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50 free Marcel Marceau trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Marcel Marceau made silence famous. For more than sixty years the man in the striped pullover and battered flower-hat took Bip the Clown around the world, and along the way he saved Jewish children from the Nazis, taught Michael Jackson to defy gravity and spoke the only word in a silent movie. This quiz covers all of it. The easy questions ask what he called his art, who Bip was, which comedian entranced him at five and which city he was born in. From there it moves into the war: the name change to Marceau, the cousin who recruited him, the children kept quiet with mime on the road to Switzerland, his father's death at Auschwitz and his months as a liaison officer with Patton's Third Army. The harder end is for theatre and film buffs: Charles Dullin's school, Étienne Decroux and corporeal mime, Jean-Louis Barrault and Baptiste, the Deburau Prize, the Théâtre de Poche, Praxitele and the Golden Fish, The Overcoat, the 1955 American tour, Professor Ping in Barbarella, the deaf puppeteer of Shanks, the 'Non!' in Silent Movie, the honorary doctorates, Marcel Marceau Day, the Wallenberg Medal, the music at his burial and Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal in Resistance. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Marceau, his teachers and his films, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Charlie Chaplin, silent film and French culture quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Marceau's surname at birth?
Mangel
He and his brother Alain adopted 'Marceau' during the German occupation of France.
Q 02In which French city was Marceau born in 1923?
Strasbourg
His father was a kosher butcher from Poland and his mother came from what is now Ukraine.
Q 03What did Marceau call mime?
The art of silence
He said it 'speaks to the soul, like music, making comedy, tragedy, and romance'.
Q 04What was the name of Marceau's famous stage persona?
Bip the Clown
Bip became his alter ego just as the Little Tramp had been Chaplin's.
Q 05What did Bip wear on his head?
A battered, flower-topped opera hat
With his striped pullover, the outfit was meant to signify life's fragility.
Q 06Which film star, seen at age five, made Marceau want to become a mime?
Charlie Chaplin
He later said Chaplin seemed to be the only silent film actor who truly used mime.
Q 07For which cause did Marceau first use mime, according to his own account?
Keeping Jewish children quiet while escaping
He helped smuggle children to Switzerland after France was invaded.
Q 08Which cousin, a Jewish Resistance member, urged Marceau to join the fight?
Georges Loinger
He rescued about 350 children and lived past a hundred.
Q 09What happened to Marceau's father in 1944?
Killed at Auschwitz
Charles Mangel was seized by the Gestapo; Marcel's mother survived the war.
Q 10The surname Marceau was chosen in reference to a general of which conflict?
The French Revolution
François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers was the revolutionary general in question.
Q 11With which US general's army did Marceau serve as a liaison officer after liberation?
George Patton
He was fluent in English, French and German.
Q 12How large was the audience for Marceau's first major performance, in August 1944?
3,000 troops
It came just after the liberation of Paris.
Q 13At whose School of Dramatic Art did Marceau enrol in 1945?
Charles Dullin
The school was housed in the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris.
Q 14Which teacher of Marceau developed the style known as corporeal mime?
Q 21Which Gogol story did Marceau adapt into a mimodrama that ran for a year from 1959?
The Overcoat
It played at the Ambigu Théâtre in Paris.
Q 22Which of Marceau's routines has him pushed backwards by an imaginary gust?
Walking Against the Wind
He used the backslide, later called the moonwalk, in it from the 1940s onward.
Q 23Which routine sums up the ages of man in under two minutes?
Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death
A critic said he accomplished in two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes.
Étienne Decroux
His pupils also included Jessica Lange; his early 'statuary mime' recalled Rodin.
Q 15In which pantomime, staged by Jean-Louis Barrault, was Marceau cast as Arlequin?
Baptiste
Barrault had played the piece's title mime in the film Les Enfants du Paradis.
Q 16What was Marceau's first 'mimodrama', presented at the Bernhardt Theatre?
Praxitele and the Golden Fish
Its unanimous acclaim established his career.
Q 17At which small Paris theatre did Marceau first play Bip in 1947?
Théâtre de Poche
The name means Pocket Theatre.
Q 18Which award, named for a 19th-century mime master, did Marceau win in 1949?
Deburau Prize
It was for his second mimodrama, Death before Dawn.
Q 19The 19th-century mime honoured by Marceau's 1949 award was famed for which stock character?
Pierrot
Deburau performed the role at the Théâtre des Funambules from 1816.
Q 20What was distinctive about the troupe Marceau founded in 1949?
The world's only company devoted to pantomime
It played the leading Paris theatres and playhouses across the globe.
Q 24Where did Marceau make his North American debut, just before his 1955 US tour?
Stratford Festival of Canada
His New York run had to move from the Phoenix to the larger Barrymore Theater.
Q 25With which American comedian did Marceau team up for three concerts of pantomimes?
Red Skelton
His one-man TV show was called 'Meet Marcel Marceau'.
Q 26Which character did Marceau play in the 1968 film Barbarella?
Professor Ping
It was his first speaking role, alongside Jane Fonda.
Q 27How many roles did Marceau play in the 1970 film First Class?
17
It showcased his versatility on screen.
Q 28In the 1974 horror film Shanks, what is Malcolm Shanks able to do?
Move dead bodies like puppets
It was Marceau's first major film role and William Castle's last as director.
Q 29What single word does Marceau utter in Mel Brooks's Silent Movie?
Non!
His is the only audible speaking part in the film, refusing to appear when Brooks asks him.
Q 30Which routine does Marceau reprise in Silent Movie, with real props instead of imaginary?
Walking into the wind
The gag is that the door, wind and telephone are actual.