Mary Tyler Moore Show Trivia
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59 free Mary Tyler Moore Show trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
She turned the world on with her smile, and she also produced the Six O'Clock News. This Mary Tyler Moore Show trivia quiz has 59 free questions with answers about the CBS sitcom that ran from 1970 to 1977: Mary Richards and her WJM-TV newsroom, Lou Grant, Murray, Ted Baxter, Rhoda, Phyllis, Sue Ann Nivens and Georgette, plus the hat toss, the Kenwood Parkway house, Chuckles the Clown and the group hug that ended it all. The early rounds are gentle enough for anyone who has caught a rerun: who played whom, where the show was set, which spin-offs it launched. Later questions dig into production history, Emmy records, the actors' other careers and the odd details that superfans love, from Mimsie the cat to Ted's on-air Tipperary sendoff. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, its episodes, spin-offs and cast, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Opposite which star did Mary Tyler Moore play a nun in the 1969 film Change of Habit?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley. He played an inner-city doctor who falls in love with her nun, in what proved to be his final acting role; a year later Moore was back on television in her own sitcom.
Q 02Mary Tyler Moore starred in a doomed 1966 Broadway musical version of which Audrey Hepburn film?
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Breakfast at Tiffany's. Moore played Holly Golightly in the troubled show, which impresario David Merrick shut after only four Broadway previews, before it ever officially opened.
Q 03Offered a drink in her job interview, which creamy cocktail does Mary Richards ask Lou Grant for?
Brandy Alexander
Brandy Alexander. She first says no; when Lou says he wouldn't mind some company, she names the dessert cocktail, and he offers her coffee instead.
Q 04Which talk-show host had the WJM newsroom and Mary's apartment rebuilt on stage for a 2008 cast reunion?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey. She has said Mary Richards inspired her to go into television, and she got there quickly: while the sitcom was still on the air she was anchoring the news at a Nashville station.
Q 05Which actor played head newswriter Murray Slaughter?
Gavin MacLeod
Gavin MacLeod was called in to read for Lou Grant but couldn't see himself as Mary's boss, so he asked to try the wisecracking Murray instead and won the part.
Q 06Rhoda Morgenstern's spin-off sent her back to which city, where she had grown up?
New York
New York. Bronx-born Rhoda flew home for a short visit in the 1974 pilot, met Joe Gerard and stayed, marrying him that same autumn in an hour-long special episode.
Q 07What was Phyllis Lindstrom's relationship to Mary, apart from being her friend?
Her landlady
Her landlady: Phyllis rented Mary her apartment, and after five seasons Cloris Leachman took the snobbish busybody into a spin-off of her own.
Q 08Betty White's Sue Ann Nivens hosted which show on Mary's station?
The Happy Homemaker
The Happy Homemaker. The script asked for a sickly sweet 'Betty White type'; after other actresses failed to fit, the producers hired White herself for what was meant to be a single episode.
Q 09Which character marries anchorman Ted in a spur-of-the-moment ceremony in Mary's apartment?
Georgette Franklin
Georgette Franklin. When Ted proposes at Mary's, she insists they marry then and there, with a young John Ritter as the minister who arrives straight from the tennis court.
Q 10Mary Tyler Moore won two Emmys as whose TV wife?
Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke. As Laura Petrie on his sitcom, Moore insisted on wearing capri pants around the house, as real housewives did, at a time when TV wives vacuumed in dresses and pearls.
Q 11Which sitcom broke The Mary Tyler Moore Show's record of 29 Emmy wins in 2002?
Frasier
Frasier took its record-breaking 30th Emmy at the 2002 Creative Arts ceremony, the separate night for craft and guest-acting awards, so the mark fell ahead of the main telecast.
Q 12Which First Lady made a cameo as herself on The Mary Tyler Moore Show?
Betty Ford
Betty Ford appeared on the phone, as herself, in the 1976 episode 'The Seminar'; in the mid-1980s Moore checked into the clinic that bears Ford's name to treat her alcoholism.
Q 13What was Mary Richards's job title when Lou Grant first hired her?
Associate producer
Associate producer. She had come about a secretarial job that was already filled, but Lou hired her anyway after telling her she had spunk, then adding that he hated spunk.
Q 21The character of Mary Richards was originally written as what, before the network objected?
A divorcee
A divorcee. The network feared viewers would think she had walked out on Rob Petrie, her previous TV husband, so Mary arrived in town getting over a broken romance instead.
Q 22Which animal kills Chuckles the Clown at a circus parade in 'Chuckles Bites the Dust'?
An elephant
An elephant. Chuckles was marching as Peter Peanut and, as Lou tells the newsroom, a rogue elephant tried to shell him; the staff can't stop joking, and only Mary is appalled.
Q 23Where does Mary finally burst out laughing over the clown's death in 'Chuckles Bites the Dust'?
At his funeral
Q 14What did Mary do at the end of every opening title sequence?
Tossed her hat into the air
Tossed her hat into the air. The puzzled woman frozen behind her was a real bystander, Hazel Frederick, caught by chance; years later Moore brought her on stage and introduced her as her co-star.
Q 15Which cable network unveiled a bronze statue of Mary Richards on Nicollet Mall in 2002?
TV Land
TV Land, then rerunning the show daily, had already put Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden outside the Port Authority bus terminal; Moore came to unveil her own bronze likeness in person.
Q 16Which Clash cover did Mary Tyler Moore theme writer Sonny Curtis write?
I Fought the Law
I Fought the Law. For the sitcom, Curtis reworked his own lyric after season one: the tentative original asked how Mary would make it on her own, and the famous version insists she will.
Q 17Which band covered the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme in 1985 and restaged scenes from its opening titles for the video?
Hüsker Dü
Hüsker Dü, a trio that made its name in hardcore punk, put the sitcom theme on the B-side of a 1985 single and mimicked Mary's title sequence in the video; Joan Jett and Sammy Davis Jr. recorded it too.
Q 18On which night of the week did The Mary Tyler Moore Show air throughout its original run?
Saturday
Saturday. Sharing the night with All in the Family, M*A*S*H and The Carol Burnett Show, it helped make staying home on Saturday fashionable, Time's Lance Morrow wrote as the show ended.
Q 19What sign did the owners of the real house shown as Mary's home hang out to stop crews filming there again?
Impeach Nixon
Impeach Nixon. The owners of 2104 Kenwood Parkway had been overrun by fans demanding to see the house, so they hung the banner where it would spoil any further exterior shots.
Q 20In which city were The Mary Tyler Moore Show's newsroom and apartment scenes actually filmed?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles. Only the title sequence and establishing shots were filmed on location; the newsroom and Mary's apartment were sets on a Studio City lot where her company became the main tenant.
At his funeral. Having scolded everyone else, Mary gets the giggles as the minister praises the clown's characters, and when he kindly tells her to laugh, she bursts into sobs instead.
Q 24In Chuckles the Clown's credo, 'a little song, a little dance', what goes 'down your pants'?
A little seltzer
A little seltzer. Mary scolds her colleagues for cracking jokes about the dead clown, then hears the credo recited in earnest and cannot keep a straight face herself.
Q 25What happens to Mary, Lou and Murray in the series finale?
They are fired
They are fired. The new station manager wants better ratings yet keeps Ted, the bumbling anchorman; by one co-creator's account the writers settled on the ending only two days before taping.
Q 26Why does the whole group hug shuffle across the newsroom in The Mary Tyler Moore Show's finale?
To reach the tissues
To reach the tissues. By the cast's account the move was found in rehearsal: asked for a funny way out of the hug without breaking it, Georgia Engel pointed to the Kleenex on the desk.
Q 27What is the last thing Mary does in the final scene of the series?
Turns off the lights
Turns off the lights. She looks back at the empty newsroom, smiles and closes the door, an ending Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman called the gold standard when writing her own finale.
Q 28Which song do Mary's colleagues sing as they leave the newsroom in the series finale?
It's a Long Way to Tipperary
It's a Long Way to Tipperary. Ted had quoted it in his heartfelt final sign-off, and Lou starts singing it to lift the mood as they all walk out arm in arm.
Q 29Which 1977 program passed Rhoda's 1974 wedding as the most-watched TV episode of the 1970s?
Roots
Roots. More than 52 million people watched Rhoda marry Joe in October 1974; when the ceremony ended, Howard Cosell welcomed the returning audience back to Monday Night Football.
Q 30Which talk-show host is Mary's guest of honor at the party wrecked by a power cut in 1977?
Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson. The power fails as the guests wait for him, with no candles or working flashlights to be found, so they pass the time recalling the earlier disasters among Mary's famously doomed parties.