Henreid
Davis had thought his slicked-back look made him resemble Valentino; the film's last line asks not for the moon when they have the stars.
Q 22What was the name of Davis's repressed spinster heroine in Now, Voyager?
Charlotte Vale
Hal Wallis talked her into the part by arguing that wartime women needed romantic escapism.
Q 23Davis's second husband, New England innkeeper Arthur Farnsworth, died in 1943 how?
He collapsed on a Hollywood street
Q 14In Dark Victory (1939) Davis's socialite Judith Traherne is diagnosed with what?
A brain tumour
Humphrey Bogart played her stablehand and Ronald Reagan a playboy friend; Tallulah Bankhead had created the role on Broadway.
Q 15Which actor, Davis's most frequent co-star, played opposite her eleven times including Dark Victory?
George Brent
'Of the men I didn't marry,' she said, 'the dearest was George Brent.'
Q 16Davis played the Tudor queen opposite Errol Flynn in which 1939 film?
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
She played the queen again in The Virgin Queen in 1955.
Q 17In The Letter (1940), Davis's Leslie Crosbie shoots a man on a rubber plantation in which colony?
Malaya
The Maugham story was based on a real case; Davis walked off the set after arguing with Wyler about the climax.
Q 18In January 1941 Davis became the first woman to hold which position?
President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
She antagonised the committee with her brash manner and radical proposals and did not last long.
Q 19Which actress created Davis's roles Regina Giddens and Judith Traherne on Broadway?
Tallulah Bankhead
Davis and Wyler clashed over how to play the character in Lillian Hellman's drama.
Q 20Davis co-founded the Hollywood Canteen, a free wartime club for servicemen, with which actor?
John Garfield
It ran on Cahuenga Boulevard from 1942 to 1945; a uniform was the only ticket needed, and the Pentagon gave her a medal for it in 1983.
He died two days later; Jack Warner halted production of Mr. Skeffington and then talked her into finishing it.
Q 24Davis gave birth to her daughter B.D. in 1947 at what age?
39
Her father was Davis's third husband, the artist and masseur William Grant Sherry.
Q 25In All About Eve (1950) Davis played which fading Broadway star?
Margo Channing
She called the script the best she had ever read, and Mankiewicz called her 'the director's dream: the prepared actress'.
Q 26Complete the most quoted line from All About Eve: 'Fasten your seat belts, ...'
it's going to be a bumpy night
Critics such as Gene Ringgold called Margo her all-time best performance.
Q 27All About Eve set a record with how many Academy Award nominations?
14
It remains the only film with four female acting nominations: Davis and Anne Baxter for lead, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter in support.
Q 28Which future star appears in one of her earliest roles in All About Eve?
Marilyn Monroe
George Sanders won an Oscar as the poisonous critic Addison DeWitt.
Q 29Davis's fourth and final husband, whom she married in July 1950, was her All About Eve co-star. Who?
Gary Merrill
They adopted two children, Margot and Michael, and lived on the coast at Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Q 30Davis and Merrill named their adopted daughter Margot after what?
The character Margo Channing
Margot was found to be severely brain-damaged and was placed in an institution at about three.