Highway Patrol (TV Series)
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Highway Patrol (TV Series) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Highway Patrol ran for four seasons in the 1950s and made Broderick Crawford, already an Academy Award winner, one of the most recognisable faces on American television. Each episode followed his fast-talking chief and a fleet of black-and-white patrol cars along the back roads of an American West that was still mostly empty. This quiz covers the series from every side: the characters and the actors who played them, the cars, uniforms and radio procedure, the filming locations, the future stars who passed through in small parts, and the business of making a hit show quickly and on a small budget. There are also questions on Crawford's life and career before and after the series, and on the films, sketches and tributes that kept the show in the public memory. The questions suit anyone who remembers the show from its first run or from decades of reruns, as well as classic television fans meeting the series for the first time. They range from easy starters to details that only devoted viewers will know.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Family Feud host was named after Broderick Crawford, gruff star of TV's Highway Patrol?
Steve Harvey
Steve Harvey was born Broderick Stephen Harvey in 1957, while the series was still in its first run. He revealed the tribute himself on an episode of the game show.
Q 02Which police radio code, meaning 'acknowledged', rings out constantly over Highway Patrol's car radios?
10-4
10-4 was so central to the show that its reruns were sold to stations under the title Ten-Four. The ten-codes themselves were devised for the Illinois State Police in the late 1930s.
Q 03Which Los Angeles policeman turned writer penned Highway Patrol scripts under the name Robert Wesley?
Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry wrote five episodes and left the LAPD in 1956 to write full time. A decade later he created Star Trek.
Q 04Which future Oscar-winning director played a motorcycle gang member in a 1956 episode of Highway Patrol?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood was still scraping by on bit parts, two years before the Western series Rawhide gave him his breakthrough. That same year he also played a hot-tempered army officer on ABC.
Q 05Which 1949 political drama won Broderick Crawford the Best Actor Oscar, years before Highway Patrol?
All the King's Men
All the King's Men won him the Oscar over John Wayne, who was nominated for Sands of Iwo Jima. The film also took Best Picture.
Q 06In which 1977 film does an Alabama patrolman invoke Broderick Crawford's name while confronting a sheriff?
Smokey and the Bandit
Smokey and the Bandit has the trooper cut off Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T. Justice, whose wrecked car horn will not stop blaring.
Q 07Which style of hat did Highway Patrol's plain-clothes chief wear in place of a uniform cap?
Fedora
Fedora and business suit set the chief apart from his uniformed officers. Broderick Crawford put the same outfit back on in 1977 to send up the role on television.
Q 08In which Stephen King novel does young Ben Hanscom idolise Broderick Crawford's Highway Patrol chief?
It
It follows seven outcast children in Derry, Maine, in the late 1950s, the very years when the series was on the air.
Q 09Which basic fact about the police force in Highway Patrol is never revealed in any of its episodes?
The state it serves
The state it serves is described only as a western one bordering Mexico, and the scripts drew on patrol files from across the country.
Q 10Which gruff chief, forever barking orders into a car radio, did Broderick Crawford play in Highway Patrol?
Dan Mathews
Dan Mathews was given no precise title beyond chief; the actor said he was simply the boss. He is the only regular character across all four seasons.
Q 11Which car maker built the Century sedans that the real California Highway Patrol loaned to TV's Highway Patrol?
Buick
Buick built 270 of the two-door cars for the real force in 1955, a body style the public could not buy. Later seasons used four-door models that were not police cars.
Q 12Which 1970s police series gave Broderick Crawford a cameo as himself, joking about Highway Patrol?
CHiPs
CHiPs followed two California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers, which made the old chief a fitting guest. His cameo came in the 1977 episode Hustle.
Q 13Which comedy show did Broderick Crawford host in 1977, appearing in a spoof of Highway Patrol?
Saturday Night Live
Q 21Which TV producer first agreed to make a California Highway Patrol drama, then dropped out?
Jack Webb
Jack Webb, whose Dragnet was the model the force wanted, pulled out when his jazz drama Pete Kelly's Blues was picked up.
Q 22Which radio call sign did Broderick Crawford's chief use to identify himself on the air in Highway Patrol?
21-50
21-50 followed a real California rule: officers added 2000 to their badge number on the air, and the chief's badge was number 150.
Q 23Willie Stark, Broderick Crawford's Oscar-winning role, was closely modelled on which Louisiana politician?
Huey Long
Huey Long, the governor and senator nicknamed the Kingfish, was assassinated in the state capitol in 1935 while planning a run for president.
Saturday Night Live had him host in March 1977, with Levon Helm, Dr. John and The Meters as the musical guests.
Q 14Which university did Broderick Crawford drop out of soon after enrolling, to work on the New York docks?
Harvard
Harvard lost him to a job as a stevedore, and he soon went back to the stage and radio, the world his performer parents had raised him in.
Q 15Which John Steinbeck drama made Broderick Crawford a Broadway name, playing the gentle giant Lennie?
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men opened on Broadway while the novel was still a bestseller, but he lost the part in the film version to Lon Chaney Jr.
Q 16Which real-life lawman did Highway Patrol's Broderick Crawford play in a 1977 film biography?
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover was his title role in Larry Cohen's film, which ends by suggesting that the FBI director's secret files helped bring down Richard Nixon.
Q 17Highway Patrol did much of its location shooting in which then-rural valley just north of Hollywood?
San Fernando
San Fernando was still mostly open country, as was neighbouring Simi Valley, so the crew found quiet roads a short drive from the studio.
Q 18Which future Star Trek regular took small roles in both Highway Patrol and Sea Hunt before finding fame?
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy played more than 50 small parts in those years, including a Martian named Narab in the 1952 serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.
Q 19From 2004, an October parade of classic police cars stopped at which Hollywood tribute to Broderick Crawford?
His Walk of Fame star
His Walk of Fame star for films is one of two he has on Hollywood Boulevard; the other honours his television work. The Highway Patrol tribute parade began in 2004.
Q 20Which production company, also behind Sea Hunt and The Cisco Kid, made Highway Patrol fast and cheaply?
Ziv Television
Ziv Television was run by Frederick Ziv of Cincinnati, and the police drama became the most profitable show his company ever made.
Q 24As a wartime sergeant, Broderick Crawford announced the weekly radio show of which bandleader?
Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller's Army Air Forces band used him as an announcer on its wartime broadcasts, and he was sent to Britain as a sergeant in 1944.
Q 25In which poker game is one starting hand nicknamed a 'Broderick Crawford', after the Highway Patrol star?
Texas hold 'em
Texas hold 'em players also call the same two cards a Convoy, a nod to the CB radio craze that kept the old chief's favourite code alive in the 1970s.
Q 26Which humour magazine spoofed Highway Patrol in 1960, with caricatures drawn by Mort Drucker?
Mad
Mad ran the parody in its October 1960 issue, early in Drucker's five decades of drawing the magazine's film and television satires.
Q 27Which animal, taken from a real police force's emblem, appeared on shoulder patches in early Highway Patrol?
Bear
Bear and all, the patch was the California Highway Patrol's own design with its lettering taken off, a look kept for three seasons.
Q 28From 1963, Highway Patrol was shown by public broadcaster ZDF in which European country?
West Germany
West Germany's second public channel picked the show up, and it was also seen in France and across most of Latin America.
Q 29How did Highway Patrol reach viewers from 1955 to 1959, without a slot on ABC, CBS or NBC?
Syndication
Syndication meant each episode was sold directly to local stations, and in some cities the show drew bigger audiences than network programmes.
Q 30Which announcer, also the voice of countless film trailers, narrated all 156 episodes of Highway Patrol?
Art Gilmore
Art Gilmore gave the show its documentary feel, and he had earlier supplied the voice of President Roosevelt in the film Yankee Doodle Dandy.