Citizen Kane Trivia
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48 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 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Charles Foster Kane's dying word?
Rosebud
Kane whispers 'Rosebud' and drops a snow globe as he dies; newsreel producer Rawlston sends reporter Jerry Thompson to find out what the word meant.
Q 02What is the name of Kane's Florida estate?
Xanadu
Xanadu is introduced by a newsreel quoting Coleridge's Kubla Khan, which then hails Kane as 'America's Kubla Khan'.
Q 03Which little newspaper among his inherited holdings does young Kane decide to run?
The New York Inquirer
The New York Inquirer was a little paper with a meagre circulation, so within six years Kane lured the rival Chronicle's star staff to it.
Q 04Which office is Kane running for when his affair with Susan Alexander is exposed?
Governor of New York
Governor of New York seemed within Kane's grasp until boss Jim Gettys threatened to expose the affair; Kane refused to withdraw, and lost.
Q 05Kane builds a large opera house for Susan in which city?
Chicago
Chicago's Municipal Opera House was Kane's gift for Susan's debut; when Leland panned her, Kane finished the bad review himself, printed it and fired him.
Q 06Kane's fortune began when a defaulting boarder left his mother the deed to what?
Gold mine
A gold mine thought worthless, the Colorado Lode, made Mary Kane rich, so she handed her young son to banker Thatcher's care.
Q 07Kane's first wife Emily Norton is the niece of whom?
The President of the United States
The President of the United States was Emily's uncle, and Kane's business manager predicts that before Kane is through, she'll be a President's wife.
Q 08Which 1938 radio broadcast made Welles notorious enough to win an unprecedented Hollywood contract?
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds caught RKO's eye; Welles later joked that copycats abroad were jailed, 'and I got a contract'.
Q 09What did Welles famously call the RKO studio when he first surveyed it?
An electric train set
An electric train set was how Welles saw RKO, and at 24 he got control no studio had offered even its biggest names.
Q 10Which Joseph Conrad novel did Welles first plan to film at RKO, entirely with a first-person camera?
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness went through weeks of preparation, but RKO turned the project down, so the film was never made.
Q 11Who co-wrote the Citizen Kane screenplay with Welles?
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Herman J. Mankiewicz dictated the first drafts at a remote desert ranch over 12 weeks, while John Houseman, by his own account, merely edited.
Q 12Which critic's 1971 essay 'Raising Kane' reopened the argument over who wrote the script?
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael credited the script almost wholly to Welles's co-writer, in an essay written to introduce the published shooting script.
Q 13Which silent-film star was widely assumed to be the model for Susan Alexander?
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was Hearst's companion, and that assumed portrait was a major reason he tried to destroy Citizen Kane.
Q 21What did Citizen Kane's sets show that Hollywood sets normally lacked?
A ceiling
A ceiling, often of muslin hiding the microphones, let the camera look up at rooms without revealing the studio lights overhead.
Q 22What did Citizen Kane's cast and crew do whenever RKO executives showed up on set unannounced?
Started a ball game
Welles's company started a ball game until the brass left, witnesses recalled; he would not let RKO's executives anywhere near his set.
Q 23To start filming without studio interference, what did Welles tell RKO he was only shooting?
Camera tests
Q 14Who plays Jedediah Leland, Kane's best friend and drama critic?
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cotten had created the Broadway role Cary Grant played in the film of The Philadelphia Story, and Kane became his feature film debut instead.
Q 15Who plays Kane's mother, Mary Kane?
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead was making her first feature film, like Welles, and recalled that he 'trained us for films at the same time that he was training himself'.
Q 16What does a bored Susan Alexander spend her days assembling in Kane's vast mansion?
Jigsaw puzzles
Jigsaw puzzles fill Susan's empty days, and the film turns them into its metaphor for piecing together a man no single word explains.
Q 17Which then-unknown future star appears as a pipe-smoking reporter in the final scene?
Alan Ladd
Alan Ladd, a year before Paramount's This Gun for Hire made him a star, is the pipe-smoking reporter in the Xanadu finale; Arthur O'Connell and Louise Currie were also uncredited reporters.
Q 18Which John Ford film did Welles say he watched 40 times to teach himself directing?
Stagecoach
Welles ran Ford's 1939 western Stagecoach some forty times with technicians explaining each shot: 'I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room, from Ford,' he said.
Q 19Who was the cinematographer on Citizen Kane?
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland asked Welles for the job, wanting to work with someone who had never made a movie, and Welles put his name on the same title card as his own.
Q 20Citizen Kane's cinematography is most famous for which technique?
Deep focus
Deep focus wasn't invented for Kane: its cinematographer had already tried the technique on John Ford's The Long Voyage Home.
Camera tests were the cover story, and five or six of those so-called tests, including the projection-room scene, ended up in the finished film.
Q 24Welles injured his ankle in a fall while shooting which Citizen Kane scene?
Shouting at Gettys on the stairs
Shouting at Gettys on the stairs ended in a fall that left Welles directing from a wheelchair and acting in a steel ankle brace.
Q 25What happened while Citizen Kane's sled-burning finale was shot at the Selznick studio?
The fire department arrived
The fire department arrived on the ninth take, Paul Stewart recalled, because the furnace had grown so hot its flue caught fire, to Welles's delight.
Q 26Which future Oscar-winning director edited Citizen Kane?
Robert Wise
Robert Wise also edited Welles's next film, The Magnificent Ambersons, which RKO took out of Welles's control and finished without him.
Q 27Who composed Citizen Kane's score, his first for a film?
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was Oscar-nominated for Kane but won that year's award for a different score, The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Q 28Susan Alexander's disastrous opera debut uses which opera, invented for Citizen Kane?
Salammbô
Salammbô was a witty pastiche of real opera, its aria pitched deliberately beyond Susan Alexander's small voice.
Q 29Which sign on the fence of Kane's estate opens Citizen Kane and returns at its very end?
No Trespassing
No Trespassing is the first thing we see, yet the curious camera ignores it and slips straight into the grounds of Kane's estate.
Q 30Where does Citizen Kane's reporter find Susan Alexander running a nightclub?
Atlantic City
Atlantic City is where a drunken Susan screams at the reporter to get out, refusing to talk about Kane.