Marlene Dietrich Trivia
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56 free Marlene Dietrich trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Marlene Dietrich went from a Berlin pit orchestra to Paramount's answer to Garbo, then walked away from Hollywood glamour to sing for Allied troops within a few kilometres of the German lines. This quiz follows the whole arc: the police lieutenant's daughter who fused her two names, Max Reinhardt's chorus line, Rudolf Sieber, Lola Lola and The Blue Angel, the six von Sternberg films from Morocco's tailcoat kiss to The Devil Is a Woman, box office poison and Frenchie in Destry Rides Again. It then covers the war: the refugee fund, the Nazi offer she refused, the musical saw and Welles's mind-reading act, the OSS recordings, Patton and the Medal of Freedom, and the second career: Hitchcock, Wilder, Welles and Kramer, the Sahara nude dress, Bacharach, 'Marlene Go Home!', Israel, Broadway, the Sydney fall, Bowie, Schell's documentary, Avenue Montaigne, and the two flags on her coffin. Easy questions suit any classic-film fan; the expert tier asks for salaries, addresses and generals. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Dietrich and her films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on classic Hollywood and on Greta Garbo.
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Q 01Dietrich was born in 1901 in which town, now the Berlin district where JFK gave his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech?
Schöneberg
Schöneberg was still a separate town outside Berlin in 1901. Though she moved to America in 1930 and died in Paris, she was buried back in Berlin, close to her mother's grave.
Q 02How did Dietrich arrive at the name Marlene?
She blended her two first names
She blended her two first names, Marie and Magdalene, at about the age of eleven. It is her later fame that made Marlene a popular name.
Q 03What was the profession of Dietrich's father?
Police lieutenant
Police lieutenant Louis Dietrich died while she was still a child; the jewellers and clockmakers were her mother's family, the Felsings. Her mother later married an army officer, who died of wounds from the First World War.
Q 04Which instrument did the young Dietrich study for a concert career until an inflamed tendon ended her training?
Violin
Violin studies in Weimar and Berlin stopped when the tendon trouble set in. She turned to the stage instead, starting out singing and dancing with a touring troupe of chorus girls.
Q 05Which theatre impresario's drama academy rejected Dietrich in 1922?
Max Reinhardt
She began as a chorus girl and took small roles in his productions.
Q 06Whom did Dietrich marry in the 1920s and never divorce, though they lived apart for most of their lives?
Rudolf Sieber
Rudolf Sieber was the production assistant who cast her in a small part in Tragedy of Love in 1923; he ended up a chicken farmer in California's San Fernando Valley.
Q 07What was the name of Dietrich's cabaret-singer character in The Blue Angel (1930)?
Lola Lola
Lola Lola made Dietrich a sensation almost overnight: straight after the film's Berlin premiere in the spring of 1930 she left Germany for America.
Q 08The novel behind The Blue Angel was written by the elder brother of which Nobel Prize-winning German novelist?
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann's elder brother Heinrich wrote Professor Unrat in 1905 as a merciless caricature of a tyrannical schoolmaster; the film softens him into a tragic figure ruined by his love for a cabaret singer.
Q 09Which make of car, painted green, was waiting as a welcome gift when Dietrich reached Hollywood in 1930?
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce: Josef von Sternberg met her train with flowers and the green car, and it soon turned up on screen in the first film they made together in Hollywood.
Q 10What was Dietrich's signature song, introduced in The Blue Angel?
Falling in Love Again
Falling in Love Again exists because the film was shot twice, in German and in English: in the German original she sings that she is made for love 'from head to toe'.
Q 11Which Hollywood studio signed Dietrich after The Blue Angel, hoping for a German answer to Greta Garbo?
Paramount
Paramount promoted her so hard that she was a star in America before audiences there had seen The Blue Angel: the studio released her first Hollywood film ahead of the German one.
Q 12Which film earned Dietrich her only Academy Award nomination?
Morocco (1930)
Morocco (1930), her first American film, earned four Oscar nominations and won none; its closing shot has her walk off into the dunes after Gary Cooper's legionnaire.
Q 13Morocco is famous for a scene in which Dietrich, in a man's tailcoat, does what?
Kisses another woman
Q 21Dietrich turned down lavish Nazi offers to return to German films and did what instead?
Applied for US citizenship
She applied for US citizenship and was sworn in in 1939; Goebbels had promised her top fees and a free choice of script, and after her refusal her films were banned in Germany.
Q 22Which 1939 Western comedy revived Dietrich's career as saloon singer Frenchy opposite James Stewart?
Destry Rides Again
Destry Rides Again pitched her into a hair-pulling saloon brawl with Una Merkel, a long way from the remote, exotic women of her earlier films.
Q 23Which co-star appeared with Dietrich in both Seven Sinners (1940) and The Spoilers (1942)?
John Wayne
She kisses another woman on the lips in exchange for a flower from the woman's hair, then tosses the flower to Gary Cooper's watching legionnaire.
Q 14Which actress, honoured on a US quarter in 2022, played Hui Fei alongside Dietrich in Shanghai Express?
Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong's Hui Fei, not Dietrich's heroine, is the one who kills the warlord holding the train's passengers hostage.
Q 15A production still from Dietrich's 1932 train film inspired the cover of which rock band's second album?
Queen
Queen almost vetoed the Queen II cover as too pretentious; photographer Mick Rock had modelled the shot on a still of Dietrich that a friend had given him.
Q 16Which Russian ruler did Dietrich play in The Scarlet Empress (1934)?
Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great arrives in Russia as a wide-eyed German princess and ends the film riding at the head of her troops up the palace stairs to seize her husband's throne.
Q 17In Blonde Venus, Dietrich sings 'Hot Voodoo' after emerging from what costume?
A gorilla suit
A gorilla suit is led on stage in chains by the chorus; then Dietrich peels herself out of the fur and starts to sing, catching the eye of Cary Grant's character in the audience.
Q 18Which Spanish-set film did Dietrich say showed her at her most beautiful?
The Devil Is a Woman
The Devil Is a Woman so angered Spain's government that her studio withdrew the film and destroyed its master print.
Q 19Which producer made Dietrich's first colour film, The Garden of Allah (1936)?
David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick cast her as a wealthy woman who marries a stranger in the desert, only to learn that he is a monk who has run away from his monastery.
Q 20What label did American exhibitors pin on Dietrich in May 1938?
Box office poison
Box office poison stuck because of one line in a cinema owners' trade-paper advertisement, which called Dietrich poison at the box office; Garbo, Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn were on its list too.
John Wayne ends The Spoilers in a furious saloon brawl with Randolph Scott, his rival for Dietrich's saloon owner.
Q 24In May 1992, the month Dietrich died, her face was on the official poster of which film festival?
Cannes
Cannes had picked a still of her from Shanghai Express for its 1992 poster, so the festival opened the day after her death with her face already on billboards everywhere.
Q 25Which organisation sent Dietrich on two long tours to entertain Allied troops near the front in 1944 and 1945?
The USO
The USO tours took her from North Africa and Italy into Germany itself; asked why she risked her life so close to the fighting, she said 'aus Anstand', out of decency.
Q 26Which unusual instrument, mastered for the Berlin stage in the 1920s, did Dietrich play for troops in her wartime shows?
A carpenter's saw
A carpenter's saw, played with a bow, was the comedy turn of shows she gave from the backs of trucks near the front, sleeping in dugouts and washing with snow like the soldiers.
Q 27Who taught Dietrich the 'mind-reading' act she used in her wartime revue?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles taught it to her for his Mercury Wonder Show, a 1943 magic revue for servicemen; the two filmed part of their act for Follow the Boys, and she took the mind-reading routine to the front.
Q 28For which US agency did Dietrich record German songs, including 'Lili Marleen', in 1944?
The OSS
The OSS, wartime forerunner of the CIA, beamed her recordings at German soldiers to sap their morale, and her 'Lili Marleen' became a favourite with them despite Nazi attempts to ban it.
Q 29Which US honour, awarded for entertaining troops in wartime, did Dietrich call her proudest accomplishment?
The Medal of Freedom
The Medal of Freedom was among the highest American awards open to civilians, and two generals had each put her name forward for it independently.
Q 30At which wartime club for servicemen, founded by Bette Davis and John Garfield, did Dietrich serve meals to soldiers?
The Hollywood Canteen
The Hollywood Canteen fed and entertained servicemen for free with film stars as the staff; Dietrich was photographed there in 1942 dishing out food beside Rita Hayworth.