1962 Movies
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50 free 1962 Movies trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
1962 has a fair claim to be one of the great years in cinema. Lawrence of Arabia swept the Oscars, To Kill a Mockingbird gave the screen one of its most admired heroes, and a spy thriller called Dr. No started the James Bond series. The same year brought The Manchurian Candidate, The Longest Day, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Lolita, Cape Fear and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This quiz covers the best and most-watched films of the year, from the big American releases to the foreign classics that critics still celebrate: Cléo from 5 to 7, Ivan's Childhood, Sanjuro, Knife in the Water and The Exterminating Angel. Expect questions on stars, directors, plots, awards and the stories behind the camera, most of them pitched for casual film fans, with a few tougher ones for the buffs. It is written for movie-night hosts, pub quiz setters and anyone working through the top films of 1962. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor became the big screen's first James Bond when Dr. No opened in British cinemas?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery was taken by director Terence Young to his own tailor and hairdresser, then round London's restaurants and casinos, to polish him for the part.
Q 02Which playing card triggers brainwashed soldier Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate?
Queen of diamonds
Queen of diamonds turns up when he is told to play solitaire, and it switches him on. His sweetheart later triggers him by accident, by wearing the card as a fancy-dress costume.
Q 03Which Hollywood mogul produced The Longest Day, the all-star epic restaging the D-Day landings?
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck produced it for 20th Century-Fox and used three directors, one each for the British and French, American and German scenes.
Q 04Which fellow Hollywood veteran played Bette Davis's wheelchair-bound sister Blanche in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford and Davis were dogged by rumours of an on-set feud, which both later denied. The gossip helped sell the film, and its success revived both careers.
Q 05Which actor became a star playing T. E. Lawrence in David Lean's desert epic Lawrence of Arabia?
Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole won over David Lean with a single screen test, though at 6 ft 2 he towered over the real Lawrence. The epic has no speaking roles for women.
Q 06Which future heavyweight champion plays himself, beating Anthony Quinn's ageing boxer, in Requiem for a Heavyweight?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali, then still known as Cassius Clay, is the young opponent in the opening bout. The beating he hands out ends the older fighter's career.
Q 07Which star was fired from the unfinished comedy Something's Got to Give two months before her death in 1962?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe had signed a new contract to finish the film only days before she died. Fox later reshot the whole story with a new cast as Move Over, Darling.
Q 08Which 16-year-old became the youngest competitive Oscar winner up to that time as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker?
Patty Duke
Patty Duke had already played the part on stage, yet she almost lost the film role. Anne Bancroft, who played her teacher, won Best Actress for the same picture.
Q 09Which actor won the Best Actor Oscar as small-town lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch was later named the greatest movie hero of the 20th century by the American Film Institute.
Q 10Which actress played Laurence Harvey's scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate, though only three years his senior?
Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury got the role because director John Frankenheimer insisted on her, after Frank Sinatra had suggested Lucille Ball. It earned her an Oscar nomination.
Q 11At which prison did Robert Stroud, the real Birdman of Alcatraz, actually keep and study his birds?
Leavenworth
Leavenworth is where he was allowed birds in his cell. He never kept a single one at Alcatraz, despite the nickname that gave Burt Lancaster's film its title.
Q 12Which actor played vengeful ex-convict Max Cady in the original Cape Fear, remade by Martin Scorsese in 1991?
Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum turned the part down at first, then gave in after the director and his co-star sent him flowers and a case of bourbon.
Q 13Which actress walked out of the sea as Honey Ryder in Dr. No?
Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress was cast only two weeks before filming, from a photograph. Her accent was so strong that another actress dubbed all her lines.
Q 21Which French New Wave director made Jules and Jim, the love-triangle drama starring Jeanne Moreau?
François Truffaut
François Truffaut found the source novel in a Paris shop in the mid-1950s and later befriended its author. The film's brisk energy is said to have influenced Scorsese's GoodFellas.
Q 22Which later science-fiction film was inspired by La Jetée, a French time-travel short told almost entirely in stills?
Twelve Monkeys
Twelve Monkeys, usually styled 12 Monkeys, acknowledges the debt in its opening credits. Chris Marker called his original a photo novel, not a film.
Q 23The title of Hatari!, the John Wayne adventure about catching wild animals, means 'Danger!' in which language?
Swahili
Q 14Which British comic actor played playwright Clare Quilty, pursued by James Mason's Humbert, in Kubrick's Lolita?
Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers was given a far bigger part than Quilty has in the novel, and the director let him play it in a string of disguises.
Q 15Which actor played the outlaw Liberty Valance opposite John Wayne and James Stewart in John Ford's 1962 western?
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin's villain faced two stars who had never shared a film before. Ford shot it in black and white, reportedly sure the final shoot-out would not work in colour.
Q 16Which star of Mutiny on the Bounty fell for Tarita, the Tahitian newcomer he had picked to play his love interest?
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando wrote that he turned down the lead in Lawrence of Arabia because he preferred Tahiti to six months in the desert. He and Tarita went on to have two children.
Q 17In which state is River City, the town that con man Harold Hill sets out to swindle in The Music Man?
Iowa
Iowa was home to the show's creator, Meredith Willson, and the film had its premiere in his home town of Mason City during a band festival.
Q 18Which West Side Story star played the title role in Gypsy, this time doing her own singing?
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood had been dubbed by Marni Nixon in West Side Story a year earlier. Here she plays the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, with Rosalind Russell as her mother, Rose.
Q 19Which actor played Joe Clay, a PR man who slides into alcoholism with his wife, in Days of Wine and Roses?
Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick both earned Oscar nominations as the couple, who go from two-martini lunches to ruin. Joe finally gets sober with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Q 20Which three-camera widescreen process, shown on a huge curved screen, was used to film How the West Was Won?
Cinerama
Cinerama was used for only two dramatic features, this western and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. John Ford grumbled that its wide view meant dressing enormous sets.
Swahili supplied the title, and the film was shot on location in northern Tanganyika, in what is now Tanzania.
Q 24Which composer won an Oscar with lyricist Johnny Mercer for the title song of Days of Wine and Roses?
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini also wrote 'Baby Elephant Walk' that year for a safari adventure. The Wine and Roses title comes from an 1896 poem by the English writer Ernest Dowson.
Q 25Sanjuro, Akira Kurosawa's samurai film starring Toshiro Mifune, is a sequel to which earlier hit?
Yojimbo
Yojimbo was such a success that the studio wanted its antihero back, so Kurosawa reworked a script he was adapting from a novel to fit him.
Q 26Which Soviet director made his feature debut with Ivan's Childhood, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice?
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky shot the war drama only two years after his film-school diploma piece, The Steamroller and the Violin.
Q 27Which French novelist's adventures inspired both In Search of the Castaways and Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1962?
Jules Verne
Jules Verne's Captain Grant's Children became the Disney film, built as a vehicle for Hayley Mills. Fox even pressed a rival balloon picture to drop all mention of his name.
Q 28Which American author's stories did Roger Corman film as Tales of Terror, starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe's tales drove Roger Corman's cycle of eight films, and this was the fourth. For a melting-face effect, a hot mix of glue, glycerin and corn starch was poured over Price's head.
Q 29Which singing star played opposite Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink, one of the biggest hits of 1962?
Doris Day
Doris Day recalled that Grant helped choose her wardrobe and dressed the library set with books from his own home. The comedy was the fourth-highest earner of the year.
Q 30Which director, later notorious for The Wild Bunch, made the western Ride the High Country with Randolph Scott?
Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah was hired on the strength of his TV series The Westerner and rewrote the script himself. The film gave Randolph Scott his final screen role.