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60 free Howard Hawks trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Howard Hawks made great films in nearly every Hollywood genre, and this trivia quiz covers all of them: the pre-Code gangster classic Scarface, the screwball comedies Twentieth Century, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings, the Bogart-and-Bacall pair To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, the Westerns Red River, Rio Bravo and El Dorado, the science-fiction landmark The Thing from Another World and the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The questions also cover the man himself: the Indiana birth and Cornell engineering degree, the World War I flying instructor, the loan to Jack Warner that got him into producing, the feud with Howard Hughes over The Dawn Patrol, the friendships with Hemingway and Faulkner, the discovery of Lauren Bacall from a magazine cover, the race car he built for the Indianapolis 500 and his famous definition of a good film as "three good scenes, and no bad ones". Difficulty runs from easy to expert. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Hawks and his individual films, and each question links to its source. Try our Classic Hollywood and John Wayne quizzes next.
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Q 01In which US state was Howard Hawks born in 1896?
Indiana
His family's Goshen Milling Company made them one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest.
Q 02Which critic called Hawks "the greatest American director who is not a household name"?
Leonard Maltin
Jean-Luc Godard went further and called him "the greatest of all American artists".
Q 03What did Hawks study at Cornell University?
Mechanical engineering
A friend recalled he spent more time on craps and drink than study, and he took his degree in absentia in 1918.
Q 04At 18, Hawks won a national junior championship in which sport?
Tennis
He was an average student who did not excel at sports as a boy, but took up coaster racing, an early form of soapbox racing.
Q 05During World War I Hawks served in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps doing what?
Teaching aviators to fly
He never saw active duty and was discharged as a second lieutenant.
Q 06Hawks got his first film job as a prop boy on a picture starring which silent star?
Douglas Fairbanks
He met cinematographer Victor Fleming, allegedly by causing a crash while racing him on a dirt track.
Q 07Hawks first directed a scene, at age 21, on a Mary Pickford film when which director failed to turn up?
Marshall Neilan
He and cinematographer Charles Rosher shot a double-exposure dream sequence for The Little Princess.
Q 08How did Hawks land his first important job in Hollywood, producing one-reel comedies?
He lent money to Jack L. Warner
Warner repaid the loan and hired him to oversee shorts starring Italian comedian Monty Banks.
Q 09Which studio gave Hawks his first chance to direct, in 1925?
Fox
Sol Wurtzel promised him a director's chair; he made his first eight films there before leaving on sour terms in 1929.
Q 10Which silent film is considered Hawks's most important early work, his first "love story between two men"?
A Girl in Every Port
After seeing Louise Brooks in it, G. W. Pabst cast her in Pandora's Box.
Q 11Which mogul tried to sabotage The Dawn Patrol (1930), fearing it would rival his aviation epic Hell's Angels?
Howard Hughes
He hired a spy, sued for copyright infringement, then dropped the suit and became Hawks's good friend.
Q 12Scarface (1932) was loosely based on the life of which gangster?
Al Capone
Ben Hecht wrote the script in 11 days, beginning a 20-year collaboration with Hawks.
Q 13Who played Tony Camonte in Hawks's Scarface?
Paul Muni
The film was remade in 1983 with Al Pacino.
Q 21Only Angels Have Wings (1939) follows pilots flying airmail through the Andes from which fictional port?
Barranca
It gave Rita Hayworth her first major role.
Q 22His Girl Friday was adapted from which Hecht-MacArthur stage hit?
The Front Page
Hawks's big idea was to turn reporter Hildy Johnson into a woman and the editor's ex-wife.
Q 23Who played Hildy Johnson opposite Cary Grant in His Girl Friday?
Rosalind Russell
Ralph Bellamy plays the wholesome insurance man she plans to marry in Albany.
Q 14Hawks used the 1930 Indy 500 winner Billy Arnold in which car-racing film?
The Crowd Roars
Racing was a childhood passion; he later built the car that won the 1936 Indy 500.
Q 15Twentieth Century (1934) is largely set aboard what?
A train from Chicago to New York
With It Happened One Night, released the same year, it is considered a prototype of the screwball comedy.
Q 16Carole Lombard, star of Twentieth Century, was related to Hawks how?
She was his distant cousin
The film propelled her into the front rank of screen comediennes.
Q 17Which producer fired Hawks midway through Come and Get It (1936), leaving William Wyler to finish it?
Samuel Goldwyn
Hawks walked off several other pictures himself when studios interfered.
Q 18In Bringing Up Baby, what is Baby?
A leopard
A tame animal named Nissa played the part, along with a second role.
Q 19What bone is Cary Grant's paleontologist missing from his Brontosaurus in Bringing Up Baby?
The intercostal clavicle
When it finally arrives, the dog George buries it.
Q 20What happened to Hawks after Bringing Up Baby flopped at the box office?
RKO fired him
He then made 11 consecutive hits, and Hepburn was branded "box office poison".
Q 24Where does Hildy hide the escaped convict Earl Williams in His Girl Friday?
In a rolltop desk
The mayor bribes a messenger to sit on the governor's reprieve until it is too late.
Q 25Who won Best Actor for the title role in Sergeant York (1941)?
Gary Cooper
It was the top-grossing film of 1941, and young men reportedly went from the cinema straight to enlistment offices.
Q 26Hawks made Sergeant York as a favour to which early mentor?
Jesse Lasky
Lasky had made him a story editor at Famous Players in 1923.
Q 27Ball of Fire (1941), written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, is a playful take on which fairy tale?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
A sheltered linguist and six fellow scholars hire Barbara Stanwyck to teach them slang.
Q 28Where did Hawks bet Hemingway he could film the author's 'worst book', To Have and Have Not?
On a fishing trip
Hemingway himself admitted it was his worst.
Q 29Which Nobel laureate besides Hemingway contributed to To Have and Have Not?
William Faulkner
Faulkner wrote five screenplays for Hawks, from Today We Live to Land of the Pharaohs.
Q 30How did Hawks find Lauren Bacall for To Have and Have Not?
His wife spotted her on a Harper's Bazaar cover
The characters' pet names, "Slim" and "Steve", were the ones Hawks and his wife Slim Keith used for each other.