Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Mae West trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mae West trivia begins in Brooklyn in 1893 with a prizefighter father and a corset-model mother, moves through vaudeville as Baby Mae and the shimmy, and arrives at the 1926 play she wrote, produced and starred in, whose one-word title got her ten days on Welfare Island in silk underwear. The quiz covers The Drag, Diamond Lil, her pen name and the Paramount contract that took her to Hollywood in 1932, where she stole Night After Night from George Raft with 'Goodness had nothing to do with it'. The film section asks about Lady Lou, the line she really said to Cary Grant, Tira and the lion, the fortune that saved Paramount, Duke Ellington in Belle of the Nineties, Hearst's fury at Klondike Annie, the Production Code, the Charlie McCarthy broadcast that got her banned from NBC, and My Little Chickadee with W. C. Fields. Later questions reach Catherine Was Great, the Vegas bodybuilders, Rock Hudson at the Oscars, Mister Ed, the Sgt. Pepper cover, Myra Breckinridge, Sextette and Ringo Starr, plus her secret 1911 marriage, Paul Novak, the Ravenswood, the WWII life jacket, Dalí's sofa and the AFI ranking. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Mae West and her films, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit any old-Hollywood fan; the expert tier reaches Guido Deiro, A La Broadway and a 52-metre sculpture in Munich.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York borough was Mae West born on 17 August 1893?
Brooklyn
It was either Greenpoint or Bushwick, before the consolidation of New York City; her family later lived in Woodhaven, Queens, too.
Q 02What was Mae West's real first and middle name?
Mary Jane
Her father, 'Battlin' Jack' West, later ran a private investigation agency.
Q 03What was Mae West's father 'Battlin' Jack' West's occupation before he became a special policeman?
Prizefighter
Her mother Tillie, a Bavarian immigrant, was a corset and fashion model.
Q 04Under what stage name did Mae West perform as a child?
Baby Mae
She started professionally in vaudeville with the Hal Clarendon Stock Company in 1907, aged 14, and even tried working as a male impersonator.
Q 05Mae West made her Broadway debut in 1911 in A La Broadway, staged by which former dancing teacher of hers?
Ned Wayburn
It closed after eight performances, but the New York Times praised the 'hitherto unknown' girl's grotesquerie and snappy singing.
Q 06Which dance did Mae West's character Mayme perform, landing her on the sheet music of 'Ev'rybody Shimmies Now'?
The shimmy
She built her early reputation on the vaudeville circuits, including Gus Sun's in Ohio.
Q 07Under what pen name did Mae West write her early risqué plays?
Jane Mast
It is a simple rearrangement of her own name.
Q 08What one-word 1926 Broadway play, written and starring Mae West, got her arrested?
Sex
She could have paid a fine but chose jail for the publicity, telling reporters she wore silk panties inside instead of the issued burlap.
Q 09Where did Mae West serve her jail sentence after the raid on her play?
Welfare Island
She dined with the warden and his wife while inside.
Q 10Which Mae West play about homosexuality never opened on Broadway due to vice campaigners?
The Drag
She called it one of her 'comedy-dramas of life'.
Q 11What was Mae West's 1928 Broadway hit about a racy 1890s lady, filmed as She Done Him Wrong?
Diamond Lil
It ran for 323 performances; she revived it on Broadway in 1949.
Q 12Which studio signed Mae West in June 1932 at $5,000 a week?
Paramount
Her second film there grossed over $2 million and is credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy; a building on the lot is named after her.
Q 13Mae West debuted in Night After Night (1932) opposite which star, who had suggested her?
George Raft
He later said, 'She stole everything but the cameras.'
Q 21Which bandleader did Mae West insist the studio hire for Belle of the Nineties (1934)?
Duke Ellington
The studio objected to the cost, but she got her way.
Q 22On what date did strict enforcement of the Production Code begin, hobbling Mae West's brand of humour?
1 July 1934
Her 1936 film Klondike Annie tackled religion and hypocrisy as best it could under the censors.
Q 23A Mae West remark about which actress, Hearst's mistress, made him call Klondike Annie 'a filthy picture'?
Marion Davies
Studio executives felt they had to tone down West's characterisation after the memo.
Q 14Complete Mae West's famous reply in Night After Night when a hat-check girl admires her diamonds:
'Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.'
She rewrote her own scenes; the phrase became the title of her 1959 autobiography.
Q 15What was Mae West's 1928 Broadway heroine renamed for the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong?
Lady Lou
The film was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and made a star of its young leading man.
Q 16Which actor did Mae West reportedly pick for She Done Him Wrong with the words 'If he can talk, I'll take him!'?
Cary Grant
They were reunited the same year in I'm No Angel.
Q 17What is Mae West's best-known line from She Done Him Wrong, as actually spoken in the film?
'Why don't you come up sometime and see me?'
The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1996.
Q 18In which decade is She Done Him Wrong set?
The 1890s
The heroine sings in Gus Jordan's Bowery saloon and is showered with diamonds by him.
Q 19What dangerous sideshow act does Mae West's character Tira perform in I'm No Angel (1933)?
Lion taming
Big Bill Barton lends her lawyer money on condition that she puts her head in a lion's mouth.
Q 20By 1935 Mae West was the highest-paid woman in America and the second-highest-paid person, behind whom?
William Randolph Hearst
The press baron later ordered his papers to refuse advertising for Klondike Annie.
Q 24Mae West was banned from NBC radio after flirting with which ventriloquist's dummy on 12 December 1937?
Edgar Bergen's Charlie McCarthy
She called Charlie 'all wood and a yard long' and said she had the splinters to prove their last date.
Q 25Which biblical pair did Mae West and Don Ameche play in the second controversial sketch of that 1937 broadcast?
Adam and Eve
Written by Arch Oboler, it led women's clubs to accuse the sponsor Chase & Sanborn of letting 'impurity invade the air'.
Q 26Mae West returned to radio in 1950, after over twelve years, on which singer's show?
Perry Como
NBC had banned even the mention of her name after the 1937 furore.
Q 27Which comedian co-starred with Mae West in the 1940 Universal western spoof My Little Chickadee?
W. C. Fields
West wrote the screenplay but Universal gave them equal credit, which so annoyed her that she never teamed with him again.
Q 28What was the name of Mae West's character in My Little Chickadee?
Flower Belle Lee
She is a Chicago singer heading west to visit relatives in the 1880s.
Q 29Which empress did Mae West play on Broadway in a 1944 satirical play she wrote herself?
Catherine the Great
Catherine Was Great was one of several stage vehicles she wrote as her film career waned.
Q 30In her 1950s Las Vegas show at the Sahara Hotel, Mae West sang flanked by what?
Bodybuilders
Several of her muscle-men later reappeared in her final film Sextette.