Lucille Ball Trivia
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46 free Lucille Ball trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Lucille Ball trivia quiz is about the woman rather than just the show. It starts in Jamestown, New York, with the lineman father who died of typhoid, the puritanical step-grandparents who banned mirrors, the drama school where Bette Davis was a classmate and the teachers who told her she had no future, then follows her through modelling for Hattie Carnegie, chorus work as Diane Belmont, the Goldwyn Girls, RKO and the years as 'Queen of the Bs'. The middle of the quiz covers Desi Arnaz and the elopement, My Favorite Husband, the vaudeville tour that convinced CBS to accept a Cuban husband, the 35 mm film deal that made Desilu a fortune, the on-air pregnancy that could not be called one, and the buyout that made her the first woman to run a major television studio, green-lighting Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. It finishes with Wildcat, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, the 1936 Communist registration and the HUAC testimony, Gary Morton, Carol Burnett, Life with Lucy, her death and the 'Scary Lucy' statue. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our I Love Lucy quiz next.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York town was Lucille Ball born in 1911?
Jamestown
Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, on August 6, 1911; the city is home to the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum and the National Comedy Center.
Q 02Ball's father, Henry, worked as a lineman for which company?
Bell Telephone
Bell Telephone employed Henry Ball as a lineman in Michigan, where the family had moved after a spell in Montana. He died there of typhoid fever while Lucille was small, and her pregnant mother took her back to her parents in New York.
Q 03Ball grew superstitious about what after seeing some at the window the day her father died?
Birds
Birds. She remembered them at the window that day, and as an adult she refused hotel rooms with bird pictures or bird wallpaper.
Q 04Ball's strict step-grandparents kept just one mirror in the house to guard against what?
Vanity
Vanity, by most accounts. The Petersons are said to have left a single mirror over the bathroom sink, and when they caught young Lucille studying her face in it she was punished.
Q 05Which future star was the teenage Ball's classmate at a New York drama school in the 1920s?
Bette Davis
Bette Davis was the star pupil of the John Murray Anderson school, and Ball said she was spellbound by her. The school wrote to Ball's mother that Lucy was wasting her time and theirs.
Q 06Hattie Carnegie hired the young Ball to do what at her fashionable Manhattan dress salon?
Model gowns
Model gowns. Ball, a natural brunette, went platinum blond in those years, and her modelling led to Chesterfield cigarette posters, which is how Hollywood first noticed her.
Q 07Ball once called herself Diane Belmont, borrowing the surname from what?
A horse racetrack
A horse racetrack. She said she had always loved the name Diane and was driving past New York's Belmont track when the two names seemed to fit together.
Q 08Ball first went to Hollywood in 1933 on a six-week contract for what job on Roman Scandals?
Showgirl
Showgirl: she was one of twelve Goldwyn Girls decorating the Eddie Cantor comedy. The six weeks kept stretching, bit parts followed, and she stayed on to build a film career.
Q 09Ball appeared in a 1934 two-reel short with which comedy team?
The Three Stooges
The Three Stooges soaked her with seltzer in Three Little Pigskins (1934). All she learned from them, she said later, was how to duck, and she still got wet.
Q 10Ball played a flower-shop clerk in which 1935 Astaire and Rogers musical?
Top Hat
Top Hat used her as an uncredited florist's clerk while she was an RKO contract player. In the late 1950s she and Desi Arnaz bought RKO's studios, so the bit player ended up owning the lot.
Q 11Which actor, Ball's radio colleague from 1938, later played her blustering boss on The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy?
Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon announced The Wonder Show when she joined it in 1938. She wanted him as Fred Mertz in 1951, but Our Miss Brooks had him committed, so he became her regular foil only in the 1960s.
Q 12Ball and Desi Arnaz fell in love while making which 1940 college musical together?
Too Many Girls
Too Many Girls brought Arnaz to Hollywood to repeat his Broadway role, a football star hired to guard Ball's heiress. They eloped that November, months after meeting.
Q 13What nickname did Ball earn in Hollywood for her string of low-budget films?
Queen of the Bs
Q 21On the 1953 night Lucy Ricardo gave birth on TV, what happened in Ball's real life?
Had a son
She had a son, Desi Jr., that same day, and about 44 million people watched the episode. That was more than saw the presidential inauguration the next day.
Q 22Ball and Arnaz played newlyweds whose honeymoon keeps going wrong in which 1954 MGM comedy?
The Long, Long Trailer
The Long, Long Trailer. MGM feared nobody would pay to see a couple they could watch free on TV, yet the film, shot during a break from I Love Lucy, became one of the studio's biggest hits of 1954.
Q 23In 1962 Ball became the first woman in Hollywood to do what?
Run a major television studio
'Queen of the Bs', a title Fay Wray had held before her, summed up Ball's 1930s run of RKO programmers; Marie Windsor later inherited the label.
Q 14What did Ball first show filmgoers in the 1943 musical Du Barry Was a Lady?
Her red hair
Her red hair. MGM dyed it a vivid shade to stand out in Technicolor, and she got the part after her friend Ann Sothern turned it down.
Q 15Which radio comedy starring Ball did CBS ask her to turn into a TV show?
My Favorite Husband
My Favorite Husband began in 1948 with Ball as Liz Cugat, soon renamed Liz Cooper, reportedly to avoid confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat, Desi Arnaz's old boss. On screen Liz became Lucy Ricardo.
Q 16Why did CBS at first resist casting Desi Arnaz in I Love Lucy?
Viewers might reject the couple
Viewers might reject the couple, CBS feared: a Cuban bandleader with a heavy accent beside an all-American redhead. So the two took a stage act on the road, audiences loved it, and CBS gave in.
Q 17Ball and Arnaz took a pay cut on I Love Lucy in exchange for what?
Ownership of the episodes
Ownership of the episodes looked like a small concession in 1951. Desilu later sold the reruns back to CBS for millions, money that helped it buy RKO's studios.
Q 18Which sponsor of I Love Lucy wanted the couple to move to New York rather than film in California?
Philip Morris
Philip Morris, the cigarette sponsor, wanted a live New York broadcast because poor-quality kinescopes would reach eastern markets; shooting on 35 mm film in Hollywood was the compromise.
Q 19I Love Lucy's longest studio-audience laugh came when a tango with Ricky crushed what hidden in Lucy's blouse?
Eggs
Eggs. In Lucy Does the Tango she hides them in her blouse, Ricky pulls her close, and the audience laughed so long that the editors had to cut the laugh in half for broadcast.
Q 20Which word did CBS ban from I Love Lucy's 1952-53 Little Ricky storyline?
Pregnant
'Pregnant' was out; 'expecting' was used instead, and the episode title borrowed the French: 'Lucy Is Enceinte'.
Run a major television studio: Ball bought Arnaz's share of Desilu after their divorce and became its president, an executive role she took on reluctantly.
Q 24Ball sold Desilu in 1967 to the owner of which next-door studio, later home of The Godfather?
Paramount
Paramount: its new parent Gulf+Western paid about $17 million for Ball's shares, merged the neighbouring lots and renamed Desilu as Paramount Television.
Q 25Ball played a prospector in which 1960 Broadway musical, source of 'Hey, Look Me Over'?
Wildcat
Wildcat opened in December 1960 with Ball as Wildy Jackson, broke but set on striking oil, and closed early after she fell ill; co-star Paula Stewart introduced her to comedian Gary Morton.
Q 26Ball's 1964-65 CBS radio show, in which she interviewed celebrities as herself, was called what?
Let's Talk to Lucy
Let's Talk to Lucy was a short weekday chat with her Hollywood friends. The tapes then sat unheard for decades, until SiriusXM revived them as a channel and podcast in 2021.
Q 27Which co-star left The Lucy Show in 1965?
Vivian Vance
Vivian Vance, tired of the weekly commute from her Connecticut home, asked for better terms to stay and was turned down. She left as a regular in 1965 and came back only for guest spots.
Q 28Which family members were regulars on Ball's sitcom Here's Lucy?
Her children Lucie and Desi Jr.
Her children Lucie and Desi Jr. played her TV kids, Kim and Craig. Having sold Desilu, Ball made the 1968 sitcom at her own new company and built it around her teenagers.
Q 29On the Dick Cavett show, Ball claimed she once picked up a Japanese radio signal through what?
The fillings in her teeth
The fillings in her teeth, she told Cavett in 1974, buzzed with Morse code on a drive home, and she said her tip led authorities to a hidden Japanese transmitter.
Q 30Frank Sinatra wanted Ball as the scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962); who got the part?
Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury got it because director John Frankenheimer had just used her as a mother in All Fall Down and insisted on her.