Bette Davis Trivia
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59 free Bette Davis trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bette Davis fought Warner Bros. in court, fought Joan Crawford for thirty years, fought her directors and, by her own account, fought her way to two Oscars and a record ten nominations. This quiz covers her whole career: the Lowell childhood and the Balzac heroine she took her name from, the write-in campaign after Of Human Bondage, Dangerous and Jezebel, the lawsuit she lost in London, the golden run of Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes and Now, Voyager, Margo Channing's bumpy night, and Baby Jane Hudson. It also covers the woman: four husbands, the Hollywood Canteen she co-founded, her stint as the Academy's first female president, the AFI and Kennedy Center honours, the Kim Carnes song, her daughter's tell-all memoir, the last films with Lillian Gish, and the epitaph she chose. Questions run from easy (which film gave us 'Fasten your seat belts') to expert (how much the English court ordered her to pay Warner Bros.). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Davis, her films and the people around her, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Joan Crawford, classic Hollywood and Academy Awards quizzes next.
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Q 01Bette Davis was born in 1908 in which Massachusetts mill city?
Lowell
Lowell-born Davis was a small child when her parents split up; her mother raised Bette and her younger sister alone and later worked as a portrait photographer.
Q 02The spelling of Davis's first name changed from Betty to Bette after a character by which novelist?
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac's novel La Cousine Bette supplied only the spelling: on paper she became Bette, but the name was still pronounced Betty.
Q 03Before her long Warner Bros. career, which studio gave Davis her film debut in Bad Sister (1931)?
Universal
Universal dropped her after about a year and six forgettable films. She was ready to return to the New York stage when George Arliss asked for her in The Man Who Played God.
Q 04Davis left Warner Bros. after which 1949 film she loathed, the origin of the line 'What a dump!'?
Beyond the Forest
Beyond the Forest appalled her: she tried to get out of it, and it ended with Jack Warner releasing her from her contract.
Q 05Davis broke through as waitress Mildred Rogers in a 1934 adaptation of which Maugham novel?
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage belonged to rival studio RKO, so Davis begged Warner Bros. to lend her out for the vicious Mildred; the acclaim made her name.
Q 06After an outcry when Davis missed a 1934 Best Actress nomination, what did the Academy allow for the first time?
Write-in votes
Write-in votes did not save Davis, who still lost, but the rule stayed one more year: long enough for cameraman Hal Mohr to become the only write-in ever to win an Oscar.
Q 07Davis won her first Academy Award for playing a washed-up Broadway actress in which 1935 film?
Dangerous
Dangerous won Davis the Oscar she always called a consolation prize: she believed voters were making amends for passing her over the year before.
Q 08Bette Davis long claimed she nicknamed the Academy Award 'Oscar' because its rear resembled whose?
Her first husband
Her first husband, bandleader Harmon Oscar Nelson, had the middle name to match. In 1974, though, Davis wrote that she gave up 'once and for all' any claim to have named it.
Q 09Who anonymously bought Davis's first Oscar at auction in 2002 and returned it to the Academy?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg paid $207,500 to rescue it. Winners since 1950 must offer their Oscars back to the Academy for $1 before selling, but older statuettes like hers can be sold freely.
Q 10What happened in 1936 when Warner Bros. took Davis to court in England for signing to film outside her contract?
She lost the case
She lost the case, and the court barred her from filming for anyone else. Yet Warner Bros. welcomed her back with better roles, and the most successful years of her career followed.
Q 11Davis's second Oscar came for playing headstrong 1850s Southern belle Julie Marsden in which 1938 film?
Jezebel
Jezebel turns on a dress: Julie shocks New Orleans by wearing red to a ball where unmarried women wear white, and the stunt costs her her fiancé.
Q 12At the 1963 Oscars, Davis watched rival Joan Crawford collect the Best Actress statuette on behalf of which absent winner?
Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft was busy on Broadway. Crawford, with no nomination of her own, had offered to accept for any absent winner, and took the stage beaming while a livid Davis looked on.
Q 13Who played Davis's leading man Preston Dillard in her 1938 antebellum drama?
Henry Fonda
Q 21In Now, Voyager (1942), which actor famously lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis?
Paul Henreid
Paul Henreid said the move came from a habit he shared with his wife. In the film it is the private ritual of two lovers who cannot marry, because his character Jerry already has a wife.
Q 22What was the name of Davis's repressed spinster heroine in Now, Voyager?
Charlotte Vale
Charlotte Vale begins as a dowdy spinster crushed by her domineering mother; a stay in a sanatorium and an ocean cruise turn her into a confident, elegant woman.
Q 23In 1961 Davis returned to Broadway as the hotel keeper Maxine in which new Tennessee Williams play?
The Night of the Iguana
Henry Fonda had to leave the shoot by a set date to be in New York for the birth of his daughter Jane, so Davis filmed her remaining close-ups without him.
Q 14In Dark Victory (1939) Davis's socialite Judith Traherne is diagnosed with what?
A brain tumour
A brain tumour dooms Judith in a role Davis later named as a favourite, though she tried to quit the shoot in despair over her collapsing marriage until her producer talked her round.
Q 15Which actor made eleven films with Davis, including Dark Victory?
George Brent
George Brent was, she wrote, 'the dearest' of the men she never married: their screen partnership turned into a love affair while they were making Dark Victory.
Q 16Davis starred opposite Errol Flynn in which 1939 costume drama?
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex gave her Flynn against her wishes: she had lobbied for Laurence Olivier. To play the ageing queen she shaved her hairline and eyebrows.
Q 17In The Letter (1940), Davis's Leslie Crosbie shoots a man on a rubber plantation in which part of the British Empire?
Malaya
Malaya was the setting of the real case behind Maugham's story: in 1911 a headmaster's wife in Kuala Lumpur shot a man dead, was convicted of murder and then pardoned by the sultan.
Q 18How did Davis's term as the first woman president of the Motion Picture Academy end?
She resigned within months
She resigned within months: the board had wanted a figurehead, and when her own proposals met resistance Davis walked away from the post.
Q 19Which actress created Davis's roles Regina Giddens and Judith Traherne on Broadway?
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead had won acclaim as Regina on stage. Making the film, Davis and director William Wyler fought bitterly over how the part should be played, and they never worked together again.
Q 20Davis co-founded the Hollywood Canteen, a free wartime club for servicemen, with which actor?
John Garfield
John Garfield, kept out of the forces by his heart, served as vice-president to Davis's president. At their club the stars themselves waited tables, washed dishes and mopped up.
The Night of the Iguana opened that December, and Davis lasted four months: she left pleading chronic illness, and Shelley Winters took over the part.
Q 24Davis longed to play which heroine of a 1939 film, a part she never got?
Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O'Hara went to Vivien Leigh. Davis blamed a quarrel with her studio boss for losing the part; the producer's side held that he never seriously considered her.
Q 25In All About Eve (1950) Davis played which fading Broadway star?
Margo Channing
Margo Channing arrived just when Davis needed her, months after her break with Warner Bros. She called the script the best she had ever read, and later said the film saved her professionally.
Q 26How does Davis's All About Eve line 'Fasten your seat belts…' end?
it's going to be a bumpy night
'It's going to be a bumpy night' is the line as spoken: the 'bumpy ride' that many people quote is a misquote. She delivers it on the stairs at her own party.
Q 27Which film first matched All About Eve's record 14 Oscar nominations?
Titanic
Titanic drew level in 1998 with 14 nominations of its own. Eve's included Best Actress nods for both Davis and Anne Baxter, and neither won: the Oscar went to Judy Holliday.
Q 28Which future star appears in one of her earliest roles in All About Eve?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe has just two scenes as the starlet Miss Caswell, and made a nervous start: a co-star recalled that her brief scene in a theatre lobby needed 25 takes.
Q 29Which All About Eve co-star became Davis's fourth and final husband in July 1950?
Gary Merrill
Gary Merrill played her lover Bill Sampson in the film; they married weeks after her divorce came through, and he adopted her daughter B.D.
Q 30Davis was a last-minute replacement in All About Eve after which star injured her back?
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert hurt her back filming Three Came Home, with the sets already booked. Davis read the script, said yes at once and was on set in San Francisco within days.