Marcel Marceau Trivia
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48 free Marcel Marceau trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Marcel Marceau made silence famous. For more than sixty years the man in the striped pullover and battered flower-hat took Bip the Clown around the world, and along the way he saved Jewish children from the Nazis, taught Michael Jackson to defy gravity and spoke the only word in a silent movie. This quiz covers all of it. The easy questions ask what he called his art, who Bip was, which comedian entranced him at five and which city he was born in. From there it moves into the war: the name change to Marceau, the cousin who recruited him, the children kept quiet with mime on the road to Switzerland, his father's death at Auschwitz and his months as a liaison officer with Patton's Third Army. The harder end is for theatre and film buffs: Charles Dullin's school, Étienne Decroux and corporeal mime, Jean-Louis Barrault and Baptiste, the Deburau Prize, the Théâtre de Poche, Praxitele and the Golden Fish, The Overcoat, the 1955 American tour, Professor Ping in Barbarella, the deaf puppeteer of Shanks, the 'Non!' in Silent Movie, the honorary doctorates, Marcel Marceau Day, the Wallenberg Medal, the music at his burial and Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal in Resistance. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Marceau, his teachers and his films, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Charlie Chaplin, silent film and French culture quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Marceau's surname at birth?
Mangel
Mangel: he and his brother Alain took the name Marceau in the Resistance to hide their Jewish origins, and he reached Paris on false identity papers.
Q 02In which French city was Marceau born in 1923?
Strasbourg
Strasbourg sits on the German border, so when war broke out in 1939 the city was evacuated and his family, given only hours to pack, had to leave.
Q 03What did Marceau call mime?
The art of silence
The art of silence was his phrase for mime, yet offstage he was famously talkative, joking that you should never get a mime talking because he won't stop.
Q 04Marceau named his clown Bip after Pip, the hero of which Charles Dickens novel?
Great Expectations
Great Expectations: Marceau went back to Dickens later, making a mime version of A Christmas Carol for BBC television.
Q 05What did Marceau's character Bip wear on his head?
A battered, flower-topped opera hat
A battered, flower-topped opera hat: with the white face beneath it, it became Marceau's trademark and one of the most familiar images of mime.
Q 06Which film star, seen at age five, made Marceau want to become a mime?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin: the boy copied him in his father's trousers and an inked moustache, and when they finally met at a Paris airport in 1967, Marceau kissed his idol's hand.
Q 07During the war, Marceau said he used mime for which purpose?
Keeping Jewish children quiet while escaping
Keeping Jewish children quiet while escaping: his cousin, a Resistance commander, had him escort groups from an orphanage near Paris towards the frontier, passing them off as children going on holiday.
Q 08Marceau's cousin Georges Loinger got children out of occupied France by sending them to chase a ball into which country?
Switzerland
Switzerland: Loinger, the Resistance commander who recruited Marceau, also dressed children as mourners and sent them up a gravedigger's ladder at a cemetery beside the border.
Q 09What happened to Marceau's father in 1944?
Killed at Auschwitz
Killed at Auschwitz after the Gestapo arrested him that year. Marceau later said that to cry for his father was to cry for the millions who died.
Q 10The surname Marceau was chosen in reference to a general of which conflict?
The French Revolution
The French Revolution: François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers helped storm the Bastille as a young soldier, became a general at 24 and was shot dead in battle in Germany at 27.
Q 11With which US general's army did Marceau serve as a liaison officer after liberation?
George Patton
George Patton: Marceau joined the French army after Paris was freed, and because he spoke English he was made a go-between with Patton's American troops.
Q 12Marceau's first big mime show, for 3,000 American soldiers, was praised by which US military publication?
Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes gave the show a warm review, and he went on entertaining Allied troops in occupied Germany until he left the army in 1946.
Q 13Marceau studied drama in the Paris theatre named after which stage legend?
Sarah Bernhardt
Q 21Which Gogol story did Marceau turn into a mimodrama in 1951?
The Overcoat
The Overcoat: a poor clerk scrimps for years to buy a new coat, only to have it stolen. Marceau's staging was the hit that first carried his name well beyond France.
Q 22Marceau compared his hapless clown Bip to which dreamer of classic fiction?
Don Quixote
Don Quixote: Marceau said Bip battles the windmills of life, a small figure alone in a world too big for him.
Q 23In Marceau's sketch Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, how does the figure begin?
Curled up like an embryo
Curled up like an embryo: from there he unfolds, struts boldly through his prime, then crumples and knots himself into shrunken old age, a whole life in a few minutes.
Sarah Bernhardt: Marceau enrolled at the school in her theatre meaning to become a speaking actor, until his mime teacher told him he was a born mime.
Q 14Which teacher of Marceau developed the style known as corporeal mime?
Étienne Decroux
Étienne Decroux treated mime as research; Marceau broke with that vision and took the art to audiences around the world.
Q 15In which pantomime, staged by Jean-Louis Barrault, was Marceau cast as Arlequin?
Baptiste
Barrault had played the piece's title mime in the film Les Enfants du Paradis.
Q 16Marceau forged identity cards in wartime France so that their holders appeared what?
Too young to be deported
Too young to be deported: he changed the birth dates on scores of cards, putting the drawing skills he had learned at art school to work for the Resistance.
Q 17At which Paris theatre did Marceau first play Bip in 1947?
Théâtre de Poche
Théâtre de Poche, the 'Pocket Theatre', saw Bip's debut on Marceau's 24th birthday, but wide fame came only with his American tour eight years later.
Q 18Marceau, born into a Jewish family, died in September 2007 on which holy day?
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year: the man who had changed his name in wartime to hide his Jewish origins died on it.
Q 19Marceau's Bip was modelled partly on which stock character of old French pantomime?
Pierrot
Pierrot, the white-faced, lovelorn clown of the old Paris pantomime: with Bip, Marceau turned from his teacher's classicism back to that romantic spirit.
Q 20Marceau led groups of young refugees through the woods to the frontier while disguised as what?
A Boy Scout leader
A Boy Scout leader: he recalled putting his charges in scout uniform too, so the party passed for a troop on a hike until a guide took them across the border.
Q 24Where did Marceau make his North American debut, just before his 1955 US tour?
Stratford Festival of Canada
Stratford Festival of Canada, in Ontario, came first. The American tour that followed went so well that he returned to the United States almost every year of his career.
Q 25With which American comedian did Marceau team up for three concerts of pantomimes?
Red Skelton
Red Skelton and Marceau were friends for many years: Marceau guested on Skelton's television show and later joined him in the pantomime specials Skelton made for HBO.
Q 26In which science-fiction film of the 1960s did Marceau play Professor Ping?
Barbarella
Barbarella: the great mime actually speaks in it, eight years before his famous one-word turn in Silent Movie.
Q 27In 1956 the wordless Marceau beat Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis Jr. to which American award?
An Emmy
An Emmy, for best specialty act: television appearances had made the French mime a familiar face across America within months of his first tour there.
Q 28In the 1974 horror film Shanks, what can Marceau's character do?
Move dead bodies like puppets
Move dead bodies like puppets: Marceau played two parts, the deaf-mute puppeteer Malcolm Shanks and the old scientist who teaches him the trick, and the scientist speaks.
Q 29What single word does Marceau utter in the 1976 comedy Silent Movie?
Non!
Non! is the only word spoken aloud in the whole film, so the single line in a silent movie goes to the world's most famous mime, turning down a part in it.
Q 30Marceau's first New York show in 1955 was booked for two weeks; what happened instead?
It transferred to Broadway
It transferred to Broadway: the reviews were raves, the two weeks stretched into months, and the mime went home to France an international star.