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70 free Old Hollywood trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
64 free Old Hollywood trivia questions with answers. Old Hollywood was more than the movies. It was a company town run by moguls like Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, policed by the Hays Code, chronicled by gossip queens Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, and lived out in places like the Brown Derby, the Chateau Marmont and Schwab's Pharmacy. This quiz covers that whole world, from the silent era of Valentino, Pickford and Fatty Arbuckle to the fall of the studio system and the last of the great stars. Expect questions about the people rather than just the films: Clark Gable's ears, Marilyn Monroe's real name, the mail-order stage name of Joan Crawford, Hedy Lamarr's wartime invention, Cary Grant's stilt-walking past and Grace Kelly's handbag. There are scandals (the Arbuckle trials, the William Desmond Taylor murder, the Lana Turner stabbing), the blacklist, the first fifteen-minute Academy Awards, and the studio lion chosen as a college tribute. The set runs from easy warm-ups to expert stumpers about magazines, murders and studio contracts. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia and other reference sources, so it works for a movie night, a pub quiz round or settling a family argument about who was really discovered at Schwab's.
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Q 01The Motion Picture Production Code of 1934–1968 is popularly named after which industry president?
Will H. Hays
Hays adopted the code in 1930 but it was only rigidly enforced from 1934, after pressure from the Catholic Legion of Decency.
Q 02What replaced the Production Code in 1968?
The MPAA film rating system
By then the code had barely been enforced for years, after films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won approval despite banned language.
Q 03Which administrator enforced Hollywood's Production Code from 1934 to 1954?
Joseph Breen
Breen's office read every script and could demand cuts before a film received its seal of approval.
Q 04What was Marilyn Monroe's birth name?
Norma Jeane Mortenson
'Marilyn' was borrowed from Broadway star Marilyn Miller and 'Monroe' was her mother's maiden name.
Q 05Marilyn Monroe's nude photos were the centerfold and cover of which magazine's first issue in 1953?
Playboy
The same year she starred in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, the films that fixed her 'dumb blonde' image.
Q 06Which gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper's arch-rival, wrote America's first dedicated movie column in 1914?
Louella Parsons
At her peak she was read by 20 million people in 700 newspapers, and Hearst hired her partly because she had championed his mistress Marion Davies.
Q 07Which actor, often called the 'King of Hollywood', won his only Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934)?
Clark Gable
A Warner Bros. executive had earlier passed on him, saying 'His ears are too big and he looks like an ape.'
Q 08Which screwball star, wife of the 'King of Hollywood', died in a 1942 plane crash after a war bond tour?
Carole Lombard
TWA Flight 3 hit Mount Potosi in Nevada; her final film, To Be or Not to Be, was released weeks later.
Q 09MGM sold Garbo's first talkie in 1930 with the tagline 'Garbo talks!' Which film was it?
Anna Christie
Her career ended eleven years later with the poorly reviewed Two-Faced Woman, the last of her 28 features, after which she shunned publicity for life.
Q 10Which silent-screen 'Latin Lover' died in 1926 aged 31, drawing 100,000 to his Manhattan funeral?
Rudolph Valentino
He died of complications after surgery for appendicitis and ulcers, weeks after a Chicago Tribune editorial had questioned his masculinity.
Q 11Which star, born Frances Ethel Gumm, died of an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1969 at 47?
Judy Garland
She had won a special Juvenile Academy Award and later earned nominations for A Star Is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg.
Q 12Elizabeth Taylor married which Cleopatra co-star in 1964, going on to make 11 films with him?
Richard Burton
Their films together included Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and she later co-founded amfAR in 1985 as one of the first celebrity AIDS activists.
Q 13Cary Grant first toured the US at 16 with the Pender Troupe after training as what?
A stilt walker
Q 21The 1947 Hollywood blacklist began after ten writers and directors refused to answer which body?
The House Un-American Activities Committee
They were cited for contempt of Congress, and studio heads announced the blacklist the very next day at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Q 22How long did the very first Academy Awards ceremony, a private dinner in May 1929, last?
15 minutes
Tickets cost $5, 270 people attended, and the winners had been announced three months earlier.
Q 23Which swashbuckling silent star, the first screen Zorro, hosted the first Academy Awards?
Douglas Fairbanks
He never won a competitive Oscar despite two nominations, receiving an honorary award in 1970 instead.
Q 14Which 19-year-old ex-model debuted opposite Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944) and married him a year later?
Lauren Bacall
Bogart was 44; a Harper's Bazaar cover had caught the eye of director Howard Hawks's wife 'Slim' Keith, which got her the screen test.
Q 15Grace Kelly won her Best Actress Oscar for which 1954 film, playing Bing Crosby's long-suffering wife?
The Country Girl
She got the part after a pregnant Jennifer Jones bowed out, and retired at 26 two years later to become Princess of Monaco.
Q 16Which fashion house made the 'Kelly bag' Princess Grace used in 1956 to shield her pregnancy?
Hermès
The Sac à dépêches had existed since the 1930s, but the photos made it one of the most coveted bags in the world.
Q 17Which 1940s 'Love Goddess', star of Gilda, was born Margarita Carmen Cansino?
Rita Hayworth
Her grandfather Antonio Cansino was a renowned classical Spanish dancer and gave her her first dance lesson.
Q 18Which Vienna-born film star co-invented a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system with George Antheil?
Hedy Lamarr
The idea underlies modern spread-spectrum communications, though the military only used similar technology from 1962, after the patent expired.
Q 19Which silent comedian was acquitted after three trials over the 1921 death of Virginia Rappe?
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
The third jury took the unusual step of writing him a formal apology, but the scandal ended his stardom and helped bring on the Hays Code.
Q 20Which blacklisted Hollywood Ten member did Kirk Douglas publicly credit as Spartacus's screenwriter in 1960?
Dalton Trumbo
Otto Preminger had openly hired him for Exodus the same year, and 1960 is generally treated as the year the blacklist broke.
He and his wife Mary Pickford ruled Hollywood society from their Pickfair estate.
Q 24Which salad was reportedly improvised from leftovers at the Hollywood Brown Derby for Sid Grauman?
Cobb
The first Brown Derby, on Wilshire Boulevard in 1926, was built in the shape of a derby hat; the Hollywood branch was where the stars ate.
Q 25In which Sunset Boulevard hotel, opened in 1929, did John Belushi die in Bungalow 3?
Chateau Marmont
Its model was the Château d'Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci is buried.
Q 26The stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are made of brass and which coral-pink material?
Terrazzo
The first permanent stars were laid in 1960, and there are now more than 2,800 along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
Q 27Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers co-starred in how many Hollywood musicals?
Ten
They included Top Hat, Swing Time and Shall We Dance; Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha and danced professionally for 76 years.
Q 28Child star Shirley Temple later served as United States ambassador to Ghana and to which other country?
Czechoslovakia
She was also the first female US Chief of Protocol, a long way from the 56 blonde curls that made her a box-office champion in the 1930s.
Q 29Allied aircrews in World War II named their yellow inflatable life vests after which curvaceous star?
Mae West
She had chosen ten days in jail over a fine in 1927 for her Broadway play 'Sex', purely for the publicity.
Q 30Besides Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, which was James Dean's third major film?
Giant
He remains the only actor to receive two posthumous Best Actor nominations, for East of Eden and Giant.