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60 free Marlene Dietrich trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Marlene Dietrich went from a Berlin pit orchestra to Paramount's answer to Garbo, then walked away from Hollywood glamour to sing for Allied troops within a few kilometres of the German lines. This quiz follows the whole arc: the police lieutenant's daughter who fused her two names, Max Reinhardt's chorus line, Rudolf Sieber, Lola Lola and The Blue Angel, the six von Sternberg films from Morocco's tailcoat kiss to The Devil Is a Woman, box office poison and Frenchie in Destry Rides Again. It then covers the war: the refugee fund, the Nazi offer she refused, the musical saw and Welles's mind-reading act, the OSS recordings, Patton and the Medal of Freedom, and the second career: Hitchcock, Wilder, Welles and Kramer, the Sahara nude dress, Bacharach, 'Marlene Go Home!', Israel, Broadway, the Sydney fall, Bowie, Schell's documentary, Avenue Montaigne, and the two flags on her coffin. Easy questions suit any classic-film fan; the expert tier asks for salaries, addresses and generals. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Dietrich and her films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on classic Hollywood and on Greta Garbo.
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Q 01In which Berlin district was Marlene Dietrich born in 1901?
Schöneberg
She was buried near her mother in the same district in 1992.
Q 02How did Dietrich arrive at the name Marlene?
By combining her first two names, Marie and Magdalene
She did it aged about 11; the family called her Lena or Leni.
Q 03What was the profession of Dietrich's father?
Police lieutenant
Her mother's family owned a Berlin jewellery and clock-making firm.
Q 04Which instrument did the young Dietrich study, hoping for a concert career until a wrist injury intervened?
Violin
By 1922 she was playing it in a cinema pit orchestra for silent films, and was fired after four weeks.
Q 05Which theatre impresario's drama academy rejected Dietrich in 1922?
Max Reinhardt
She began as a chorus girl and took small roles in his productions.
Q 06Whom did Dietrich marry in Berlin in May 1923, remaining married to him until his death in 1976?
Rudolf Sieber
They met on the set of Tragedy of Love; their daughter Maria was born in December 1924.
Q 07What was the name of Dietrich's cabaret-singer character in The Blue Angel (1930)?
Lola Lola
She brings about the ruin of a respectable schoolmaster played by Emil Jannings.
Q 08The Blue Angel was based on Professor Unrat, a 1905 novel by which German author?
Heinrich Mann
The novel's title means 'Professor Filth'.
Q 09Which director of The Blue Angel and six Dietrich Hollywood films claimed to have 'discovered' her?
Josef von Sternberg
He welcomed her to Hollywood with a green Rolls-Royce Phantom II that appeared in their first US film.
Q 10What was Dietrich's signature song, introduced in The Blue Angel?
Falling in Love Again
Friedrich Hollaender wrote it as 'Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt'.
Q 11Which Hollywood studio signed Dietrich after The Blue Angel, hoping for a German answer to Greta Garbo?
Paramount
It was the US distributor of The Blue Angel.
Q 12Which film earned Dietrich her only Academy Award nomination?
Morocco (1930)
She played a cabaret singer opposite Gary Cooper.
Q 13Morocco is famous for a scene in which Dietrich, in a man's tailcoat, does what?
Kisses another woman
Both the costume and the kiss were considered scandalous in 1930.
Q 21What was Dietrich's response when Nazi officials offered her lucrative contracts to return to Germany?
She refused and applied for US citizenship
She became an American citizen in 1939 and renounced her German citizenship.
Q 22Which 1939 Western comedy revived Dietrich's career as saloon girl Frenchie opposite James Stewart?
Destry Rides Again
Her song 'See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have' became a hit.
Q 23Which co-star appeared with Dietrich in both Seven Sinners (1940) and The Spoilers (1942)?
John Wayne
Q 14What was Dietrich's character name in her 1932 film set aboard a train from Peiping?
Shanghai Lily
'It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,' she tells her old flame.
Q 15A production still from Dietrich's 1932 train film inspired the cover of which rock band's second album?
Queen
The Queen II pose was reused in the 'Bohemian Rhapsody' video.
Q 16Which Russian ruler did Dietrich play in The Scarlet Empress (1934)?
Catherine the Great
It was one of the last, and least profitable, of her collaborations with von Sternberg.
Q 17In Blonde Venus, Dietrich sings 'Hot Voodoo' after emerging from what costume?
A gorilla suit
Cary Grant played the wealthy politician who notices her.
Q 18Which film did Dietrich say showed her at her most beautiful?
The Devil Is a Woman
It was the most stylised of the von Sternberg films and one of the lowest-grossing.
Q 19Which producer paid Dietrich $200,000 for her first colour film, The Garden of Allah (1936)?
David O. Selznick
Korda then paid her $450,000 for Knight Without Armour, making her one of the best-paid stars in the world.
Q 20What label did American exhibitors pin on Dietrich in May 1938?
Box office poison
She shared the tag with Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Mae West and Fred Astaire.
She played bawdy types similar to Frenchie in both.
Q 24What did Dietrich do with her entire $450,000 salary from Knight Without Armour in 1937?
Put it in escrow to help refugees from Germany
With Billy Wilder and other exiles she had set up a fund to help Jews and dissidents escape.
Q 25What was Dietrich's two-word German answer when asked why she performed so close to the front lines?
Aus Anstand (out of decency)
Billy Wilder said she was at the front more than Eisenhower.
Q 26Which unusual instrument, learned from Igo Sym in 1920s Berlin, did Dietrich play in her wartime shows?
A carpenter's saw
She also did a comic mind-reading routine in the same shows.
Q 27Who taught Dietrich the 'mind-reading' act she used in her wartime revue?
Orson Welles
It came from his Mercury Wonder Show; she would tell a soldier, 'Oh, think of something else. I can't possibly talk about that!'
Q 28For which US agency did Dietrich record German songs, including 'Lili Marleen', in 1944?
The OSS
The Musak project aimed to demoralise enemy soldiers; she was the only performer told what the recordings were for.
Q 29Which US honour, received in 1947 for entertaining troops, did Dietrich call her proudest accomplishment?
The Medal of Freedom
She also received the Légion d'honneur for the same work.
Q 30Which two generals did Dietrich accompany into Germany at the end of her 1944–45 USO tours?
James Gavin and George Patton
She had already performed in Algeria, Italy, the UK and the Netherlands.