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48 free Citizen Kane trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Citizen Kane trivia for film students, classic-movie fans and anyone who knows what Rosebud is but wants to know how the sled ended up in the furnace. The quiz begins with the story: Charles Foster Kane's dying word, the reporter chasing its meaning, Thatcher's archive, the Inquirer, the affair that sank the governor's race, Susan's opera career and the vast estate called Xanadu. Then it goes behind the camera. Orson Welles's unprecedented RKO contract, the fake 'camera tests' that hid the start of shooting, Gregg Toland's deep-focus photography and the ceilings on every set, Maurice Seiderman's ageing make-up, Bernard Herrmann's first score, the editing by a young Robert Wise, and the fight over the screenplay credit that Pauline Kael reopened thirty years later. Later rounds cover William Randolph Hearst's ban, the studios' offer to burn the negative, the box-office loss, the single Oscar it won, its 50 years atop the Sight and Sound poll, and Ted Turner's colourising crayons. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Orson Welles, classic Hollywood and Best Picture quizzes.
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Q 01What is Charles Foster Kane's dying word?
Rosebud
Kane whispers 'Rosebud' and drops a snow globe as he dies; newsreel producer Rawlston sends reporter Jerry Thompson to find out what the word meant.
Q 02What is the name of Kane's Florida estate?
Xanadu
Xanadu was conjured with photographs of banker Otto Kahn's real Oheka Castle standing in for it on screen.
Q 03Which newspaper does the young Kane buy to launch his career in yellow journalism?
The New York Inquirer
Kane takes over the New York Inquirer at 25 because 'it would be fun to run a newspaper', then poaches the rival Chronicle's entire staff within six years.
Q 04Which office is Kane running for when his affair with Susan Alexander is exposed?
Governor of New York
His rival Jim W. Gettys reveals the affair to Emily and the press, ending the campaign.
Q 05Kane builds a large opera house for Susan in which city?
Chicago
Kane builds the Chicago Municipal Opera House for Susan's debut; Leland, the Chicago Inquirer's drama critic, passes out drunk over his bad notice and Kane finishes it in the same spirit, then fires him.
Q 06How old is Kane when he is taken from his Colorado home by the banker Thatcher?
Eight
Thatcher's memoir dates the meeting to 1871, when Kane was eight; the boy shoves him with the sled that proves, decades later, to be Rosebud.
Q 07Kane's first wife Emily Norton is the niece of whom?
The President of the United States
The News on the March newsreel records Kane's 1900 marriage to Emily Norton, niece of the President of the United States; the breakfast montage then charts the marriage's collapse in a few minutes.
Q 08Which studio signed Orson Welles in 1939 to a contract granting him final cut?
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures' head George Schaefer wanted Welles after the War of the Worlds broadcast; the deal was mocked all over Hollywood.
Q 09Welles famously described the RKO studio as what on his first tour?
The greatest electric train set a boy ever had
Touring the lot, Welles said it was 'the greatest electric train set a boy ever had'; he arrived in Hollywood in July 1939 meaning to stay three months, pay off his theatre debts and leave.
Q 10Which Joseph Conrad novel did Welles first plan to film at RKO, entirely with a first-person camera?
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness was to be shot entirely through Marlow's eyes, with Welles as both Marlow and Kurtz; RKO shelved it over the budget in late 1939, and The Smiler with a Knife stalled next.
Q 11Who co-wrote the Citizen Kane screenplay with Welles?
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Herman J. Mankiewicz knew Hearst socially and shared the screenplay credit with Welles on the director's first feature film.
Q 12Which critic's 1971 essay 'Raising Kane' reopened the argument over who wrote the script?
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael argued in The New Yorker that Mankiewicz deserved nearly all the credit; Robert Carringer's 1978 study of the seven drafts concluded Welles's contribution was 'not only substantial but definitive'.
Q 13Which media baron was the primary model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles's 1941 film?
William Randolph Hearst
Q 21What did Citizen Kane's sets show that Hollywood sets normally lacked?
A ceiling
Citizen Kane's sets had ceilings, many made of muslin to hide the microphones, so Toland's low-angle shots could look up at them instead of into studio lights.
Q 22What did the cast and crew do whenever RKO executives showed up on set unannounced?
Started playing softball
Board members had also intercepted the script and leaked a copy to the press.
Q 23What was the film's production number, used as its working title at RKO?
RKO 281
The picture was RKO production number 281, so 'RKO 281' served as its working title; the number became the title of HBO's 1999 film about the making of Kane, with Liev Schreiber as Welles.
William Randolph Hearst was the main model, though Pulitzer and the Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick fed the composite too, along with aspects of the screenwriters' own lives.
Q 14Who plays Jedediah Leland, Kane's best friend and drama critic?
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cotten made his feature debut as Leland, fresh from playing opposite Katharine Hepburn in Broadway's The Philadelphia Story; Welles also cast him in The Magnificent Ambersons.
Q 15Who plays Kane's mother, Mary Kane?
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead, a Mercury Theatre radio regular, made her film debut as Mary Kane; her first of four Oscar nominations came for Welles's next film, The Magnificent Ambersons.
Q 16Dorothy Comingore, who plays Susan Alexander, was recommended to Welles by which star?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin recommended Comingore to Welles; she had been acting in small parts since 1938 under the name Linda Winters, and Kane was her first major role.
Q 17Which then-unknown future star appears as a pipe-smoking reporter in the final scene?
Alan Ladd
Alan Ladd, a year before Paramount's This Gun for Hire made him a star, is the pipe-smoking reporter in the Xanadu finale; Arthur O'Connell and Louise Currie were also uncredited reporters.
Q 18Which John Ford film did Welles say he watched 40 times to teach himself directing?
Stagecoach
Welles ran Ford's 1939 western Stagecoach some forty times with technicians explaining each shot: 'I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room, from Ford,' he said.
Q 19Who was the cinematographer on Citizen Kane?
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland asked Welles for the job, wanting to work with someone who had never made a movie, and Welles put his name on the same title card as his own.
Q 20Citizen Kane is famous for which technique, keeping foreground, background and everything between in sharp focus at once?
Deep focus
Deep focus, achieved with fast lenses, bright arc lighting and small apertures, let Toland hold everything from close foreground to distant background sharp, so Welles could stage scenes in depth.
Q 24Welles fell ten feet while shooting which scene, chipping his ankle?
Shouting at Gettys on the stairs
Welles fell ten feet while shooting Kane shouting at Gettys on the stairs, chipping an ankle bone; he directed from a wheelchair for two weeks and wore a steel brace visible in the low-angle scene with Leland.
Q 25What happened while the sled-burning finale was shot at the Selznick studio?
The fire department arrived
The rented furnace grew so hot that its flue caught fire and the fire department arrived; the shot closes the film on the burning Rosebud sled.
Q 26Who edited Citizen Kane, later directing West Side Story and The Sound of Music?
Robert Wise
Robert Wise edited the film at 26, earning an Oscar nomination; his assistant Mark Robson also became a director, and Wise later won Oscars for West Side Story and The Sound of Music.
Q 27Who composed the score, his first for a film?
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann, Welles's radio composer, got 12 weeks rather than the usual two or three, and Welles insisted RKO pay him at Max Steiner's rate; it earned Herrmann an Oscar nomination.
Q 28Susan Alexander's debut aria comes from which opera, invented for the film by Herrmann?
Salammbô
Herrmann wrote an original aria for a fictional opera called Salammbô, pitched so high that soprano Jean Forward, dubbing Comingore, had to strain for the top notes.
Q 29Who created the film's ageing make-up despite being only an apprentice at RKO?
Maurice Seiderman
Maurice Seiderman, an apprentice in RKO's make-up department, built the ageing make-up and was denied screen credit by department head Mel Berns; Welles thanked him in a full-page newspaper advertisement instead.
Q 30Seiderman created the texture of skin pores on old Kane's face using a cast of what?
An orange peel
The oldest incarnation of Kane took three and a half hours to apply each morning.