1960s Movies
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100 free 1960s Movies trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This 1960s movie trivia quiz covers the films released between 1960 and 1969, from Psycho, Spartacus and The Apartment at the start of the decade to Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and Midnight Cowboy at the end. Expect the epics (Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, Doctor Zhivago), the musicals (West Side Story, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Oliver!), the birth of Bond, the spaghetti westerns, Hitchcock's last great scares, Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and 2001, and the New Hollywood shock of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who grew up watching these films on television, a third are medium, and the rest dig into casting stories, budgets, records and Oscar trivia that will separate the film buffs from the casual fans. Every Best Picture winner of the decade gets a look-in. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays the shy motel proprietor Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)?
Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates, a role he returned to in Psycho II (1983); Hitchcock shot Psycho in black and white with the crew of his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Q 02Which Billy Wilder comedy, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, won Best Picture for 1960?
The Apartment
The Apartment won Best Picture for 1960; Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine starred, and it inspired the 1968 Broadway musical Promises, Promises.
Q 03Who replaced the original director of Spartacus (1960) after Kirk Douglas removed him?
Stanley Kubrick
It was the only Kubrick film where he lacked complete artistic control; Douglas also broke the blacklist by crediting screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
Q 04Which 1961 musical won 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, from 11 nominations?
West Side Story
West Side Story won 10 Oscars from 11 nominations for 1961, including Best Picture and Best Director for co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins; Robbins also received an honorary award for his choreography.
Q 05Who wrote 'Moon River' with Henry Mancini for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)?
Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to Henry Mancini's melody for 'Moon River', which won the Best Original Song Oscar for 1961; the pair won again the next year for 'Days of Wine and Roses'.
Q 06Which actor made his debut as James Bond in Dr. No (1962)?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery first played James Bond in Dr. No (1962), directed by Terence Young, and went on to play 007 in six more films, the last being Never Say Never Again (1983).
Q 07Who played T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962)?
Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole played T. E. Lawrence, earning the first of his eight Best Actor nominations; Lawrence of Arabia won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for David Lean.
Q 08Gregory Peck won his Best Actor Oscar for playing which lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)?
Atticus Finch
Atticus Finch, the Alabama lawyer who defends Tom Robinson, won Gregory Peck the Best Actor Oscar for 1962; the American Film Institute later ranked Atticus the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.
Q 09Elizabeth Taylor signed on to Cleopatra (1963) for what record-setting salary?
$1 million
Elizabeth Taylor was paid $1 million plus a share of the gross for Cleopatra; the shoot began at Pinewood in 1960, shut down, and restarted in Rome under Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1961.
Q 10Which 1963 Best Picture winner starred Albert Finney as Henry Fielding's roguish foundling?
Tom Jones
Tom Jones, Tony Richardson's adaptation of Fielding's novel scripted by John Osborne, won four Oscars from ten nominations, including Best Picture for 1963 and Best Director.
Q 11Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is set in which northern California town?
Bodega Bay
The Birds is set in Bodega Bay, a fishing village on the Sonoma County coast where Hitchcock shot on location; it introduced Tippi Hedren, and Evan Hunter built a new story around Daphne du Maurier's premise.
Q 12Who became the first Black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar, for Lilies of the Field (1963)?
Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier won Best Actor for 1963 as Homer Smith, a handyman who builds a chapel for East German nuns in the Arizona desert; he was the first Black winner of that award.
Q 13Steve McQueen's motorcycle jump is the famous stunt from which 1963 POW film?
The Great Escape
Q 21Which 1965 film overtook Gone with the Wind as the highest-grossing film ever?
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music, released in March 1965, passed Gone with the Wind in 1966 to become the highest-grossing film to that point; Robert Wise won Best Director and the film took Best Picture.
Q 22Because Pasternak's novel was banned in the USSR, where was Doctor Zhivago (1965) mostly filmed?
Spain
Doctor Zhivago was shot mainly in Spain: a Moscow street set was built outside Madrid and the winter scenes were filmed near Soria; Maurice Jarre's score, with 'Lara's Theme', won an Oscar.
Q 23Thunderball (1965) was the first Bond film shot in which widescreen format?
Panavision
The Great Escape's motorcycle jump was actually performed by stuntman Bud Ekins, McQueen's friend; McQueen won Best Actor at the 1963 Moscow International Film Festival for the role.
Q 14Ray Harryhausen's fight between the hero and seven skeleton warriors comes from which 1963 film?
Jason and the Argonauts
Jason and the Argonauts' skeleton fight took Ray Harryhausen over four months to animate; Bernard Herrmann composed the score, and Harryhausen called it his finest film.
Q 15In Dr. Strangelove (1964), how many different characters does Peter Sellers play?
Three
Peter Sellers plays three roles: President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove himself and RAF Group Captain Mandrake; he was also cast as Major Kong but a leg injury handed that part to Slim Pickens.
Q 16Goldfinger (1964) turned which car into the biggest-selling toy of the year via Corgi?
Aston Martin DB5
Goldfinger's gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5, with ejector seat and revolving number plates, became Corgi's best-selling toy in 1965; the film was the first Bond to gross over $100 million.
Q 17Mary Poppins (1964) was the feature-film debut of which actress, who won the Best Actress Oscar for it?
Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews made her film debut as Mary Poppins and won Best Actress for 1964, the same year she had been passed over for the screen version of My Fair Lady, her own Broadway role.
Q 18Who played Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 film of My Fair Lady?
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn played Eliza Doolittle, with Marni Nixon dubbing most of her singing; Rex Harrison repeated his stage Higgins and won Best Actor as the film took eight Oscars for 1964.
Q 19Clint Eastwood's first leading role was in which 1964 spaghetti western?
A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone's unofficial remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, gave Clint Eastwood his first lead for a fee of $15,000; Kurosawa's lawsuit won him a share of the worldwide gross.
Q 20Who directed the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night?
Richard Lester
Richard Lester directed A Hard Day's Night, shot in black and white in spring 1964 as a fictional day and a half in the band's life; Lester directed the Beatles again in Help! (1965).
Thunderball was the first Bond film shot in anamorphic Panavision, giving it a 2.35:1 widescreen frame; about a quarter of its running time is underwater, and it was Terence Young's last Bond.
Q 24Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) starred which real-life married pair as George and Martha?
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, married in 1964, played the warring George and Martha; Taylor won Best Actress for 1966, and all four credited cast members were Oscar-nominated.
Q 25Who played Sir Thomas More in the 1966 Best Picture winner A Man for All Seasons?
Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield, who had created Sir Thomas More on the West End stage in 1960, won Best Actor for the film; Robert Shaw played Henry VIII and John Hurt was Richard Rich.
Q 26In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), who plays 'the Ugly'?
Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach played Tuco, 'the Ugly', alongside Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef; the Italian title, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, actually orders them good, ugly, bad.
Q 27Which duo recorded the soundtrack for The Graduate (1967), including 'Mrs. Robinson'?
Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel supplied the songs, and 'Mrs. Robinson' went to number one in 1968 and won the Grammy for Record of the Year; Mike Nichols won Best Director for The Graduate.
Q 28Who played Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and also produced the film?
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty produced Bonnie and Clyde and starred as Clyde Barrow opposite Faye Dunaway; Estelle Parsons won the film's only acting Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress.
Q 29Which 1967 Best Picture winner gave us the line 'They call me Mister Tibbs!'?
In the Heat of the Night
In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture for 1967; the line is detective Virgil Tibbs's retort to Rod Steiger's Mississippi police chief, and Steiger won Best Actor.
Q 30Which actor, who died 17 days after filming ended, made his ninth and final film with Katharine Hepburn in 1967?
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy died on 10 June 1967, 17 days after completing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, his ninth film with Katharine Hepburn; she said she never watched it because the memories were too painful.