50 free Citizen Kane trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Citizen Kane trivia for film students, classic-movie fans and anyone who knows what Rosebud is but wants to know how the sled ended up in the furnace. The quiz begins with the story: Charles Foster Kane's dying word, the reporter chasing its meaning, Thatcher's archive, the Inquirer, the affair that sank the governor's race, Susan's opera career and the vast estate called Xanadu. Then it goes behind the camera. Orson Welles's unprecedented RKO contract, the fake 'camera tests' that hid the start of shooting, Gregg Toland's deep-focus photography and the ceilings on every set, Maurice Seiderman's ageing make-up, Bernard Herrmann's first score, the editing by a young Robert Wise, and the fight over the screenplay credit that Pauline Kael reopened thirty years later. Later rounds cover William Randolph Hearst's ban, the studios' offer to burn the negative, the box-office loss, the single Oscar it won, its 50 years atop the Sight and Sound poll, and Ted Turner's colourising crayons. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Orson Welles, classic Hollywood and Best Picture quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Charles Foster Kane's dying word?
Rosebud
The newsreel producer sends reporter Jerry Thompson to find out what it meant.
Q 02What is the name of Kane's Florida estate?
Xanadu
Photographs of banker Otto Kahn's real Oheka Castle stood in for it on screen.
Q 03Which newspaper does the young Kane buy to launch his career in yellow journalism?
The New York Inquirer
He hires the best journalists in town, poaching most from the rival Chronicle.
Q 04Which office is Kane running for when his affair with Susan Alexander is exposed?
Governor of New York
His rival Jim W. Gettys reveals the affair to Emily and the press, ending the campaign.
Q 05Kane builds a large opera house for Susan in which city?
Chicago
Leland is fired for writing a bad review of her debut there; Kane finishes the review himself.
Q 06How old is Kane when he is taken from his Colorado home by the banker Thatcher?
Eight
He hits Thatcher with the sled that turns out, decades later, to be Rosebud.
Q 07Kane's first wife Emily Norton is the niece of whom?
The President of the United States
The famous breakfast montage charts the marriage's collapse across a dozen years in a few minutes.
Q 08Which studio signed Orson Welles in 1939 to a contract granting him final cut?
RKO Pictures
Studio head George Schaefer wanted him after the War of the Worlds broadcast; the deal was mocked all over Hollywood.
Q 09Welles famously described the RKO studio as what on his first tour?
The greatest electric train set a boy ever had
He arrived on 20 July 1939 intending to stay three months, pay off his theatre debts and leave.
Q 10Which Joseph Conrad novel did Welles first plan to film at RKO, entirely with a first-person camera?
Heart of Darkness
It died when he couldn't trim $50,000 from the budget; a political thriller, The Smiler with a Knife, stalled next.
Q 11Who co-wrote the Citizen Kane screenplay with Welles?
Herman J. Mankiewicz
He knew Hearst socially and came to hate him after being exiled from his circle.
Q 12Which critic's 1971 essay 'Raising Kane' reopened the argument over who wrote the script?
Pauline Kael
Robert Carringer's 1978 study of all seven drafts concluded Welles's contribution was 'substantial but definitive'.
Q 13Which media baron was the primary model for Charles Foster Kane?
William Randolph Hearst
Pulitzer and Chicago tycoons Insull and Harold McCormick contributed to the composite too.
Q 21What unusual thing did every set on Citizen Kane have, breaking studio convention?
A ceiling
Many were made of fabric to hide microphones, and the low angles showed them off.
Q 22How did Welles disguise the start of filming from RKO executives in June 1940?
He called it camera tests
The first 'test' was the projection-room scene, which cost $809 against a test budget of $528.
Q 23What did the cast and crew do whenever RKO executives showed up on set unannounced?
Started playing softball
Board members had also intercepted the script and leaked a copy to the press.
Q 14Who plays Jedediah Leland, Kane's best friend and drama critic?
Joseph Cotten
It was his feature-film debut, fresh from Broadway's The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn.
Q 15Who plays Kane's mother, Mary Kane?
Agnes Moorehead
She was one of ten Mercury Theatre players making their film debuts.
Q 16Dorothy Comingore, who plays Susan Alexander, was recommended to Welles by which star?
Charlie Chaplin
She had been acting in small parts since 1938 under the name Linda Winters.
Q 17Which then-unknown future star appears as a pipe-smoking reporter in the final scene?
Alan Ladd
Arthur O'Connell and Louise Currie were also among the uncredited reporters.
Q 18Which John Ford film did Welles say he watched 40 times to teach himself directing?
Stagecoach
'I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room - from Ford,' he said.
Q 19Who was the cinematographer on Citizen Kane?
Gregg Toland
He asked Welles for the job, wanting to work with someone who had never made a movie, and shares Welles's title card.
Q 20What technique, which the film is famous for, keeps foreground and background sharp at once?
Deep focus
Toland called it 'pan-focus' and said it could hold everything from eighteen inches to two hundred feet.
Q 24What was the film's production number, used as its working title at RKO?
RKO 281
It later gave its name to a 1999 HBO film about the making of Kane.
Q 25Welles fell ten feet while shooting which scene, chipping his ankle?
Shouting at Gettys on the stairs
He directed from a wheelchair for two weeks and wore a steel brace visible in the low-angle scene with Leland.
Q 26What happened on the ninth take of the sled-burning finale?
The fire department arrived
The furnace at the Selznick studio grew so hot the flue caught fire; Welles was delighted.
Q 27Who edited Citizen Kane, later directing West Side Story and The Sound of Music?
Robert Wise
His assistant Mark Robson also went on to a directing career.
Q 28Who composed the score, his first for a film?
Bernard Herrmann
Welles insisted RKO pay him at Max Steiner's rate, and gave him 12 weeks rather than the usual two or three.
Q 29Susan Alexander's opera aria was a parody of an aria from which fictional-sounding but real title?
Salammbô
Herrmann pitched it so high that a real soprano, Jean Forward, had to strain for a top D while dubbing Comingore.
Q 30Who created the film's ageing make-up despite being only an apprentice at RKO?
Maurice Seiderman
Denied a credit by the department head, he got a full-page newspaper thank-you from Welles instead.