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50 free In the Heat of the Night trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free In the Heat of the Night trivia questions with answers. In the Heat of the Night is two classics in one: the 1967 Best Picture winner that paired Sidney Poitier's Virgil Tibbs with Rod Steiger's Chief Gillespie, and the long-running series that brought Carroll O'Connor and Howard Rollins to Sparta, Mississippi for eight seasons. This quiz covers both, plus John Ball's Edgar-winning novel and the two Poitier sequels. Forty questions take in the murder of Phillip Colbert, the slap heard round the movie world, 'They call me Mister Tibbs!', Quincy Jones and Ray Charles, the Illinois town that stood in for Mississippi, and the film's five Oscars. On the TV side there is Bubba Skinner, Althea Tibbs, Harriet DeLong, Hampton Forbes, the move from NBC to CBS, the Georgia filming location and O'Connor's Emmy. Easy questions ask who played Tibbs; the hard ones want the composer's track titles and the real Sparta. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, novel, sequels and series, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
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Q 01Who directed the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night?
Norman Jewison
He later directed Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck.
Q 02Who plays Virgil Tibbs in the 1967 film?
Sidney Poitier
He and Rod Steiger were old friends who had long wanted to work together, and both were first choices for their parts.
Q 03In the film, Virgil Tibbs is a homicide detective from which city?
Philadelphia
In John Ball's novels he worked for the Pasadena police, and in the sequel films for San Francisco.
Q 04Who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Chief Bill Gillespie?
Rod Steiger
The film took five Oscars from seven nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Q 05How many Oscars did In the Heat of the Night win?
Five
It beat Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate to Best Picture at the 40th Academy Awards.
Q 06In the film, the town of Sparta is in which state?
Mississippi
John Ball's novel had been set in the fictional Wells, South Carolina.
Q 07Where was most of the film actually shot?
Sparta, Illinois
The town was renamed Sparta so filmmakers could use existing signs, unaware a real Sparta, Mississippi existed.
Q 08Why did the film's star have reservations about the shoot?
Filming south of the Mason-Dixon line
Jewison shot part of it in Tennessee anyway, in Dyersburg and Union City.
Q 09Who is the murder victim whose body is found in the street at the start of the film?
Phillip Colbert
He was a wealthy industrialist in town to build a factory, which the local plantation owner opposed.
Q 10How does Tibbs first come to the attention of the Sparta police?
He is arrested at the train station
Officer Sam Wood spots a black man with a fat wallet and hauls him in as the obvious suspect.
Q 11Which wealthy plantation owner slaps Tibbs during questioning, and gets slapped right back?
Eric Endicott
The return slap is not in the novel; Poitier insisted on it as a condition of making the film.
Q 12Who turns out to be the killer in the film?
Ralph Henshaw, a diner cook
He robbed Colbert to pay $100 for his girlfriend Delores Purdy's abortion.
Q 13How much money did Officer Wood deposit the day after the murder, making Gillespie suspect him?
$632
Tibbs clears him by proving the murder happened at the factory site, so Wood could not have driven both cars back.
Q 21What was the title of the 1970 sequel starring Poitier?
They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
Tibbs is now a lieutenant with the San Francisco police, and Quincy Jones's score went funk.
Q 22In the sequels, Tibbs works for the police of which city?
San Francisco
The second sequel, The Organization, followed in 1971; neither was based on Ball's novels.
Q 23Who played Chief Bill Gillespie in the 1988-1995 television series?
Carroll O'Connor
It was his first series since Archie Bunker's Place ended in 1983, and he was an executive producer.
Q 14Where does Tibbs's famous retort about his name rank on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes?
Number 16
It answers Gillespie's sneer about his first name, and Pumbaa quotes it in The Lion King.
Q 15Who composed the film's score?
Quincy Jones
Track titles include 'Peep-Freak Patrol Car', 'Cotton Curtain' and 'Mama Caleba's Blues'.
Q 16Who performed the film's title song?
Ray Charles
With lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, it reached No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Q 17Cinematographer Haskell Wexler is credited with a first on this picture. What was it?
Lighting a colour movie properly for a Black actor's skin
Standard strong lighting glared on dark complexions and blurred features, so he adjusted it for Poitier.
Q 18Who wrote the screenplay, adapting John Ball's novel?
Stirling Silliphant
He framed the story as a subversive Christian allegory with Tibbs as the messianic outsider.
Q 19John Ball's 1965 book In the Heat of the Night won which honour?
The Edgar for Best First Novel
Ball wrote six more Tibbs novels, ending with Singapore in 1986.
Q 20In the novel, the small town is called Wells and is in which state?
South Carolina
The filmmakers renamed it Sparta so they could shoot in Sparta, Illinois using the real signage.
Q 24Who played Virgil Tibbs in the TV series?
Howard Rollins
He was dropped after season six for health reasons and a short jail stint over traffic violations.
Q 25The series began on NBC in 1988 and later moved to which network?
CBS
It ran on the new network from October 1992 until May 1995.
Q 26In the TV series, why has Tibbs returned to Sparta in the pilot?
For his mother's funeral
Unlike the film, the series makes Sparta his hometown, and the mayor talks him into staying as Chief of Detectives.
Q 27The character Courtney from the film was renamed what for the TV series?
Parker
David Hart played Parker Williams for the entire run.
Q 28Where was the first season of the TV series filmed?
Hammond, Louisiana
Producers struggled to hide modern buildings there and moved to Covington, Georgia from season two.
Q 29From season two onward, the series was shot primarily in which Georgia town?
Covington
The same town later stood in for Mystic Falls in The Vampire Diaries.
Q 30In the series, widower Chief Gillespie lost a wife of what nationality along with an infant son?
Italian
He is written as a World War II veteran whose war bride died in childbirth.