Howard Hawks Trivia
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60 free Howard Hawks trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Howard Hawks made great films in nearly every Hollywood genre, and this trivia quiz covers all of them: the pre-Code gangster classic Scarface, the screwball comedies Twentieth Century, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings, the Bogart-and-Bacall pair To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, the Westerns Red River, Rio Bravo and El Dorado, the science-fiction landmark The Thing from Another World and the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The questions also cover the man himself: the Indiana birth and Cornell engineering degree, the World War I flying instructor, the loan to Jack Warner that got him into producing, the feud with Howard Hughes over The Dawn Patrol, the friendships with Hemingway and Faulkner, the discovery of Lauren Bacall from a magazine cover, the race car he built for the Indianapolis 500 and his famous definition of a good film as "three good scenes, and no bad ones". Difficulty runs from easy to expert. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Hawks and his individual films, and each question links to its source. Try our Classic Hollywood and John Wayne quizzes next.
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Q 01In which US state was Howard Hawks born in 1896?
Indiana
Indiana was home only briefly: the family soon moved to his grandfather's paper-mill town in Wisconsin, then settled in Pasadena, California, where he grew up.
Q 02Which critic called Hawks "the greatest American director who is not a household name"?
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin wrote it in his Movie Encyclopedia, adding that with very few exceptions Hawks is the name modern filmmakers cite most often as an influence.
Q 03What did Hawks study at Cornell University?
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering got little of his attention: a college friend recalled him shooting craps and drinking rather than studying, and he left Cornell in 1917 to join the Army.
Q 04Hawks claimed to have been a national junior champion in which sport?
Tennis
Tennis was the boast, but biographer Todd McCarthy found no record of Hawks playing at any school he attended and judged the title 'virtually impossible to believe'.
Q 05During World War I Hawks served in the Army Signal Corps doing what?
Teaching aviators to fly
Teaching aviators to fly left its mark on his work: The Dawn Patrol, Ceiling Zero, Only Angels Have Wings and Air Force all followed.
Q 06Hawks's first film job, by most accounts, was as prop boy on a 1917 picture starring which silent star?
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, by Hawks's account, was delighted when the prop boy designed a set in a hurry; Hawks later joined the star's weekend circle of sporting friends.
Q 07Hawks said he first directed a scene, at 21, when which silent superstar's director failed to turn up?
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford agreed, by his account, after director Marshall Neilan went off on a drunk; the 21-year-old prop man and cameraman Charles Rosher shot a double-exposure dream sequence.
Q 08How did Hawks land his first important job in Hollywood, producing one-reel comedies?
He lent money to Jack L. Warner
He lent money to Jack L. Warner from the family fortune; Warner soon repaid it and hired him to oversee Monty Banks shorts, some of which Hawks later claimed, without proof, to have directed.
Q 09Which studio gave Hawks his first chance to direct, in 1925?
Fox
Fox hired him after Irving Thalberg stalled on a promise to let him direct at MGM; Hawks quit MGM and, by his account, had the Fox offer the same afternoon, over a round of golf.
Q 10Which silent film is considered Hawks's most important early work, his first "love story between two men"?
A Girl in Every Port
A Girl in Every Port follows two brawling sailors who end up prizing their friendship above the women they chase; after seeing Louise Brooks in it, G. W. Pabst cast her in Pandora's Box.
Q 11Which rival filmmaker tried to sabotage The Dawn Patrol (1930), fearing it would upstage his own First World War flying epic?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes sued, claiming the film copied his Hell's Angels, yet the two became friends during the legal fight and Hughes then hired Hawks to direct Scarface.
Q 12Scarface (1932) was loosely based on the life of which gangster?
Al Capone
Al Capone, by screenwriter Ben Hecht's account, sent two men to ask whether the film was about him; Hecht told them the title was only meant to intrigue, and they left him alone.
Q 13Who played Tony Camonte in Hawks's Scarface?
Paul Muni
Q 21Which future star had her first major role in Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (1939)?
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth had made more than a dozen pictures without anyone taking notice; as the old flame of Cary Grant's flying boss, she finally made Hollywood look.
Q 22His Girl Friday was adapted from which Hecht-MacArthur stage hit?
The Front Page
The Front Page had two men in the leads; Hawks made star reporter Hildy Johnson a woman and the editor's ex-wife, turning a newsroom farce into a battle of exes.
Q 23Who played Hildy Johnson opposite Cary Grant in His Girl Friday?
Rosalind Russell
Rosalind Russell got the part after a string of bigger names turned it down; feeling Cary Grant had the better lines, she secretly paid her own writer to sharpen hers.
Paul Muni, a Broadway actor, at first turned the part down, feeling he was physically wrong for a gangster; his wife Bella helped talk him into it.
Q 14Hawks used the 1930 Indy 500 winner Billy Arnold in which car-racing film?
The Crowd Roars
The Crowd Roars stars James Cagney as a champion driver whose younger brother wants to race too; Hawks knew that world first-hand, having raced cars himself as a young man.
Q 15Twentieth Century (1934) is largely set aboard what?
A train from Chicago to New York
A train from Chicago to New York, the 20th Century Limited, gives the film its title; a broke Broadway producer boards it in disguise to dodge his debts and finds his former star aboard.
Q 16Carole Lombard, star of Twentieth Century, was related to Hawks how?
She was his distant cousin
She was his distant cousin, a second cousin by his biographer's count; when she froze in rehearsal he asked what she would do if a man insulted her, heard 'kick him', and told her to go ahead.
Q 17Hawks left Come and Get It (1936) after a clash with which producer, who brought in William Wyler to finish it?
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn came back from weeks of illness to find Hawks had turned Edna Ferber's novel about plundered forests into a love triangle; Goldwyn said he fired him, Hawks said he quit.
Q 18In Bringing Up Baby, what is Baby?
A leopard
A leopard named Nissa played Baby and the film's second big cat too; Katharine Hepburn was mostly unafraid of her, but Cary Grant was terrified, so a stand-in handled his close contact.
Q 19What bone is Cary Grant's paleontologist missing from his Brontosaurus in Bringing Up Baby?
The intercostal clavicle
The intercostal clavicle is a contradiction in terms: intercostal means between the ribs, and the clavicle is the collarbone; when the precious bone finally arrives, the dog George buries it.
Q 20What happened to Hawks after Bringing Up Baby ran over budget and lost money on its first release?
RKO fired him
RKO fired him by ending his two-film contract early and handing Gunga Din, the adventure he had signed to direct, to George Stevens; the comedy only turned a profit on its reissue.
Q 24Where does Hildy hide the escaped convict Earl Williams in His Girl Friday?
In a rolltop desk
In a rolltop desk in the courthouse press room; Walter Burns then tries to have the whole desk carried out of the building with the fugitive still inside.
Q 25Who won Best Actor for the title role in Sergeant York (1941)?
Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper played a man who had turned Hollywood down for years: the real Alvin York finally sold his story to pay for a Bible school he wanted to build.
Q 26Hawks made Sergeant York as a favour to which early mentor?
Jesse Lasky
Jesse Lasky had put Hawks in charge of his studio's story department in 1923; the favour paid off for both, as Sergeant York became the biggest box-office hit of Hawks's career.
Q 27Ball of Fire (1941), co-written by Billy Wilder, is a playful take on which fairy tale?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs gave the plot its shape: a nightclub singer on the run from the police hides in a house of unworldly professors, who study her slang for their encyclopedia.
Q 28Where, by Hawks's account, did he bet Hemingway he could film his 'worst book', To Have and Have Not?
On a fishing trip
On a fishing trip, as Hawks told it: he wanted his friend to write for the movies, was turned down, and wagered he could make a picture out of the worst thing Hemingway ever wrote.
Q 29Which Nobel laureate besides Hemingway contributed to To Have and Have Not?
William Faulkner
William Faulkner owed his screen career to Hawks, who started him as a screenwriter adapting one of his own stories into Today We Live; the two friends shared a love of flying and drinking.
Q 30How did Hawks find Lauren Bacall for To Have and Have Not?
His wife spotted her on a Harper's Bazaar cover
His wife spotted her on a Harper's Bazaar cover in 1943 and left her mark on the film: Bacall's character goes by 'Slim', the nickname of Mrs Hawks herself.