Dean Martin
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50 free Dean Martin trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dean Martin made everything look easy. A barber's son from Ohio who tried prizefighting and dealing cards before he tried singing, he became half of the hottest comedy act in America, then walked away from it and built a second career, and a third, on his own. This quiz covers the whole run: the nightclub years with Jerry Lewis, the Las Vegas nights with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., the Westerns, spy spoofs and disaster movies, the hit records, and the television variety show and celebrity roasts that kept him in living rooms for nearly two decades. There is a round's worth of Christmas questions too, for the voice that turns up on the radio every December. It is written for fans of the crooners and the Rat Pack, for anyone who grew up watching the roasts, and for quiz hosts who want a story behind every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1964 Dean Martin single knocked the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night off the top of the US chart?
Everybody Loves Somebody
Everybody Loves Somebody hit No. 1 in August 1964, after Dean told his Beatles-mad son he would knock the band off the charts. His pianist Ken Lane had co-written it back in 1947.
Q 02Which drink often filled the glass Dean Martin carried while playing a tipsy playboy on his TV variety show?
Apple juice
Apple juice was often all the glass held: the boozy act was borrowed from comic Joe E. Lewis, and Dean was usually the first to call it a night. His vanity license plate still read DRUNKY.
Q 03In which 1959 Howard Hawks Western did Dean Martin play Dude, a drunken ex-deputy helping John Wayne's sheriff?
Rio Bravo
Rio Bravo let Dean prove he could act: his shaky Dude was so convincing that it fed unfounded rumors about his own drinking. It was the highest-grossing Western of 1959.
Q 04Which Dean Martin hit from the 1953 comedy The Caddy earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song?
That's Amore
That's Amore lost the Oscar to Secret Love from Calamity Jane but outlasted it as a signature tune. Jerry Lewis said he secretly paid the writers $30,000 to hand his partner a hit.
Q 05Dean Martin refused to finish the 1962 film Something's Got to Give after the studio fired which co-star?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was replaced by Lee Remick, but Dean's contract gave him approval of his leading lady and he would work with no one else. The film was never completed.
Q 06Which future martial arts star was the karate advisor on Dean Martin's 1968 spy comedy The Wrecking Crew?
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee trained the cast and staged the fights, later grumbling that Dean was too lazy and clumsy to learn a kick. A stand-in did most of the star's fighting.
Q 07Which sitting governor and future president was the first person roasted on The Dean Martin Show in 1973?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, took the first roast in September 1973, with his wife Nancy among those teasing him. The roasts were added to lift the show's sagging ratings.
Q 08Which sport, Dean Martin's great passion, had a professional tour event in Tucson named after him in the 1970s?
Golf
Golf was the love of his off-duty life: the Dean Martin Tucson Open ran on the PGA Tour from 1972 to 1975, and he even sold a signature line of balls.
Q 09Which nickname of Dean Martin's became the title of a Time-Life DVD set of his variety show?
The King of Cool
The King of Cool tag suited a star who refused to rehearse and read his lines off cue cards. He could not read music either, yet he recorded more than 550 songs.
Q 10Which seasonal standard, written in a July 1945 heatwave, did Dean Martin record on both his Christmas LPs?
Let It Snow
Let It Snow was dreamed up by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne as they sweltered in California, and its words never mention Christmas at all. Dean cut it in 1959 and again in 1966.
Q 11Which network aired The Dean Martin Show on Thursday nights for eight years before moving it to Fridays?
NBC
NBC wanted him so badly that it met a list of demands he had made outlandish on purpose, hoping to be turned down. The show ran for 264 episodes from 1965 to 1974.
Q 12Which rock and roll star, a fan, is said to have patterned a 1956 ballad on Dean Martin's crooning style?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was said to have based his delivery of Love Me Tender on Dean's easy croon. Both men were also steeped in country music, which Dean recorded by the album in the 1960s.
Q 13Which 1960 Rat Pack film introduced Dean Martin's Ain't That a Kick in the Head, a flop single at the time?
Ocean's 11
Q 21Which future 1970s sitcom giant wrote Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis's television sketches with partner Ed Simmons?
Norman Lear
Norman Lear, who went on to create All in the Family, was hired with Simmons to sharpen the duo's material. By 1950 the two newcomers were the main writers for the team.
Q 22During which annual broadcast did Frank Sinatra reunite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis onstage in September 1976?
A Labor Day telethon
A Labor Day telethon for muscular dystrophy, hosted by Lewis, was where Sinatra walked his old partner out unannounced. By Lewis's account the two had not spoken privately for twenty years, and they embraced.
Q 23Which 1958 war drama with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift launched Dean Martin's comeback as a solo actor?
Ocean's 11 has Dean croon the tune inside a Las Vegas casino, but the single failed to chart and went unreleased on any album for years. A 1989 compilation finally revived it.
Q 14In which 1970 disaster hit, based on an Arthur Hailey novel, did Dean Martin star with Burt Lancaster?
Airport
Airport cast Dean as a philandering pilot facing a bomber in mid-flight. It became Universal's highest-grossing film to that point and set off the disaster-movie craze of the 1970s.
Q 15Which actress does Margot Robbie play watching herself beside Dean Martin in a 2019 Quentin Tarantino film?
Sharon Tate
Sharon Tate slips into a cinema in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to watch The Wrecking Crew, her 1968 spy caper with Dean. Her murder soon after its release led him to refuse another sequel.
Q 16Which sport did a teenage Dean Martin pursue, earning a broken nose and a scarred lip?
Boxing
Boxing brought him little glory: he joked that he won all but 11 of his 12 bouts. He soon swapped the ring for a job working the roulette wheel in an illegal casino.
Q 17Which Las Vegas hotel hosted the Rat Pack's shows, its marquee teasing that Frank and Sammy might join Dean Martin?
The Sands
The Sands would fill with wealthy gamblers whenever the group played, each man singing solos, duets and trios between bouts of seemingly improvised clowning, always in a tuxedo.
Q 18Which Ohio town, Dean Martin's birthplace, renamed its stretch of Route 7 as a boulevard in his honor in 1997?
Steubenville
Steubenville has honored him for years with a June festival of impersonators, friends and family. His Italian-born father worked there as a barber.
Q 19What surname was Dean Martin born with in 1917, the son of a barber who had emigrated from Abruzzo in Italy?
Crocetti
Crocetti gave way to Dean Martin around 1940, when a Cleveland bandleader urged the change. Before that he had sung under the surname Martini, borrowed from a Metropolitan Opera tenor.
Q 20In which New Jersey resort did Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis debut as a team at the 500 Club in 1946?
Atlantic City
Atlantic City nearly saw the act die on its first night: the owner threatened to fire the pair unless they improved by the second show. They threw out the script and improvised.
The Young Lions
The Young Lions paid Dean just $20,000, less than a week of his nightclub earnings, after Tony Randall was bought out of the part. Splendid reviews remade him as a dramatic actor.
Q 24Which Donald Hamilton secret agent did Dean Martin play in four 1960s spy spoofs, starting with The Silencers?
Matt Helm
Matt Helm was gritty on the page, but Dean, who co-produced the films and shared the profits, played him as broad camp comedy. Five films were planned and only four were made.
Q 25Which actress joined Dean Martin in several films, including Artists and Models, Career and Some Came Running?
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination for Some Came Running, which was also the first film Dean made with Frank Sinatra.
Q 26In The Cannonball Run, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. race a red Ferrari disguised as which professionals?
Catholic priests
Catholic priests was the cover for their washed-up racing drivers, who stop to bless a rival team's fake patient and let down its tire. The film and its sequel were Dean's last feature films.
Q 27Which 1955 recording, backed by its writers the Easy Riders, was Dean Martin's only UK No. 1?
Memories Are Made of This
Memories Are Made of This spent five weeks at No. 1 in America in 1956. In Hungary it was reworked into a song of homesickness that became an anthem for refugees of that year's uprising.
Q 28Which 1958 Dean Martin hit was a part-English version of Domenico Modugno's Sanremo winner Nel blu, dipinto di blu?
Volare
Volare reached No. 2 in Britain for Dean, one of more than a dozen rival versions on sale at once. Modugno's original won the first Grammy for Record of the Year.
Q 29Dean Martin left Capitol in the early 1960s to join which record label founded by his friend Frank Sinatra?
Reprise
Reprise promised its artists creative freedom and eventual ownership of their work, and it brought Dean his first real album-chart success. Sinatra had started it after failing to buy Verve.
Q 30Dean Martin agreed to host his weekly variety show only if he could turn up on which single day of the week?
Sunday
Sunday was his one working day: he skipped rehearsals, read his lines off cue cards and taped the show that evening. He set the terms expecting a refusal, and the network agreed to them all.