1959 Movies
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50 free 1959 Movies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Film fans often point to 1959 as one of Hollywood's great years. A biblical epic swept the Oscars, a cross-dressing comedy became a benchmark for laughs, a spy thriller sent its hero running across America, and a western, a courtroom drama and a fairy-tale cartoon all turned into classics. This quiz covers the best-loved movies released that year: Ben-Hur, Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, Rio Bravo, Anatomy of a Murder, Sleeping Beauty and Pillow Talk, along with horror cheapies, British comedies and the early stirrings of the French New Wave. Expect questions on plots, casts, directors, music, box office and awards. It is written for classic-film fans, anyone born in 1959 or planning a milestone birthday quiz, and trivia hosts who want a ready-made movie round. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which star played Sugar Kane, the ukulele-playing singer of an all-female band, in 1959's Some Like It Hot?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe won a Golden Globe for the part, which she nearly refused as one more 'dumb blonde'. Director Billy Wilder had first pictured Mitzi Gaynor in it.
Q 02Which 1990s blockbuster first equaled the record eleven Oscars that 1959's Ben-Hur had held alone for decades?
Titanic
Titanic matched the eleven-Oscar haul at the 1998 ceremony, almost four decades after Ben-Hur set the mark. The Return of the King equaled it again six years later.
Q 03Which American landmark do Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall scramble across at the climax of North by Northwest?
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore hosts the final chase, yet the only spot in the real park where the crew was permitted to film was its visitor building.
Q 04Which horned villain becomes a fire-breathing dragon to fight Prince Phillip in Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty?
Maleficent
Maleficent curses the infant princess after being left off the guest list for her christening. The character got her own live-action film in 2014.
Q 05Which future James Bond had his first leading role in Disney's 1959 fantasy Darby O'Gill and the Little People?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery was borrowed from 20th Century Fox for the part and even sings a duet in the film, three years before Dr. No made him 007.
Q 06What color does the submarine USS Sea Tiger end up painted in the 1959 wartime comedy Operation Petticoat?
Pink
Pink was what the crew got by mixing its scarce red and white primer, and Tokyo Rose mocks the odd-looking boat on the radio.
Q 07Which director appears in the opening credits of North by Northwest having a bus door shut in his face?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock times the gag so the door slams just as his own directing credit appears, one of the walk-on cameos he made a signature of his films.
Q 08What kind of aircraft attacks Roger Thornhill at a lonely Indiana bus stop in the 1959 thriller North by Northwest?
A crop duster
A crop duster armed with a machine gun dives at him in broad daylight. The 'Indiana' prairie scene was actually filmed near Wasco, California.
Q 09Which Ed Wood film, seen across America in 1959 with Bela Lugosi's last footage, was later dubbed the worst ever made?
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space got the 'worst film ever made' label from the 1980 book The Golden Turkey Awards, after two decades of obscurity on television.
Q 10Which actor won the Best Actor Oscar as Judah, a Jewish prince sold into galley slavery, in the 1959 epic Ben-Hur?
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston got the part after Burt Lancaster turned it down, calling the script boring. Paul Newman said he lacked the legs for a tunic.
Q 11Which actor played the bass player who, as 'Daphne', ends Some Like It Hot engaged to millionaire Osgood Fielding?
Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon landed the role after Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and Danny Kaye had all been considered, and it brought him a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Q 12Which singer played Dude, the drunken ex-deputy who sobers up to help John Wayne's sheriff, in 1959's Rio Bravo?
Dean Martin
Dean Martin's part was reworked for Robert Mitchum when the same director and star retold the story as El Dorado in 1966.
Q 13Which star played Sister Luke, a Belgian nurse sent to the Congo, in the 1959 drama The Nun's Story?
Audrey Hepburn
Q 21In which state do the disguised musicians of Some Like It Hot hide at a beach hotel actually filmed in California?
Florida
Florida's 'Seminole Ritz' was really the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California, picked because it suited the 1920s setting and was near Hollywood.
Q 22From which Prohibition-era city do the two musicians of Some Like It Hot flee after witnessing a mob killing?
Chicago
Chicago's real St. Valentine's Day Massacre inspired the shooting the pair stumble on, which sends them running to join an all-female band.
Q 23Which star's voice does Tony Curtis mimic as the fake oil heir 'Junior' in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot?
Cary Grant
Audrey Hepburn earned a Best Actress nomination for the film, whose African scenes were shot on location around Stanleyville, now Kisangani.
Q 14Which Russian composer's 1889 ballet score was adapted for the songs and music of Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty?
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Tchaikovsky's themes took Disney composer George Bruns three years to rework; the ballet's Garland Waltz became the song 'Once Upon a Dream'.
Q 15Which horror star played the pathologist hunting a spine-gripping parasite in William Castle's 1959 film The Tingler?
Vincent Price
Vincent Price's film came with a gimmick called Percepto: vibrating devices fitted to some theater seats went off on cue with the action on screen.
Q 16Which novelist's 1864 adventure became 1959's Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring James Mason and Pat Boone?
Jules Verne
Jules Verne's tale gained new characters on screen, including Pat Boone's student and Gertrud, a pet duck that tags along underground.
Q 17Which sport does Sandra Dee's California teenager fall for in Gidget, the 1959 film that began the beach-party genre?
Surfing
Surfing went mainstream in America largely thanks to the film, whose heroine buys a used board with $21.50 advanced by her parents.
Q 18Which actor, later the first Black winner of the Best Actor Oscar, played Porgy in the 1959 film Porgy and Bess?
Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier at first turned the part down, and accepted only reluctantly after the film's veteran producer threatened to sue him.
Q 19Which sequence in 1959's Ben-Hur took five weeks to film on what was then the largest movie set ever built?
The chariot race
The chariot race cost about $1 million on its own, and seven thousand extras were hired to cheer from the stands of the arena.
Q 20Which actress won an Oscar for 1959's The Diary of Anne Frank and later gave the statuette to the Anne Frank House?
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters had promised Anne's father, Otto Frank, that she would give the award away if she won, and handed it over in Amsterdam in 1975.
Cary Grant was Curtis's boyhood hero, and the two went on to co-star later in 1959 in the submarine comedy Operation Petticoat.
Q 24Which actor first teamed with Doris Day as the playboy sharing her telephone party line in 1959's Pillow Talk?
Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson had never made a comedy before, and the film's huge box office revived his career and led to two more pairings with Day.
Q 25Which star played both a Michigan defense lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder and an agent in The FBI Story in 1959?
James Stewart
James Stewart's lawyer argues before a judge played by Joseph Welch, a real attorney famous for dressing down Senator Joseph McCarthy on television.
Q 26Which jazz bandleader scored Otto Preminger's 1959 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder and also appears on screen?
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington wrote the music with Billy Strayhorn and turns up as a character called Pie Eye, with several of his own sidemen around him.
Q 27Which 1952 Gary Cooper western did Howard Hawks and John Wayne set out to answer with 1959's Rio Bravo?
High Noon
High Noon is often read as an allegory of the Hollywood blacklist, and Hawks said plainly that he made his own sheriff-under-siege film because he disliked it.
Q 28Which Disney comedy about a teenager transformed by a cursed Borgia ring was the second-highest-grossing film of 1959?
The Shaggy Dog
The Shaggy Dog cost less than $1 million and earned $9.6 million in rentals, a better return on its budget than Ben-Hur's. Its hero keeps turning into an Old English Sheepdog.
Q 29In which country do Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner await drifting nuclear fallout in the 1959 drama On the Beach?
Australia
Australia's Melbourne is the last major city left alive in the story, and the production had to lease the city's showgrounds to use as a studio.
Q 30Which British comic played three roles, including a grand duchess, in the 1959 satire The Mouse That Roared?
Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers was still little known in America; his duchess parodies an elderly Queen Victoria who believes Calvin Coolidge is still president.