50s TV Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
99 free 50s TV trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The 1950s were the decade television took over the American living room, and this quiz covers the whole picture: the sitcoms (I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best), the Westerns (Gunsmoke, Maverick, Have Gun – Will Travel, Bonanza), the kids' shows (Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, The Mickey Mouse Club), the variety hours, the anthology dramas and the quiz shows that ended in scandal. The 99 questions run from easy to genuinely hard, so a family game night can play it together: grandparents who watched these shows live, parents who grew up on the reruns and kids meeting Lucy for the first time. Expect Marshal Dillon and Sergeant Bilko, but also Elvis on Ed Sullivan, Nixon's cocker spaniel and the professor who was fed the answers on Twenty-One. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article for the show or event before it went in, and each question carries a citation you can open. Play through the questions on screen or use the answers page to run your own 50s TV trivia round.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01I Love Lucy premiered in October 1951 on which network?
CBS
CBS aired I Love Lucy from October 1951 to 1957: 180 half-hour episodes over six seasons, and it ended its run as America's top-rated show.
Q 02Where did the name of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's studio, Desilu, come from?
The couple's first names
Desilu came from "The couple's first names", Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball; after their 1960 divorce Ball bought out Arnaz and ran the studio that made Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.
Q 03What happens in the record-setting January 1953 I Love Lucy episode watched by 71.7 percent of TV homes?
Little Ricky is born
"Little Ricky is born" in 'Lucy Goes to the Hospital', aired 19 January 1953, the night before Eisenhower's inauguration; about 44 million viewers watched, more than saw the swearing-in.
Q 04I Love Lucy pioneered filming a sitcom in front of a live audience with how many cameras?
Three
Three cameras filmed each scene at once; cinematographer Karl Freund, who had shot Metropolis, devised flat, even lighting so every angle worked, and the multi-camera sitcom became an industry standard.
Q 05What job did Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden hold on The Honeymooners?
Bus driver
Ralph was a Bus driver for the fictional Gotham Bus Company, though he was almost never shown behind the wheel; New York City later named a Brooklyn bus depot after Gleason.
Q 06Where did Ralph's upstairs neighbour Ed Norton work?
The city sewers
Ed Norton, played by Art Carney, worked underground in The city sewers; Carney's Norton won him Emmy Awards in 1954, 1955 and 1956.
Q 07Before the "Classic 39" on CBS, The Honeymooners began as sketches on Cavalcade of Stars on which network?
DuMont
The Honeymooners debuted as a sketch on DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars in 1951; when Gleason left DuMont the next year, Audrey Meadows replaced Pert Kelton, who had been blacklisted, as Alice.
Q 08Who played Marshal Matt Dillon on the TV version of Gunsmoke?
James Arness
James Arness, six foot seven, played Dillon for the show's entire run; William Conrad had voiced the marshal on radio, and John Wayne introduced the 1955 premiere, recommending Arness to viewers.
Q 09Gunsmoke was set in which frontier town?
Dodge City, Kansas
Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City, Kansas, where the Long Branch Saloon had been a real 1880s establishment; the modern town's Boot Hill Museum trades on the connection.
Q 10How many seasons did the TV Gunsmoke run after its 1955 debut?
20
Gunsmoke ran 20 seasons, from 1955 to 1975, and its 635 episodes stood as the record for an American scripted primetime series until The Simpsons passed the mark in 2018.
Q 11Who created and hosted The Twilight Zone, which premiered on CBS in October 1959?
Rod Serling
Rod Serling created, narrated and wrote most of the series; its first season earned him his fourth Emmy for dramatic writing, after wins for Patterns, Requiem for a Heavyweight and The Comedian.
Q 12Of The Twilight Zone's 156 episodes, how many did its creator write or co-write himself?
92
Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of the 156 scripts himself; Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson supplied most of the remainder.
Q 13In which fictional town do the Cleavers live in Leave It to Beaver?
Mayfield
The Cleavers lived in the fictional town of Mayfield, first at 485 Mapleton Drive and, from the third season, at 211 Pine Street.
Q 21Which 1994 Robert Redford film dramatised the Twenty-One scandal?
Quiz Show
Quiz Show, directed by Redford, cast Ralph Fiennes as Van Doren and John Turturro as Stempel; Stempel consulted on the film while Van Doren declined a $100,000 offer to do the same.
Q 22How many freckles did the Howdy Doody marionette have?
48
Howdy had 48 freckles, one for each state in the union when the marionette was built; the count went out of date when Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959.
Q 23Which future children's TV star first played Howdy Doody's mute clown?
Bob Keeshan
Bob Keeshan, who later created and starred as Captain Kangaroo, was the original Clarabell; the clown communicated only with a horn and a seltzer bottle.
Q 14'Beaver' Cleaver's real first name is what?
Theodore
Beaver was christened Theodore; the show explained that toddler Wally mangled "Theodore" into "Tweeder", which the family softened into Beaver.
Q 15Which Leave It to Beaver character was polite to adults and a wise guy behind their backs?
Eddie Haskell
Eddie Haskell, played by Ken Osmond for the whole run, returned in the 1980s sequel as an adult contractor with a son, played by Osmond's real son, who was just as two-faced.
Q 16Under what title did The Ed Sullivan Show originally air from 1948?
Toast of the Town
Toast of the Town premiered in June 1948; viewers called it The Ed Sullivan Show for years before that became the official title in September 1955.
Q 17Elvis Presley's first Ed Sullivan appearance in September 1956 drew what record share of the TV audience?
82.6%
Elvis drew an 82.6% share, about 60 million viewers, on 9 September 1956; the famous waist-up camera order applied only to his third and final appearance in January 1957.
Q 18Twenty-One champion Charles Van Doren, later exposed as having been fed the answers, taught at which university?
Columbia
Van Doren was an English instructor at Columbia, where his father Mark was a celebrated professor; his run made the cover of Time in February 1957 before the fixing was exposed.
Q 19Herb Stempel was ordered to lose on Twenty-One by missing which Best Picture winner?
Marty
Stempel was told to miss Marty, the 1955 Best Picture winner, and name the prior year's winner instead; Marty was one of his favourite films, which made the dive sting more.
Q 20How much had Van Doren won on Twenty-One by the time he was finally beaten in March 1957?
$129,000
Van Doren left with $129,000 after lawyer Vivienne Nearing beat him in March 1957; the scandal later cost him his job on NBC's Today show.
Q 24Jack Webb played which Los Angeles police sergeant on Dragnet?
Joe Friday
Webb created, produced and directed Dragnet as well as playing Sergeant Joe Friday; the cases were drawn from real LAPD files, with names changed to protect the innocent.
Q 25Under what title was the 1950s Dragnet later syndicated?
Badge 714
Reruns of the 1950s series went out as Badge 714, after Friday's badge number; the real LAPD retired badge 714 when Webb died in 1982 and buried him with police honours.
Q 26Which cosmetics company sponsored The $64,000 Question, lending its name to the isolation booth?
Revlon
Revlon sponsored the show and gave its name to the Revlon isolation booth; broadcasts went out live from Studio 52 in New York, the building that later housed the disco Studio 54.
Q 27Psychologist Joyce Brothers became famous by winning The $64,000 Question on which subject?
Boxing
Brothers won the top prize in 1955 answering questions on Boxing, a subject she had crammed from reference books; the win launched four decades of advice columns and television.
Q 28Raymond Burr originally auditioned for which role on Perry Mason?
Prosecutor Hamilton Burger
Burr tested for Prosecutor Hamilton Burger, but the novels' author, watching the screen test, insisted he was Perry Mason; after slimming down he played the lawyer for nine seasons and 271 episodes.
Q 29Perry Mason was based on detective novels by which lawyer-turned-writer?
Erle Stanley Gardner
Erle Stanley Gardner, a practising California lawyer before he turned to fiction, wrote more than eighty Perry Mason novels, beginning with The Case of the Velvet Claws in 1933.
Q 30American Bandstand was broadcast from which city before it moved to Los Angeles in 1964?
Philadelphia
Bandstand began locally on Philadelphia's WFIL-TV in 1952 and went national on ABC in August 1957 with Dick Clark hosting; it stayed in Philadelphia until the 1964 move west.