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50 free Frank Capra trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Frank Capra trivia quiz covers the director whose life was the American Dream personified: a boy from a Sicilian village who arrived in steerage aged five and went on to win three Best Director Oscars in five years. The easy questions are the ones any classic-film fan should get: the Christmas movie with George Bailey and his angel, the first film to sweep the top five Oscars, the star of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the studio he built up from Poverty Row. From there it digs deeper: the Caltech chemical engineering degree, the banjo and the odd jobs, the $75 one-reeler that started it all, the comedian Harry Langdon, the writer Robert Riskin, Harry Cohn's 'name above the title', the Chopin project that made him quit Columbia, General Marshall's Why We Fight, the Disney animators and the Oscar for Prelude to War, Liberty Films, the copyright slip that turned a flop into a classic, and the science films that ran in classrooms for thirty years. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Capra and his major films before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our It's a Wonderful Life, classic Hollywood and Oscars quizzes next.
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Q 01On which Mediterranean island was Frank Capra born in 1897?
Sicily
He was born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, near Palermo, the youngest of seven children.
Q 02What does the surname Capra mean in Italian?
Goat
Biographer Joseph McBride notes 'capricious' derives from it, fitting Capra's emotionalism and obstinacy.
Q 03How did the Capra family travel to America in 1903?
In steerage on the steamship Germania
Capra called the 13-day crossing one of the worst experiences of his life.
Q 04Capra worked his way through which university, graduating in chemical engineering in 1918?
Caltech
He played banjo in nightclubs, waited tables and cleaned engines at a power plant to pay his way.
Q 05Which famous aviator was one of Capra's classmates at Manual Arts High School?
Jimmy Doolittle
Singer Lawrence Tibbett was another classmate; Capra sold newspapers after school for ten years.
Q 06What did Capra teach to artillerymen as a second lieutenant during the First World War?
Mathematics
He caught Spanish flu, was discharged, and became a citizen in 1920 as Frank Russell Capra.
Q 07How much did Walter Montague pay Capra to direct his first one-reeler, Fultah Fisher's Boarding House?
$75
He made it in two days with amateurs for $1,700 and it sold to Pathé for $3,500.
Q 08Capra wrote gags for which slapstick producer's studio, in 1918 and again in 1924?
Mack Sennett
He also wrote for Hal Roach's Our Gang series.
Q 09Capra directed three successful features in 1926-27 for which baby-faced silent comedian?
Harry Langdon
Langdon followed Arthur Ripley's advice, started directing himself, and his career collapsed.
Q 10Which studio boss rehired Capra in 1928 and gave him top billing over his films, a first in the industry?
Harry Cohn of Columbia
Columbia was then a Poverty Row studio; Capra directed 20 films for it and his salary rose from $1,000 a film to $25,000 a year.
Q 11Why did Capra adapt to sound film more easily than most directors?
His engineering education
He called hearing Al Jolson sing in The Jazz Singer 'a once-in-a-lifetime experience'.
Q 12Which screenwriter, Fay Wray's husband, formed a famed writer-director team with Capra?
Robert Riskin
Riskin wrote the wisecracking dialogue for It Happened One Night among many others.
Q 13It Happened One Night (1934) was the first film to achieve what at the Oscars?
A sweep of the 'Big Five' categories
Q 21What tactic does Senator Smith use to hold the floor for hours in the film's climax?
A filibuster
Saunders, played by Jean Arthur, coaches him from the gallery.
Q 22Which US ambassador urged Columbia not to show Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in Europe?
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
He feared it would confirm impressions that America was 'full of graft, corruption and lawlessness'.
Q 23Of its eleven Oscar nominations, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington won only one - for what?
Best Original Story
It was competing with Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in a ten-nominee Best Picture field.
Only two films have matched the 'Big Five' since: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.
Q 14Who starred opposite Claudette Colbert as the roguish reporter in It Happened One Night?
Clark Gable
An urban legend says undershirt sales fell after Gable undressed on screen without one.
Q 15Capra's 1934 screwball classic was based on which 1933 short story, also its shooting title?
Night Bus
Samuel Hopkins Adams wrote it; the film is one of the earliest road movies.
Q 16Which cartoon character may have been partly inspired by It Happened One Night?
Bugs Bunny
Friz Freleng, who worked on the film, helped develop the rabbit six years later.
Q 17How many Best Director Oscars did Capra win?
Three
For It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can't Take It with You, from six nominations.
Q 18Which 1936 Capra film features a tuba-playing greeting-card poet who inherits a fortune?
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Jean Arthur had her first featured role; the film won Capra his second directing Oscar.
Q 19Capra's 1938 Best Picture winner You Can't Take It with You came from a play by which duo?
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
It brought Capra his third Best Director Oscar in five years.
Q 20Which actor played the naive senator Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?
James Stewart
The story was loosely based on Montana senator Burton K. Wheeler and the Teapot Dome investigation.
Q 24Capra quit Columbia in a rage after the studio vetoed his expensive Technicolor biopic of which composer?
Chopin
Columbia later made it anyway as A Song to Remember (1945) with Charles Vidor directing.
Q 25Who starred as the drifter turned 'common man' in Capra's Meet John Doe (1941)?
Gary Cooper
So great was Capra's name that Warner dropped its own from the main title, opening simply with 'Presenting'.
Q 26Capra's 1937 film Lost Horizon, adapted from James Hilton's novel, is set in which hidden paradise?
Shangri-La
The plane crashes deep in the Himalayas of Tibet.
Q 27Which actor starred in Capra's 1944 black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace?
Cary Grant
On Broadway, Boris Karloff had played Jonathan Brewster, a character said to 'look like Boris Karloff'.
Q 28Within four days of Pearl Harbor, Capra received a commission in the US Army at what rank?
Major
At 44 he did not have to enlist, but wanted to prove his patriotism to his adopted land.
Q 29Under which Army Chief of Staff did Capra work directly to make the Why We Fight films?
George C. Marshall
Marshall bypassed the Signal Corps, wanting the 'nursery' next to his own office.
Q 30How many episodes made up the Why We Fight series?
Seven
From Prelude to War (1942) to War Comes to America (1945).