Cary Grant Trivia
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48 free Cary Grant trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Cary Grant trivia quiz follows the boy born Archibald Leach in a Bristol suburb to the man the American Film Institute ranked the second-greatest male star of Hollywood's Golden Age. It starts with the childhood he rarely discussed: the mother he was told was dead, the expulsion from Fairfield Grammar School, the acrobatic troupe that took him to New York on the same ship as Douglas Fairbanks, the stilt-walking on Coney Island and the Broadway flops that led to a Paramount contract and a new name. From there it covers the career: Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, the decision to go freelance, the screwball run of The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story, the two Oscar nominations, the four Hitchcock films from Suspicion to North by Northwest, the Savile Row suit, the retirement after Charade and Father Goose, and the Bond role he was offered first. It also asks about the five marriages, 'Cash and Cary', Randolph Scott and Bachelor Hall, the LSD sessions, the Fabergé boardroom, the honorary Oscar Frank Sinatra presented, and the night in Davenport, Iowa, where it ended. Questions range from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article on Cary Grant.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which birth name did Cary Grant slip into an ad-libbed line in His Girl Friday?
Archie Leach
Archie Leach. His character warns that the last man to cross him that way was Archie Leach, shortly before he cut his throat: an in-joke about the name his studio had made him drop.
Q 02In which English city was Cary Grant born in 1904?
Bristol
Bristol. He ran away from home there as a schoolboy to join a troupe of acrobats, sailed with them for America at 16 and stayed behind when the tour ended.
Q 03When Cary Grant was a boy his mother vanished from home; where had his father in fact sent her?
A mental institution
A mental institution. He was told she had gone away and grew up believing her dead; he was past thirty, and a film star, before he learned the truth and arranged her release.
Q 04Which actor mimicked Cary Grant's voice in Some Like It Hot, then co-starred with him in Operation Petticoat?
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis. As a teenager he had joined the Navy's submarine service after seeing Grant in Destination Tokyo; in Operation Petticoat he at last served under him, aboard a pink submarine.
Q 05What skill did young Cary Grant train in with the Bob Pender Stage Troupe?
Stilt walking
Stilt walking. Having stayed on in New York when the troupe went home, he earned five dollars a day, ten at weekends, striding about on stilts to advertise Steeplechase Park at Coney Island.
Q 06To which cause did Cary Grant give his entire fee for The Philadelphia Story in 1940?
British War Relief
British War Relief. Still a British subject in 1940, he insisted on top billing and a six-figure fee for the part, then gave the whole sum away.
Q 07In Bringing Up Baby, what kind of animal is the Baby that Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn chase around Connecticut?
A leopard
A leopard. A tame one named Nissa played both Baby and the dangerous circus leopard it is mistaken for, with her trainer standing just off screen for every scene.
Q 08Which studio gave Cary Grant his first film contract and had him change his name?
Paramount
Paramount. By Hollywood legend he borrowed 'Cary' from the character he had just played on Broadway and picked 'Grant' from a list of surnames the studio handed him.
Q 09Which 1939 Cary Grant adventure takes its title from a Rudyard Kipling poem?
Gunga Din
Gunga Din. Grant plays one of three British sergeants in India; the water-carrier of the title, who dreams of being a soldier, dies sounding the bugle that warns the regiment of an ambush.
Q 10Which star claimed to have discovered Cary Grant by casting him in She Done Him Wrong (1933)?
Mae West
Mae West. It was to Grant that she delivered her much-misquoted line, 'Why don't you come up sometime and see me?'; he had in fact already played a lead opposite Marlene Dietrich.
Q 11Which Italian co-star did Cary Grant fall for on The Pride and the Passion and hope, in vain, to marry?
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren. He then had her cast opposite him in Houseboat, in place of his own wife, who had written the script; Loren married the producer Carlo Ponti instead.
Q 12Which 1935 Cukor film, his first with Katharine Hepburn, did Grant consider his career breakthrough despite flopping?
Sylvia Scarlett
He played a raffish Cockney swindler on loan to RKO after Paramount had decided he was expendable.
Q 13Unusually for a 1930s film star, what did Cary Grant do when his first studio contract ran out?
Went freelance
Q 21What was the nickname of John Robie, Cary Grant's retired jewel thief in To Catch a Thief?
The Cat
The Cat. Robie is a reformed cat burglar on the French Riviera who has to trap a copycat thief himself, because the police are sure he has gone back to his old trade.
Q 22Which actress played opposite Cary Grant in the 1957 romance An Affair to Remember?
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr. Their lovers agree to meet in six months at the top of the Empire State Building, a rendezvous that Sleepless in Seattle borrowed 36 years later.
Q 23What is the profession of Cary Grant's mistaken-identity hero in North by Northwest?
Advertising executive
Went freelance. Free of any one studio, he chose his own scripts, and in later years negotiated a share of his films' gross takings as well.
Q 14Which 1937 screwball comedy with Irene Dunne made Cary Grant a top Hollywood star?
The Awful Truth
The Awful Truth. Unnerved by director Leo McCarey's habit of improvising scenes, Grant tried to get off the picture in its first week; it made him a star and a convert to ad-libbing.
Q 15Which silent comedian was Cary Grant told to think of when playing the professor in Bringing Up Baby?
Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd. The director had first wanted Lloyd himself for the absent-minded professor, and the round glasses Grant wears are a nod to him; the film lost money on release in 1938.
Q 16Who plays Cary Grant's ex-wife, whom he tries to stop marrying Ralph Bellamy, in His Girl Friday?
Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell. Her reporter had been a man in the original play, The Front Page; the film's boldest change was to make the character a woman, and the editor's former wife.
Q 17Which two films brought Cary Grant his Best Actor Oscar nominations?
Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart
Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart. Both were dramas, far from the comedies that made him famous, and he lost both times; his only Oscar was an honorary one in 1970.
Q 18Which Hitchcock film pairs Cary Grant with Ingrid Bergman?
Notorious
Notorious. Censors would not pass a screen kiss longer than three seconds, so Hitchcock had the pair break off every few seconds to murmur and nuzzle, and stretched one embrace to two and a half minutes.
Q 19Who won the Best Actress Oscar opposite Cary Grant in Suspicion, the only acting Oscar ever won in a Hitchcock film?
Joan Fontaine
Joan Fontaine. She plays a bride who comes to fear that her charming husband means to kill her, and on Oscar night she beat her own sister and rival, Olivia de Havilland.
Q 20Which composer did Cary Grant play in the 1946 musical biopic Night and Day?
Cole Porter
Cole Porter. Porter cooperated with the film, which is largely fiction: under Hollywood's censorship code it could not so much as hint that he was gay.
Advertising executive. Roger Thornhill is mistaken for a government agent who does not exist, and is soon running for his life across a cornfield from a crop-dusting plane.
Q 24Which screen hero did his producers first hope Cary Grant would play, until he refused to sign for more than one film?
James Bond
James Bond. Grant would commit to a single picture and the producers wanted a series, so the lead in Dr. No went to Sean Connery, who played the part seven times.
Q 25In which Audrey Hepburn film did Cary Grant, 25 years her senior, have the script changed so that she pursued him?
Charade
Charade. Grant turned 59 during the shoot and feared looking like a cradle snatcher, so lines were added in which his character jokes about his age and she does the chasing.
Q 26In Father Goose (1964), Cary Grant swapped his suave persona to play what?
A grizzled beachcomber turned coastwatcher
A grizzled beachcomber turned coastwatcher. The role turned his polished image inside out, unshaven and in rags on a Pacific island, and the screenplay won an Oscar; the title plays on his radio code name, Mother Goose.
Q 27Which comedy, set in Tokyo during the 1964 Olympics, was Cary Grant's final film?
Walk, Don't Run
Walk, Don't Run. At 62 he left the romance to a younger couple and played their matchmaker; the title quotes the first rule of race walking, that a competitor must never break into a run.
Q 28In 1966, the year Cary Grant made his last film, which event did he say had changed his life?
The birth of his daughter
The birth of his daughter. Jennifer, born when he was 62, was his only child; he called her his best production and met any talk of a comeback with 'fat chance'.
Q 29Which wife bore Cary Grant's only child?
Dyan Cannon
Dyan Cannon. She was the fourth of his five wives; the marriage was over within three years, and she later told its story in a memoir called Dear Cary.
Q 30The press dubbed Cary Grant and which heiress 'Cash and Cary' after their 1942 wedding?
Barbara Hutton
Barbara Hutton. She had inherited a Woolworth fortune, but Grant took none of it: he asked for nothing when they divorced three years later, and the two stayed friends.