100 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 100 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 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01I Love Lucy premiered in October 1951 on which network?
CBS
It ran for 180 half-hour episodes over six seasons and was still the most-watched show in America when it ended in 1957.
Q 02Where did the name of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's studio, Desilu, come from?
The couple's first names
Desilu later produced Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and The Untouchables, and Ball ran it herself after the divorce.
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
The birth episode aired the night before Eisenhower's inauguration and drew more viewers than the swearing-in did.
Q 04I Love Lucy pioneered filming a sitcom in front of a live audience with how many cameras?
Three
Cinematographer Karl Freund, who had shot Metropolis, worked out how to light the set evenly for all the cameras at once, and the format is still standard for sitcoms.
Q 05What job did Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden hold on The Honeymooners?
Bus driver
He worked for the fictional Gotham Bus Company but was almost never seen actually driving; a Brooklyn bus depot was later named for Gleason.
Q 06Where did Ralph's upstairs neighbour Ed Norton work?
The city sewers
Norton described himself as a 'sub-supervisor in the sub-division of the department of subterranean sanitation'.
Q 07Before the "Classic 39" on CBS, The Honeymooners began as sketches on Cavalcade of Stars on which network?
DuMont
When Gleason moved to CBS, Audrey Meadows took over as Alice because original Alice Pert Kelton had been blacklisted.
Q 08Who played Marshal Matt Dillon on the TV version of Gunsmoke?
James Arness
William Conrad had voiced Dillon on radio; the popular story that John Wayne was offered the TV role is disputed by cast members.
Q 09Gunsmoke was set in which frontier town?
Dodge City, Kansas
The show's Long Branch Saloon was a real Dodge City establishment, and 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
Its 635 episodes made it the longest-running scripted primetime series in America until The Simpsons passed it.
Q 11Who created and hosted The Twilight Zone, which premiered on CBS in October 1959?
Rod Serling
The show's first season earned him an unprecedented fourth Emmy for dramatic writing.
Q 12Of The Twilight Zone's 156 episodes, how many did its creator write or co-write himself?
92
Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson wrote most of the rest; the three of them account for 127 of the 156 scripts.
Q 13In which fictional town do the Cleavers live in Leave It to Beaver?
Mayfield
The family moved from 485 Mapleton Drive to 211 Pine Street for season three, and June was later elected to the town council.
Q 21Which 1994 Robert Redford film dramatised the Twenty-One scandal?
Quiz Show
Stempel consulted on the film; Van Doren turned down $100,000 to do the same.
Q 22How many freckles did the Howdy Doody marionette have?
48
One for every state in the union at the time he was built, a count that went out of date when Alaska joined in January 1959.
Q 23Which future children's TV star first played Howdy Doody's mute clown?
Bob Keeshan
The clown didn't speak because a speaking actor would have had to be paid union scale on the low-budget show.
Howdy Doody's onstage kids' bleachers inspired a syndicate to rename which Charles Schulz comic strip?
Q 14'Beaver' Cleaver's real first name is what?
Theodore
The nickname supposedly came from big brother Wally mispronouncing it when Beaver was a baby.
Q 15Which Leave It to Beaver character was polite to adults and a wise guy behind their backs?
Eddie Haskell
Ken Osmond played him for the whole run and, in the 1980s sequel, an adult Haskell running a contracting business with a son just like him.
Q 16Under what title did The Ed Sullivan Show originally air from 1948?
Toast of the Town
It was widely called The Ed Sullivan Show for years before that became the official name in September 1955.
Q 17Elvis Presley's first Ed Sullivan appearance in September 1956 drew what record share of the TV audience?
82.6%
The famous 'from the waist up' camera order only applied to his third and final appearance, not this one.
Q 18Twenty-One champion Charles Van Doren, later exposed as having been fed the answers, taught at which university?
Columbia
His run made the cover of Time and briefly pushed Twenty-One past I Love Lucy in the ratings before it all unravelled.
Q 19Herb Stempel was ordered to lose on Twenty-One by missing which Best Picture winner?
Marty
He was told to answer with the previous year's winner instead, and it was one of his favourite films, which made the dive sting all the more.
Q 20How much had Van Doren won on Twenty-One by the time he was finally beaten in March 1957?
$129,000
He was unseated by lawyer Vivienne Nearing; his defeat came before the fixing was exposed and he later lost his job on NBC's Today.
Peanuts
Schulz reportedly hated the name for the rest of his life; his strip had been called Li'l Folks.
Q 25Jack Webb played which Los Angeles police sergeant on Dragnet?
Joe Friday
Webb also created the show and had wanted Lloyd Nolan for the TV role before agreeing to play it himself.
Q 26Under what title was the 1950s Dragnet later syndicated?
Badge 714
714 was Friday's badge number, and the real LAPD later retired it in Webb's honour.
Q 27Which cosmetics company sponsored The $64,000 Question, lending its name to the isolation booth?
Revlon
The show broadcast live from CBS Studio 52 in New York, a building that later became the disco Studio 54.
Q 28Psychologist Joyce Brothers became famous by winning The $64,000 Question on which subject?
Boxing
She parlayed the win into four decades of advice columns and TV appearances, the most durable career the show produced.
Q 29Raymond Burr originally auditioned for which role on Perry Mason?
Prosecutor Hamilton Burger
Burr lost 100 pounds for the part and went on to play Mason for nine seasons and 271 episodes.
Q 30Perry Mason was based on detective novels by which lawyer-turned-writer?
Erle Stanley Gardner
Over nine seasons Mason lost only three cases on screen, and even those were quietly declared mistrials.