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60 free Marx Brothers trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Marx Brothers trivia quiz starts where the brothers did: five sons of a Yorkville tailor pushed on stage by their mother Minnie, renamed by a monologist during a poker game, banned from vaudeville over a trip to Britain, then rescued by Broadway. From there it covers the Paramount years (The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup), Irving Thalberg's MGM reinvention with A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, and the reluctant final films. Along the way you will need to know who Freedonia went to war with, which brother smuggled diplomatic messages taped to his leg in Moscow, why W.C. Fields faked a broken wrist, what a 'sanity clause' is, how Groucho's quiz show gave away fifty dollars, and which rock band named two albums after Marx films. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the team, the individual brothers and their films, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for classic comedy fans, film students and quiz nights that want more than 'which one never spoke'.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many Marx brothers performed in the act at various times?
Five
Gummo and Zeppo both left over time, leaving Chico, Harpo and Groucho as the trio of the later films.
Q 02How many feature films did the Marx Brothers make together?
13
The American Film Institute put five of them among its top 100 comedies, two in the top fifteen.
Q 03Which Marx brother's stage persona never spoke?
Harpo
Their uncle Al Shean wrote him almost no lines in Home Again; reviews kept saying he was better silent, and the wig and horn followed.
Q 04What was Groucho Marx's real first name?
Julius
He was named after an unemployed uncle who lived with the family and, Groucho claimed, owed his father $85.
Q 05Harpo was born Adolph but officially changed his first name in 1910 to what?
Arthur
He had never liked Adolph; his memoir was titled Harpo Speaks!
Q 06Who gave the brothers their stage names during a poker game?
Monologist Art Fisher
The '-o' names followed a fad started by Gus Mager's comic strip Sherlocko the Monk, which had a character called Groucho.
Q 07According to the usual story, why was Leonard Marx nicknamed 'Chico'?
He chased women, or 'chicks'
It was originally spelled Chicko and is still pronounced 'Chick-o', not 'Cheek-o'.
Q 08Milton Marx's nickname 'Gummo' supposedly came from his habit of wearing what?
Rubber-soled shoes
Harpo said he crept round theatres like a gumshoe detective; others said he was a hypochondriac who wore overshoes whenever rain threatened.
Q 09Under what stage name did the brothers' mother manage the act so agents would not realise who she was?
Minnie Palmer
Her brother Al Shean was half of the hit double act Gallagher and Shean, and her success at launching him inspired her to push her sons.
Q 10What was the name of the early singing act featuring Groucho, Gummo and Mabel O'Donnell?
The Three Nightingales
Harpo was dragged out of a movie-theatre job to make it a quartet at Coney Island and famously wet his pants at his debut.
Q 11In which Texas town did a runaway mule interrupt a 1909 show, prompting Groucho insults that revealed the act's comedy?
Nacogdoches
His lines included 'Nacogdoches is full of roaches' and 'the jackass is the flower of Tex-ass'.
Q 12Which famous comedian reportedly faked a broken wrist rather than follow the Marx Brothers on stage?
W.C. Fields
By the end of 1914 their show Home Again had earned them a contract with the United Booking Office and bills alongside top acts.
Q 13Where and when did all five Marx Brothers appear on stage together, believed to be the only time?
Flint, Michigan, 1915
Q 21Which actress played the wealthy widow foil to Groucho in The Cocoanuts and seven of the brothers' films?
Margaret Dumont
Groucho liked to claim she 'never understood any of my jokes', though interviews show she understood comedy perfectly well.
Q 22'Hooray for Captain Spaulding', later the theme of Groucho's quiz show, was written for which show?
Animal Crackers
Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby supplied it; Groucho played the explorer Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding.
Q 23Where was The Cocoanuts filmed in 1929 while the brothers still played Broadway nightly?
Astoria Studios, Queens
Zeppo was 14 and sang 'four or five songs', according to the local paper.
Q 14Which brother left the act on being drafted in 1918, quipping he 'went to war to get a little peace'?
Gummo
Minnie had bought a 27-acre poultry farm in Illinois hoping to win her sons draft exemptions; Zeppo left his job as a Ford mechanic to replace him.
Q 15What was the title of the brothers' unreleased 1921 silent short, of which no copies survive?
Humor Risk
Groucho played a villain and Harpo a romantic lead named Watson; after one bad screening in the Bronx it was shelved.
Q 16Why were the Marx Brothers blacklisted from the major vaudeville circuit in 1922?
They toured Britain without E. F. Albee's permission
They then flopped on the smaller Shubert circuit, where sheriffs seized their show's assets, before Broadway saved them.
Q 17What was the Marx Brothers' first Broadway hit, which opened in May 1924?
I'll Say She Is
Minnie broke her ankle at a dress fitting and attended the premiere on a stretcher; the show ran 313 performances.
Q 18Which Algonquin Round Table critic became Harpo Marx's lifelong friend after reviewing I'll Say She Is?
Alexander Woollcott
He also talked the brothers into using their stage names in public rather than Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert.
Q 19Who wrote the music for the Marx Brothers' Broadway show The Cocoanuts?
Irving Berlin
George S. Kaufman wrote the book, having first protested 'I'd rather write a show for the Barbary apes!'
Q 20In the 'Why a Duck?' routine, Chico keeps confusing 'why a duck' with what word?
Viaduct
The confusion is between 'viaduct' and 'why a duck'; the show was set during the Florida land boom.
Paper props had to be sprayed with water so the primitive microphones would not pick up crinkling.
Q 24Which studio made the Marx Brothers' first five films, from The Cocoanuts to Duck Soup?
Paramount
After Duck Soup the contract lapsed, Zeppo quit to become an agent, and Irving Thalberg lured the remaining three to MGM.
Q 25Which 1931 film was the first Marx Brothers movie not based on a stage production?
Monkey Business
Groucho dismissed the first draft by S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone with 'It stinks'; Nat Perrin got hired via a forged letter from Moss Hart.
Q 26Which Marx Brothers film satirised the American college system and put the brothers on the cover of Time?
Horse Feathers
It contains Harpo's running gag of pulling absurd props from his coat, including a candle burning at both ends.
Q 27What is the name of the fictional country Groucho leads in Duck Soup?
Freedonia
The real village of Fredonia, New York asked Paramount to change it; Groucho told them to change their town's name because 'it's hurting our picture'.
Q 28What is the name of Groucho's character in Duck Soup?
Rufus T. Firefly
He goes to war with neighbouring Sylvania; Chico and Harpo play the spies Chicolini and Pinky posing as peanut vendors.
Q 29Which Oscar-winning director made Duck Soup?
Leo McCarey
It was only the sixth-highest grosser of 1933 and earned less than Horse Feathers, but is now the highest-ranked Marx film on the AFI list.
Q 30Which MGM producer signed the Marx Brothers after discussing it with Chico over a bridge game?
Irving Thalberg
He insisted on stronger stories, sympathetic characters and testing scripts in front of live audiences before filming.