Elia Kazan Trivia
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60 free Elia Kazan trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Elia Kazan launched Marlon Brando, James Dean, Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint, directed the Broadway premieres of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, and won two Oscars for directing. He also named eight friends before a congressional committee in 1952 and spent the rest of his life defending it. This quiz covers all of it. It starts with the boy from Constantinople with the pot-maker surname, the Williams College nickname, the Group Theatre mentors who said he could not act, and the studio he co-founded that made the Method the house style of postwar Hollywood. The film questions run from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Gentleman's Agreement through Streetcar, Viva Zapata!, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Baby Doll, A Face in the Crowd, Splendor in the Grass and America America to The Last Tycoon, with the writers, composers, debuts and casting stories behind each. Then the politics: the Communist Party years, the HUAC testimony, the New York Times ad, Orson Welles's verdict and the divided room at the 1999 Academy Awards. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the big films; the expert tier reaches Sandy Hook, Malcolm Johnson and the Methodist church where the Actors Studio first met. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Kazan, his films and his collaborators, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Elia Kazan born in 1909?
Constantinople
His parents came from Kayseri in Anatolia, and the family sailed for New York when he was four.
Q 02Kazan's family belonged to which ethnic community of Anatolia?
Greek
His birth name was Elias Kazantzoglou; the family sailed for New York in 1913.
Q 03Which 1951 Kazan film of a Pulitzer-winning Southern Gothic play made Marlon Brando a star?
A Streetcar Named Desire
Kazan had directed the same actor in the Broadway production; the film was the first to win three of the four acting Oscars.
Q 04Which actor made his starring debut in Kazan's 1955 film "East of Eden"?
James Dean
Kazan spotted him on stage in New York and flew him to Los Angeles, the actor's first ever flight, with his clothes in a paper bag.
Q 05Kazan's 1954 film about corruption in a longshoremen's union, which won eight Oscars, was which?
On the Waterfront
It was shot in 36 days on location in New Jersey and gave Eva Marie Saint her screen debut.
Q 06Kazan won his first Best Director Oscar for which 1947 film about antisemitism, starring Gregory Peck?
Gentleman's Agreement
Producer Darryl Zanuck reportedly took on the story after being refused membership of a country club that assumed he was Jewish.
Q 07Which acting workshop did Kazan co-found in New York in 1947?
The Actors Studio
He started it with Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford; Lee Strasberg took over in 1951 and made it the home of the Method.
Q 08Before which US congressional body did Kazan give the 1952 testimony that shadowed the rest of his life?
The House Un-American Activities Committee
He named eight former theatre colleagues as one-time Communists and then took out a newspaper ad defending the decision.
Q 09How old was Kazan when he died in his Manhattan apartment in 2003?
94
He outlived almost all the colleagues he had named and the ones he had launched, from Brando to Dean.
Q 10Which actor debuted as drifter "Lonesome" Rhodes in Kazan's 1957 satire "A Face in the Crowd"?
Andy Griffith
The film was intended as a warning about television's power over politics; the character was a composite of Will Rogers, Huey Long and Arthur Godfrey.
Q 11Which actor's film debut came opposite Natalie Wood in Kazan's "Splendor in the Grass" (1961)?
Warren Beatty
During the first week of shooting he confronted Kazan about naming names, and got a two-hour justification in a dressing room.
Q 12Kazan's testimony cost him the friendship of which playwright, whose 1949 play he had directed?
Arthur Miller
The two eventually worked together again on "After the Fall" at Lincoln Center in 1964.
Q 13Which two filmmakers presented Kazan with his controversial Honorary Oscar in 1999?
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro
Q 21Kazan's first feature film, released in 1945, was an adaptation of which Betty Smith novel?
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
He had made two short films first; the feature began his habit of choosing dramas about contemporary social concerns.
Q 22Kazan's 1949 film "Pinky", one of Hollywood's first to confront racism, drew controversy for casting whom as a Black woman passing for white?
Jeanne Crain
The film was still a hit and earned three Oscar nominations, for Crain, Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters.
Q 23Kazan's 1950 thriller 'Panic in the Streets', shot in New Orleans, is a race to stop an outbreak of what?
Pneumonic plague
Some in the audience stood and applauded, others such as Nick Nolte and Ed Harris sat on their hands, and 250 demonstrators picketed outside.
Q 14Marlon Brando's Oscar-winning role for Kazan was as ex-boxer Terry Malloy. In which New Jersey city was the film shot?
Hoboken
Frank Sinatra, a native of the city, had a handshake deal to play the part before Brando changed his mind.
Q 15Which composer wrote his only original film score for Kazan's 1954 longshoremen drama?
Leonard Bernstein
He never scored another film that was not adapted from one of his stage shows.
Q 16What nickname, short for "Gadget", did Kazan pick up at Williams College and keep for life?
Gadg
He said it was because he was small, compact and handy to have around; Brando used it in his autobiography.
Q 17Where did Kazan study for two years before moving to New York in 1932?
Yale School of Drama
He had already graduated cum laude from Williams College, paying his way by waiting tables and washing dishes.
Q 18Kazan's first professional home was which socially committed 1930s New York company?
The Group Theatre
Its two leaders told him at the end of his apprentice summer that whatever his talent was, it was not acting.
Q 19Kazan's role as a strike-leading taxi driver in which 1935 Odets play earned him the label 'proletarian thunderbolt'?
Waiting for Lefty
Critics who had been told he could not act called the performance dynamic.
Q 20Kazan's first big Broadway success was a 1942 Thornton Wilder play starring Tallulah Bankhead. Which one?
The Skin of Our Teeth
The play won Wilder a Pulitzer and Kazan the New York Drama Critics award for direction; Montgomery Clift was in the cast.
It was Jack Palance's film debut, and Kazan used it to give a blacklisted comedian a job.
Q 24Who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Zapata's brother Eufemio in Kazan's 1952 biopic?
Anthony Quinn
Kazan called it his "first real film" because of its location shooting and accents; John Steinbeck wrote the screenplay.
Q 25How many Oscar nominations did Kazan's 1951 New Orleans drama and his 1954 dockside film each receive?
Twelve
The earlier film won four and the later one eight, including Best Picture.
Q 26Which actress originated Blanche DuBois on Broadway, only to be replaced by Vivien Leigh on film?
Jessica Tandy
Leigh had played Blanche in London and was cast for star power; Brando, Hunter and Malden all kept their stage roles.
Q 27Which screenwriter wrote both Kazan's 1954 dockside drama and "A Face in the Crowd"?
Budd Schulberg
He was Kazan's lifelong friend and thanked him at the 1982 Kennedy Center Honors for honouring "the hero in every man".
Q 28Kazan's 1956 film "Baby Doll" was condemned by which Catholic watchdog for its implied sexuality?
The National Legion of Decency
Carroll Baker's title character sleeps in a crib; Kazan called the swing scene his exact idea of screen eroticism.
Q 29In Kazan's 1960 film "Wild River", a matriarch refuses to sell her island to which agency?
The Tennessee Valley Authority
Jo Van Fleet played the old woman and Bruce Dern made his film debut.
Q 30Kazan's 1963 film "America America" dramatises the journey to the United States of which relative?
His uncle
The young man left an Anatolian village with the family's wealth on a donkey, lost it, and swept rugs in the Ottoman capital before reaching New York.