All About Eve
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50 free All About Eve trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
All About Eve is the sharpest backstage story the movies ever told: an adoring young fan talks her way into the life of a great stage star, then starts quietly helping herself to it. More than seventy years on, its dialogue is still quoted and its plot is still borrowed. This quiz covers the whole picture: Margo Channing, Eve Harrington and the people caught between them, the actors who played them and the ones who nearly did, the short story and real-life anecdote behind the script, the awards season that made history, and the musicals, plays and television parodies that followed. It suits classic-film fans, theatre lovers and anyone putting together a movie-night round. Questions run from easy plot points to deep cuts about the production, and each comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future superstar has a small early role as aspiring actress Miss Casswell in All About Eve?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe appears in only two scenes, and turned up an hour late for her first day on the party sequence. One short lobby exchange reportedly took 25 takes.
Q 02Which 1990s blockbuster matched the record 14 Oscar nominations that All About Eve had held alone for decades?
Titanic
Titanic equalled the tally in 1998 and then won eleven of its fourteen races, where the older film had converted six.
Q 03Which screen legend played ageing stage star Margo Channing in All About Eve after the actress first cast was injured?
Bette Davis
Bette Davis was given just ten days to get ready, and at first took the studio chief's phone call offering her the part for a prank.
Q 04In All About Eve, which theatre job does Eve Harrington obtain behind Margo Channing's back, with Karen's help?
Understudy
Understudy is the post Eve secures without Margo knowing; when Margo is tricked into missing a show, Eve goes on in her place and triumphs.
Q 05All About Eve earned 14 Oscar nominations, breaking a record of 13 set by which 1939 epic?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind had held the nominations record for eleven years, and it still took home more statuettes: eight competitive Oscars to the newer film's six.
Q 06Which granddaughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright played scheming fan Eve Harrington in All About Eve?
Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter was picked partly because she resembled the actress first cast as Margo, the idea being that Eve would slowly come to mirror her idol.
Q 07At the end of All About Eve, newly crowned stage star Eve Harrington is about to leave New York for where?
Hollywood
Hollywood is Eve's next rung, a sly joke in a story whose theatre people spend two hours sneering at the picture business.
Q 08In All About Eve, Eve Harrington wins Margo Channing's sympathy by falsely claiming to be what?
A war widow
A war widow is the part Eve invents, saying her husband died in the South Pacific; the truth, exposed late on, is that she never married at all.
Q 09Which Spanish director titled his Oscar-winning 1999 drama as a homage to All About Eve?
Pedro Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar named it All About My Mother, and it went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Q 10Which other 1950 classic about a fading actress lost the Best Picture Oscar to All About Eve?
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard arrived with eleven nominations, including one in every acting category, yet none of its four nominated performers won.
Q 11Which acid-tongued critic narrates the opening of All About Eve and later exposes Eve Harrington's invented past?
Addison DeWitt
Addison DeWitt digs up Eve's true name and history, then uses the secret to stop her marrying a married man and to bind her to himself.
Q 12Which suave British actor won the only acting Oscar awarded to All About Eve, as a venomous newspaper columnist?
George Sanders
George Sanders took Best Supporting Actor while all four of the film's nominated actresses left empty-handed. A later generation knows his purr as Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book.
Q 13Who both wrote and directed All About Eve, collecting two Oscars for it a year after winning the same pair?
Joseph Mankiewicz
Q 21Which powerful studio chief personally produced All About Eve and sent nine pages of notes on its script?
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck urged that the maid's early distrust be toned down, so audiences would not spot Eve as the schemer until much later.
Q 22Which writer's 1946 magazine short story inspired All About Eve, though she received no screen credit?
Mary Orr
Mary Orr sold the film rights for $5,000 and went unnamed in the titles, yet she played Karen herself when the tale was dramatised for radio.
Q 23Which magazine published "The Wisdom of Eve", the 1946 short story that became All About Eve?
Cosmopolitan
Joseph Mankiewicz had taken the same two prizes twelve months earlier for A Letter to Three Wives, which made four statuettes in two years.
Q 14Which major studio made All About Eve, with a score by the composer of its own famous logo fanfare?
20th Century-Fox
20th Century-Fox employed the fanfare's composer as its music chief for two decades, and his work here earned one of the film's fourteen nominations.
Q 15Which stage prize, invented for All About Eve, inspired a real Chicago society to start presenting it in 1952?
Sarah Siddons Award
The Sarah Siddons Award existed only in the script until Chicago theatregoers, among them Nancy Reagan's mother, founded a society to hand out a real one.
Q 16Which Born Yesterday star won the Best Actress Oscar over both leading ladies of All About Eve?
Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday beat a field that held two nominees from one film, which is still the only picture to earn four acting nominations for women.
Q 17Which star was cast as Margo Channing in All About Eve but withdrew after injuring her back on another film?
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert hurt her back shooting Three Came Home, and with a location already leased for two weeks the producers could not wait for her to heal.
Q 18Which character actress earned the first of her six Oscar nominations as Margo Channing's maid in All About Eve?
Thelma Ritter
Thelma Ritter never won on any of those six Best Supporting Actress nominations, all of them earned within twelve years.
Q 19In All About Eve, Eve Harrington says she first saw Margo Channing act in which city, far from New York?
San Francisco
San Francisco is part of the lie, since Eve had never been there, though the real city lent the production its Curran Theatre for the playhouse scenes.
Q 20Which 1970 Broadway musical based on All About Eve won the Tony Award for Best Musical?
Applause
Applause ran for 896 performances at the Palace Theatre, and its second Margo was the very actress who had played Eve on screen twenty years before.
Cosmopolitan ran the story in May 1946 and came back for more, printing a sequel called More About Eve five years later.
Q 24Which stage star's real-life anecdote about a scheming young secretary inspired the story behind All About Eve?
Elisabeth Bergner
Elisabeth Bergner took in a young fan who had stood outside the Booth Theatre for days, gave her a job, then watched her try to take over.
Q 25Which costume designer, the most honoured woman in Oscar history, shared a win for All About Eve?
Edith Head
Edith Head won twice that night, sharing the monochrome prize for this film and the colour prize for Samson and Delilah.
Q 26Which character in All About Eve is Margo Channing's sharp-tongued maid, who shows an early mistrust of Eve?
Birdie
Birdie does not exist in the original short story: the part was written specially for a character actress the writer-director had just worked with.
Q 27In the final shot of All About Eve, what is young intruder Phoebe holding as she bows to a mirror?
Eve's award
Eve's award had been left in a taxi and returned to the flat; Phoebe keeps hold of it, slips on Eve's cloak and bows, the next schemer in line.
Q 28Which film star won a Tony Award playing Margo Channing in the 1970 stage musical of All About Eve?
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall won Best Actress in a Musical, then took the show out on tour when her contract ended in 1971.
Q 29Which screen star played Margo Channing opposite Lily James in the 2019 London stage version of All About Eve?
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson led the production at the Noël Coward Theatre for director Ivo van Hove, nearly seventy years after the film opened.
Q 30Which animated series spoofed All About Eve in a 2008 episode about a young assistant who steals her boss's show?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons called the episode All About Lisa: Lisa goes to work for Krusty the Clown, takes over his programme and collects an entertainer award.