Cool Hand Luke Trivia
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49 free Cool Hand Luke trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free Cool Hand Luke trivia questions with answers. Cool Hand Luke came out in November 1967 and has never really left: the egg bet, the mirrored sunglasses, the road-tar sequence and the most misquoted line in prison-movie history are still in circulation nearly sixty years later. This quiz covers the film from the parking meters in the opening scene to the crossroads in the last shot, along with the cast of future stars buried in the chain gang and the ex-convict who wrote the book. It starts easy — what Luke did to get arrested, how many eggs, who won the Oscar — and works up to the details only obsessives know: which Florida road prison the crew measured, why a county inspector condemned the set, how much George Kennedy spent campaigning for his award, and what the novel does with quotation marks. There are also questions on Donn Pearce's own remarkable criminal record, Lalo Schifrin's score and its second life on TV news, and the film's afterlife in Guns N' Roses, the West End and professional darts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, the novel and its author, and each question carries its source. Play it before a rewatch, or use it as a round at movie night; the difficulty scores tell you which ones are the gimmes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What drunken act gets Luke arrested at the start of the film?
Beheading parking meters
Beheading parking meters on a drunken spree earns Luke two years on a chain gang, where his refusal to bend to the bosses makes him a legend among the convicts.
Q 02Which contest does Luke lose badly to Dragline, yet earn the chain gang's respect by refusing to quit?
A boxing match
A boxing match leaves Luke bloodied and hopelessly outmatched, but he keeps getting back up until Dragline walks away, and that stubbornness wins over the camp.
Q 03What rank does Luke's army record show he held when discharged?
Buck private
Buck private is what Luke's record shows on his arrival: decorated with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and Purple Hearts, he made sergeant but was busted back down.
Q 04Luke earns his nickname by winning a poker game with what kind of cards?
A hand worth nothing
A hand worth nothing wins the pot on a pure bluff; Luke shrugs that 'sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand', and Dragline christens him on the spot.
Q 05How many hard-boiled eggs does Luke bet he can eat in an hour?
50
50 eggs in an hour is the bet; Luke gets the last one down and is left sprawled alone on the table, arms outstretched and one foot folded over the other.
Q 06Who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Dragline?
George Kennedy
George Kennedy won the 1968 Oscar as Dragline, who starts out as Luke's chief rival among the convicts and ends the film retelling his legend to the gang.
Q 07Which future Paris, Texas star plays Tramp, the guitar-strumming convict of Cool Hand Luke?
Harry Dean Stanton
Harry Dean Stanton plays Tramp, whose guitar and gospel songs run through the film, including a spiritual sung while Luke is being broken by the guards.
Q 08Why do the inmates call Walking Boss Godfrey 'the man with no eyes'?
He always wears mirrored sunglasses
He always wears mirrored sunglasses, so the convicts never see his eyes; they come off only in the final scene, to be ground into the mud under a car's wheels.
Q 09Which actor, later Punk Anderson on Dallas, plays the silent, rifle-carrying Walking Boss in Cool Hand Luke?
Morgan Woodward
Morgan Woodward plays Boss Godfrey, who never speaks a word in the film and fires the shot that brings Luke down in its final scene.
Q 10Who plays the Captain, the prison camp's warden, in Cool Hand Luke?
Strother Martin
Strother Martin plays the Captain, the camp's warden who delivers the 'failure to communicate' speech after Luke's first recapture.
Q 11Which organisation ranked Cool Hand Luke's 'failure to communicate' line 11th among its 100 greatest movie quotes?
American Film Institute
American Film Institute voters placed the Captain's line 11th on a 2005 list; near the end of the film Luke throws the same words back at his pursuers, moments before he is shot.
Q 12Which screenwriter, later an Oscar winner for Dog Day Afternoon, wrote Cool Hand Luke's 'failure to communicate' line?
Frank Pierson
Frank Pierson wrote the line, then worried it sounded too literate for a prison warden, so his stage directions gave the Captain a history of college criminology courses.
Q 13Novelist Donn Pearce served his own two years on a Florida chain gang after being arrested for what?
Q 21Which actress, an Oscar winner for East of Eden, plays Luke's dying mother, Arletta?
Jo Van Fleet
Jo Van Fleet plays Arletta, propped up in the bed of a pickup truck to say goodbye to her son; the part came to her after Bette Davis turned it down.
Q 22Who plays the blonde who torments the chain gang by washing her car?
Joy Harmon
Joy Harmon plays the car-washing girl without a word of dialogue; when a convict says she doesn't know what she's doing, Luke answers that she knows exactly.
Q 23What name does Dragline give the girl washing her car beside the road?
Lucille
Lucille is Dragline's name for her: 'Anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille,' he declares, though she never says a word on screen.
Burglary
Burglary, specifically safecracking, put Donn Pearce on a Florida chain gang for two years in his early twenties, the experience behind his novel.
Q 14By the Captain's rule in Cool Hand Luke, what does a convict earn each time he runs?
A set of leg chains
A set of leg chains: 'You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets,' the Captain warns, and Luke ends up wearing both.
Q 15Cool Hand Luke is set in Florida, but in which state was most of it actually filmed?
California
California: the filmmakers considered Florida locations, then built the prison camp near Stockton in the San Joaquin delta and finished the shoot on a studio lot in Burbank.
Q 16After Luke is shot, what does Dragline do to the Walking Boss?
Tries to strangle him
Tries to strangle him: Dragline carries the wounded Luke outside, then charges the Walking Boss and has him by the throat until the guards beat him off.
Q 17In Cool Hand Luke's closing aerial shot, the roads where the chain gang works form what shape?
A cross
A cross: the camera rises from the crossroads until the junction reads as a crucifix, the last of many signs the film uses to cast Luke as a Christ figure.
Q 18A county building inspector ordered the prison set condemned after mistaking it for what?
Migrant worker housing
Migrant worker housing is what the inspector took the set for, its barracks, mess hall and guard shack realistic enough to read as substandard farm-labour quarters.
Q 19Which composer of the Mission: Impossible theme wrote Cool Hand Luke's Oscar-nominated score?
Lalo Schifrin
Lalo Schifrin, a jazz pianist from Buenos Aires, scored the Deep South chain gang with banjo, guitar and harmonica; the nomination lost to Elmer Bernstein's Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Q 20An edited cue from the road-paving 'Tar Sequence' became widely familiar as what?
The theme for local TV news programs
The theme for local TV news programs, first at WABC in 1968 and then at other ABC-owned stations, came from this cue; its staccato melody resembles a telegraph.
Q 24What is 'a night in the box' in Cool Hand Luke?
A wooden booth in the prison yard
A wooden booth in the prison yard, with little air or room, is the camp's stock punishment; the Captain locks Luke in it when Arletta dies, expecting him to run for her funeral.
Q 25Which future Easy Rider star plays the convict Babalugats?
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper plays Babalugats in a small supporting part; two years later he made his directing debut with Easy Rider, which he also co-wrote.
Q 26Which actor, later the father on The Waltons, plays 'Alibi' Gibson?
Ralph Waite
Ralph Waite made his film debut as 'Alibi' Gibson; he had been an ordained Presbyterian minister before he took up acting, and became John Walton Sr. in 1972.
Q 27Which actor, later a Bond villain in Licence to Kill, plays Dog Boy, keeper of the bloodhounds in Cool Hand Luke?
Anthony Zerbe
Anthony Zerbe plays Dog Boy, who comes back from one of Luke's escapes without his man but with a dead bloodhound: the dog had run itself to death on the trail.
Q 28Which actor, later Trapper John on M*A*S*H, plays the convict called Gambler in Cool Hand Luke?
Wayne Rogers
Wayne Rogers plays Gambler, who gets one of the car-wash scene's best lines, begging the girl's single safety pin to pop; M*A*S*H made him Trapper John five years later.
Q 29Jalem Productions, the company that developed Cool Hand Luke, belonged to which actor?
Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon's Jalem Productions bought the rights to Pearce's novel and developed the film, with Lemmon staying off screen; Gordon Carroll took the producer credit.
Q 30Where did Cool Hand Luke premiere at Loew's State Theatre on November 1, 1967?
New York City
New York City's Loew's State, in Times Square, hosted the opening as a benefit for the Actors Studio, where Newman had trained; the film opened in Los Angeles the same day.