Marilyn Monroe Trivia
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58 free Marilyn Monroe trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Marilyn Monroe trivia quiz follows Norma Jeane Mortenson from foster homes and a wartime munitions factory to the most photographed woman of the century. The early questions cover the basics most fans know: her real name, where her stage name came from, the platinum hair, the nude calendar that became the first Playboy centrefold, and the white dress over the subway grate. From there it digs into the films: Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, Bus Stop, The Prince and the Showgirl, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits, with the directors, co-stars and awards attached to each. A second strand follows the woman behind the image: the three marriages, the production company that helped break the studio system, the Actors Studio and the Strasbergs, the FBI file, the Korea USO shows, 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President', the firing from Something's Got to Give, and the night in Brentwood in August 1962. There are also questions on the Monroeisms, the lookalikes the studios manufactured, and how critics from Pauline Kael to Roger Ebert have judged her. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Classic Hollywood and Audrey Hepburn quizzes next.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Marilyn Monroe's birth name?
Norma Jeane Mortenson
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson (and baptised Norma Jeane Baker), she adopted the stage name in 1946 and made Marilyn Monroe her legal name only in 1956.
Q 02Which pop artist made the silkscreen Marilyn Diptych in the weeks after Monroe's death in 1962?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol: he began it within weeks of her death, repeating one publicity photo fifty times, in bright colour on one panel and fading black and white on the other.
Q 03Where did Marilyn Monroe's stage surname, Monroe, come from?
Her mother's maiden name
Her mother's maiden name: Gladys was born a Monroe, and Fox executive Ben Lyon paired it with 'Marilyn' because she reminded him of the Broadway star Marilyn Miller.
Q 04Monroe wed James Dougherty at 16 to avoid being sent where?
Orphanage
An orphanage: her guardians could no longer keep her, so she left high school to marry weeks after turning 16, and divorced him four years later when he opposed her career.
Q 05Monroe was discovered while working in a factory making what during World War II?
Munitions and drones
Munitions and drones: at Radioplane's Van Nuys plant, army photographer David Conover, sent to shoot morale-boosting pictures of women war workers, picked her out and she was soon modelling.
Q 06Which Elton John song, first released in 1973, was written as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe?
Candle in the Wind
Candle in the Wind: Bernie Taupin rewrote the lyrics in 1997 for Princess Diana's funeral, and that version became one of the best-selling singles of all time.
Q 07Why did Monroe say she had posed for her 1949 nude calendar?
For money
For money: out of work when she posed, she signed as 'Mona Monroe', then owned up three years later, saying she had been broke.
Q 08When asked what she had on during the 1949 nude photo shoot, what did Monroe famously reply?
'I had the radio on'
'I had the radio on': when the calendar story broke in 1952 she owned up to posing instead of denying it, and met reporters' questions with jokes like this one.
Q 09Monroe's 1949 nude photograph became the centrefold of the first issue of which magazine in 1953?
Playboy
Playboy: its founder ran the calendar picture in the launch issue without asking or paying her, and the promise of the famous nude sold the issue out within weeks.
Q 10In which 1950 classic did Monroe have an early bit part as a character named Claudia?
All About Eve
All About Eve: Monroe was on screen only briefly there and in The Asphalt Jungle that year, yet audiences noticed and she won a new contract from Fox.
Q 11Johnny Hyde, the agent and lover who won Monroe her 1950 Fox contract, was vice-president of which agency?
William Morris
William Morris: Hyde got her the bit parts that made critics notice and a seven-year Fox contract in December 1950, then died of a heart attack only days later.
Q 12In which 1953 Technicolor noir did Monroe play a wife plotting to murder her husband, played by Joseph Cotten?
Niagara
Niagara: Monroe's Rose Loomis has her lover try to kill her husband at the Falls, but the husband kills him instead and comes after her.
Q 13Who co-starred with Monroe as fellow showgirl Dorothy Shaw in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?
Jane Russell
Q 21With which photographer did Monroe found Marilyn Monroe Productions in 1954?
Milton Greene
Milton Greene: she walked out on Fox, moved in with his family in Connecticut and set up the company with him, and a year later Fox offered a contract giving her approval over directors.
Q 22Under whom did Monroe study method acting at the Actors Studio in 1955?
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg: she grew so close to him and his wife Paula, who became her on-set coach, that her will left him the largest share of her estate.
Q 23Which Broadway comedy cast Jayne Mansfield as Rita Marlowe, a blonde film star written as a send-up of Monroe?
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Jane Russell played Dorothy to Monroe's Lorelei Lee; the pair pressed their hand and footprints into wet concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in June 1953 to promote the film.
Q 14Which pop star recreated Monroe's pink-gown 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' number in a 1980s music video?
Madonna
Madonna: her 'Material Girl' video copies the pink gown and the chorus of men in tuxedos, and she insisted on the idea because it was her favourite scene from Monroe's films.
Q 15How to Marry a Millionaire teamed Monroe with Betty Grable and which other star?
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall: her character claims to like older men and praises 'that old fellow what's-his-name in The African Queen', a wink at Bacall's real husband, Humphrey Bogart.
Q 16Fox suspended Monroe in January 1954 for refusing to shoot which musical?
The Girl in Pink Tights
She refused The Girl in Pink Tights, a musical she found inferior, and Fox suspended her in January 1954; to have it dropped she agreed to make There's No Business Like Show Business.
Q 17Which flowers did ex-husband Joe DiMaggio have delivered to Monroe's crypt three times a week for 20 years?
Roses
Roses: their marriage had lasted only nine months, yet he never remarried and kept the standing order at her crypt going for two decades after her death.
Q 18From her 1954 honeymoon in Japan, Monroe flew to which country to entertain US troops?
South Korea
South Korea: asked to perform during the honeymoon, she left her new husband behind in Japan, an early strain on a marriage that lasted nine months.
Q 19The famous subway grate scene, with Monroe's white dress blowing up, was staged for which film?
The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch: the street shoot drew a cheering crowd and the world's press, husband Joe DiMaggio looked on furious, and she filed for divorce within weeks.
Q 20On which Manhattan avenue did Monroe film her famous subway-grate scene in September 1954?
Lexington
Lexington Avenue, at 52nd Street: the late-night shoot drew such a crowd of fans and photographers that the scene was filmed again on a Hollywood sound stage.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? gave Rita her own production company, a dig at Monroe's new one; Fox then bought the screen rights on condition that Mansfield repeat the role.
Q 24Monroe's husband Arthur Miller was convicted of what for refusing to name suspected communists?
Contempt of Congress
Contempt of Congress: he refused to give the House Un-American Activities Committee any names the year he married Monroe, and the conviction was overturned on appeal in 1958.
Q 25Which country banned all of Monroe's films after she converted to Judaism on marrying Arthur Miller?
Egypt
Egypt: its ban on all her films came soon after she converted to Judaism, a step she took to show loyalty to Arthur Miller and draw closer to his parents.
Q 26For Bus Stop (1956), Monroe learned which regional accent to play Chérie, a hill-country saloon singer?
Ozark
Ozark: Chérie comes from the Ozarks and dreams of Hollywood; it was Monroe's first film after a year at the Actors Studio, and reviewers said her acting had greatly improved.
Q 27Who directed, produced and starred opposite Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)?
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier: as her director he told her simply to be sexy, an instruction that offended her so much that she took to arriving late on set.
Q 28Who earned an Oscar nomination for playing Monroe in the 2011 film My Week with Marilyn?
Michelle Williams
Michelle Williams: the film draws on the diaries of Colin Clark, a young assistant on The Prince and the Showgirl, who wrote about the troubled shoot and his time with its star.
Q 29What was the name of Monroe's character in Some Like It Hot?
Sugar Kane
Sugar Kane: Monroe thought the band singer was one more dumb blonde and agreed to play her only after she was offered ten percent of the film's gross.
Q 30Which Some Like It Hot co-star was famously quoted as saying that kissing Monroe was 'like kissing Hitler'?
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis: the line was pinned on him after their love scene took take after take, though he told an interviewer decades later that he had never said it.