A Streetcar Named Desire
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free A Streetcar Named Desire trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A Streetcar Named Desire has been unsettling audiences since 1947. Tennessee Williams put a fragile schoolteacher with a past, her younger sister and a brother-in-law who trusts nobody into two cramped rooms in New Orleans, and let one hot summer do the rest. The 1951 film carried most of the Broadway company to Hollywood and made a star overnight. This quiz covers both versions. Expect questions on the plot scene by scene, with extra attention to the opening three scenes and the poker night that classes study most closely, plus the characters, the symbols, the famous lines (described, never quoted), the cast, the awards and what the censors changed on the way to the screen. It is written for students revising the play, for film fans who know the movie by heart, and for anyone who wants to test how much of the story has stayed with them. Later rounds reach into the stage history, the revivals and the adaptations.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actress won her second Best Actress Oscar playing Blanche DuBois in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire?
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh got the film part only after Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland turned it down; she had already played Blanche on the London stage.
Q 02Which actor, almost unknown when cast, played Stanley on Broadway and in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire?
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando was cast after the producer had first wanted John Garfield, and the film earned him the first of four straight Best Actor nominations.
Q 03Which animated series staged a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire, titled Oh, Streetcar!, in a 1992 episode?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons cast Marge as Blanche opposite Ned Flanders as Stanley, and a song mocking New Orleans drew so many complaints that Bart apologized in the next episode's chalkboard gag.
Q 04Which garment did Stanley's costume in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire help turn into fashionable outerwear?
The T-shirt
The T-shirt was still a navy undergarment that veterans had begun wearing with their uniform trousers, until the film helped make it stylish on its own.
Q 05Which body of law does Stanley cite in Scene Two of A Streetcar Named Desire to claim a share of Stella's property?
The Napoleonic Code
The Napoleonic Code still shaped Louisiana law from its French colonial past, so Stanley argues that if Stella was swindled out of the family estate, he was swindled too.
Q 06Which star of The African Queen won the 1951 Best Actor Oscar, the one acting award A Streetcar Named Desire missed?
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart's win stopped a clean sweep: the film's Blanche, Stella and Mitch all took Oscars, making it the first picture to win three acting awards.
Q 07In Scene Three of A Streetcar Named Desire, what does Blanche ask Mitch to hang over the bare light bulb?
A paper lantern
A paper lantern softens the glare so that Mitch never sees her clearly, and in Scene Nine he tears it off to look at her in the full electric light.
Q 08What do contestants do in the Streetcar Named Desire contest that closes New Orleans's Tennessee Williams festival?
Shout Stella's name
Contestants shout Stella's name up at actors on a gallery above Jackson Square, as Stanley does after the poker night; the contest has closed the festival since 1996.
Q 09How did censors make the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire end differently from Tennessee Williams's play?
Stella leaves Stanley
Stella leaves Stanley in the film, fleeing upstairs with the baby at the censors' insistence; on stage she stays and lets him console her.
Q 10What is the name of the lost Mississippi plantation where Blanche and Stella grew up in A Streetcar Named Desire?
Belle Reve
Belle Reve, French for beautiful dream, was lost on a mortgage after generations of family mismanagement, which is why Blanche arrives at her sister's door with a trunk.
Q 11From which Mississippi town, where she taught school, does Blanche arrive in A Streetcar Named Desire?
Laurel
Laurel is a real Mississippi town, which the 1951 film swapped for the invented Auriol, and a salesman with contacts there brings Stanley the gossip about Blanche.
Q 12Which school subject did Blanche DuBois teach in Mississippi before coming to New Orleans in A Streetcar Named Desire?
English
English was her subject, and she says she is taking time off for her nerves; in truth she was dismissed over an affair with a teenage student.
Q 13After riding the Desire line in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche must transfer to a streetcar with which name?
Cemeteries
Cemeteries was a real New Orleans line, and its pairing with Desire introduces the death and longing that run through the whole play.
Q 21Which director staged A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway in 1947 and then made the 1951 film version?
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan kept most of his Broadway cast and had the apartment set designed to appear smaller as the film goes on, to mirror the tension between the characters.
Q 22Which actress originated Blanche DuBois on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire but was passed over for the 1951 film?
Jessica Tandy
Jessica Tandy won a Tony for the role, but the film's producer wanted more box-office appeal, which made her the only one of the four Broadway leads left out.
Q 23Which actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Mitch in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire?
Karl Malden
Q 14The Kowalskis' New Orleans street in A Streetcar Named Desire is named after which place in Greek myth?
Elysian Fields
Elysian Fields is a real New Orleans avenue, and the resting place of the heroic and virtuous is a pointed name for the shabby block where Blanche's journey ends.
Q 15Which sport does Stanley go off to play as A Streetcar Named Desire opens, with Stella following to watch?
Bowling
Bowling keeps Stanley out of the flat when Blanche arrives, so a neighbor has to fetch Stella from the alley while Blanche waits alone inside.
Q 16What does Stanley toss up to Stella on the landing in the opening moments of A Streetcar Named Desire?
A package of meat
A package of meat from the butcher is his first gesture in the play, and the two women sitting on the front steps crow over its innuendo.
Q 17Which drink does Blanche secretly help herself to while waiting alone in the Kowalski flat in A Streetcar Named Desire?
Whiskey
Whiskey from the closet is her first act alone on stage: she takes a quick drink, rinses the tumbler and puts everything back, then presents herself as a lady who rarely touches it.
Q 18In Scene Two of A Streetcar Named Desire, which items in Blanche's trunk convince Stanley she has cheated Stella?
Furs and jewelry
Furs and jewelry spill out as he ransacks the trunk, sure they cost thousands, and Stella has to explain that the gems are only rhinestones.
Q 19What news about Stella does Stanley let slip to Blanche at the end of Scene Two of A Streetcar Named Desire?
She is pregnant
She is pregnant, and Stella had told him to keep quiet about it so that the news would not land on her sister's delicate nerves all at once.
Q 20During the poker night in Scene Three of A Streetcar Named Desire, what does a drunken Stanley hurl out of the window?
The radio
The radio goes through the window because Blanche has switched it back on to dance with Mitch, and when Stella yells at him for it, Stanley hits her.
Karl Malden had created Mitch on Broadway, and he was nominated again three years later as the priest in On the Waterfront.
Q 24Which actress won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar as Stella in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire?
Kim Hunter
Kim Hunter was blacklisted from film and television later in the 1950s, then found a new audience as the chimpanzee scientist Zira in Planet of the Apes.
Q 25Which fact about Blanche's dead husband did Hollywood's censors cut from the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire?
He was gay
He was gay, and on stage Blanche tells how she found him with an older man; in the film she speaks only of scorning his sensitive nature.
Q 26Alex North's score for the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire was one of Hollywood's first in which musical style?
Jazz
Jazz suited the New Orleans setting, and North wrote it in short cues that follow each character's state of mind, which earned him an Oscar nomination.
Q 27Which major American award for drama did A Streetcar Named Desire win in 1948, months after its Broadway opening?
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize came alongside the New York Drama Critics' Circle award, but that season's Tony for best play went to Mister Roberts instead.
Q 28A Streetcar Named Desire is usually classed in which literary genre, shared with William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor?
Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic dwells on violence, cruelty and the decay of the plantation South, all of which the play packs into a two-room flat.
Q 29Which earlier Tennessee Williams play, his 1944 breakthrough, came before A Streetcar Named Desire?
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie took Williams from obscurity to fame, and its fragile Laura was based on his sister Rose.
Q 30Tennessee Williams's sister Rose, a model for Blanche DuBois, was left incapacitated by which psychiatric procedure?
A lobotomy
A lobotomy left Rose incapacitated, and the success of A Streetcar Named Desire enabled Williams to finance her care.