North by Northwest Trivia
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47 free North by Northwest trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
North by Northwest began as Hitchcock's daydream of Cary Grant hiding inside Lincoln's nose and sneezing. Ernest Lehman turned it into a cross-country chase in which an ad man is mistaken for a spy who does not exist, and the result has been called the first James Bond film, the greatest thriller ever made and the source of cinema's best suit. It topped the US box office for seven weeks in 1959. These 47 questions cover the cast from Grant and Eva Marie Saint to James Mason and Martin Landau, the real locations from the Plaza to Mount Rushmore, the Wasco cornfield standing in for Indiana, Saul Bass's titles, Bernard Herrmann's score, the redubbed dining-car line, the Oscar nominations, the title's meaning and the film's influence on Bond, Doctor Who and South by Southwest. Easy questions stick to the stars and set pieces; the hard end asks about working titles, Operation Mincemeat and stage adaptations. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation attached. Play it solo or print it for a classic-film quiz night.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In North by Northwest, how do Vandamm's men first try to kill Roger Thornhill?
A staged drunk-driving crash
A staged drunk-driving crash. They pour a bottle of bourbon into him and send him down a cliff road at the wheel; he survives, is booked for drunk driving, and cannot get even his mother to believe him.
Q 02Who plays advertising executive Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest?
Cary Grant
Cary Grant. A third of the way through filming he told Hitchcock it was a terrible script and that he still couldn't make head or tail of it, which was exactly how his character felt.
Q 03Who plays Eve Kendall in North by Northwest?
Eva Marie Saint
Eva Marie Saint. The studio pushed one of its own stars, Cyd Charisse, but Hitchcock insisted on Saint, then threw out its costumes and took her shopping at Bergdorf Goodman himself.
Q 04Who plays the suave villain Phillip Vandamm in North by Northwest?
James Mason
James Mason. His silky spy first appears in a borrowed Long Island mansion, posing as its owner, so that when Thornhill brings the police back the next day not a word of his story holds up.
Q 05Who plays Leonard, Vandamm's watchful henchman, in North by Northwest?
Martin Landau
Martin Landau. He plays the henchman as devoted to his boss and jealous of Eve; Hollywood's censors repeatedly asked for the script's "flavor of homosexuality" around Leonard to be toned down.
Q 06Jessie Royce Landis, Thornhill's mother in North by Northwest, had played Grace Kelly's mother in which earlier Hitchcock film?
To Catch a Thief
To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock cast the veteran scene-stealer as a mother in both films, and here the casting is a joke in itself: she was nowhere near old enough to be her screen son's parent.
Q 07In North by Northwest, what does Roger O. Thornhill say his middle initial stands for?
Nothing
Nothing. The line is thought to be a dig at Hitchcock's former boss, the producer David O. Selznick, whose own middle initial also stood for nothing.
Q 08Who composed the score for North by Northwest?
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann. The film owes him more than its music: it was the composer who recommended his friend, the screenwriter Ernest Lehman, to Hitchcock in the first place.
Q 09Which graphic designer created the opening title sequence of North by Northwest?
Saul Bass
Saul Bass. His slanting grid of lines crosses a bright green screen while the names ride up and down it like elevators, then the grid dissolves into the glass wall of a New York building.
Q 10In North by Northwest, for which man is Roger Thornhill mistaken?
George Kaplan
George Kaplan. No such man exists: a government intelligence agency invented him as a decoy for its real agent, and its chief chooses not to rescue the innocent man who is taken for him.
Q 11At which New York hotel is Roger Thornhill kidnapped in North by Northwest?
The Plaza
The Plaza. He is having drinks in its Oak Room when he waves over a bellboy to wire his mother, at the very moment the boy is paging the man the spies are waiting for.
Q 12In North by Northwest, where is the real Lester Townsend murdered?
The United Nations
The United Nations. Filming there was forbidden, so Hitchcock hid a camera in a parked truck to steal the shot of his star walking up to the entrance, then rebuilt the interiors in the studio.
Q 13On which luxury New York-to-Chicago express does Thornhill meet Eve Kendall in North by Northwest?
20th Century Limited
Q 21How does Thornhill escape Vandamm's men at the auction in North by Northwest?
He gets himself arrested
He gets himself arrested. With every exit covered, he heckles the auctioneer with absurd bids until the police are called to drag him out, straight past the men waiting to kill him.
Q 22North by Northwest reworks the innocent-man-on-the-run story of which earlier Hitchcock film?
The 39 Steps
The 39 Steps. Ernest Lehman set out to write the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures, and his script borrows the 1935 thriller's central situation: a man wrongly suspected of murder, on the run from police and spies alike.
Q 23In North by Northwest, why do the police believe Roger Thornhill murdered Lester Townsend?
20th Century Limited. He slips aboard at Grand Central without a ticket, and she hides him from the police in the folded-away upper berth of her stateroom.
Q 14How does the crop-duster attack on Thornhill end in North by Northwest?
The plane hits a fuel tanker
The plane hits a fuel tanker. Thornhill flags the truck down in desperation and drops under its bumper; in the fireball that follows he steals a bystander's pickup and drives off.
Q 15In North by Northwest, a farmer at the bus stop remarks that a distant plane is dusting crops where what?
There ain't no crops
There ain't no crops. He then steps onto his bus and leaves Thornhill alone on the empty road, and a moment later the plane swings round and dives straight at him.
Q 16North by Northwest sets its crop-duster attack in Indiana, but in which state was the scene filmed?
California
California. The fields lie near Wasco, north of Bakersfield; Hitchcock wanted the opposite of the usual dark-alley ambush, so he chose flat, sunlit farmland with nowhere to hide.
Q 17Where does the climactic chase of North by Northwest take place?
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock even wanted his hero to hide in Lincoln's nostril and have a sneezing fit, but the monument's guardians would not allow filming on the faces, so the climb was shot on studio replicas.
Q 18In North by Northwest, what hides the microfilm the spies are smuggling?
A small statue
A small statue. Vandamm buys the pre-Columbian figure in the open at a Chicago auction, and only later does his henchman let slip that the little treasure has "a bellyful of microfilm".
Q 19What term did Hitchcock popularise for a plot device like the microfilm in North by Northwest?
MacGuffin
MacGuffin. Hitchcock called this one his favourite because it was boiled down to its purest form: the film never reveals what the secrets are, or why they matter.
Q 20How does Hitchcock make his cameo appearance in North by Northwest?
Getting a bus door slammed in his face
Getting a bus door slammed in his face. It happens under the opening titles, just as his own credit appears: he put the cameo first so that audiences would stop watching for him and follow the plot.
He is photographed holding the knife
He is photographed holding the knife. A thrown blade strikes Townsend in mid-conversation, Thornhill pulls it from his back, and a press photographer snaps him standing over the body with it raised.
Q 24Which working title of North by Northwest later became the English title of a Jean-Luc Godard film?
Breathless
Breathless. The title that stuck was itself meant as a stopgap: the studio's story editor suggested North by Northwest, and Lehman said they simply never found a better one.
Q 25North by Northwest was the only film Alfred Hitchcock made for which studio?
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio had hired him to film a shipwreck novel, The Wreck of the Mary Deare; he and his writer quietly dropped it and delivered this original story instead.
Q 26Just before Eve Kendall fires at Thornhill in North by Northwest's cafeteria scene, what does a boy extra do?
Plugs his ears
Plugs his ears. He knows the bang is coming and covers up a moment before the gun goes off, a blooper that slipped past Hitchcock and that fans have been pointing out ever since.
Q 27In which architect's style was Vandamm's clifftop house in North by Northwest designed?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright. The house never existed: production designer Robert Boyle drew up a look-alike in the master's style, and it was conjured from matte paintings and studio sets.
Q 28Captured at the end of North by Northwest, Vandamm complains that using what "wasn't very sporting"?
Real bullets
Real bullets. His own side had just been fooled by the blanks in Eve's gun, so when a marksman's live round drops his henchman from the cliff, the villain can only grumble about fair play.
Q 29In North by Northwest, ad man Roger Thornhill says there is no such thing as a lie, only the expedient what?
Exaggeration
Exaggeration. He has just lied his way into another man's taxi, and when his secretary scolds him he insists that he has made the fellow feel like a Good Samaritan.
Q 30Which item worn by the hero of North by Northwest topped GQ's 2006 list of the best clothing in the movies?
His grey suit
His grey suit. He wears it through most of the film, and GQ's style editor said it had been copied ever since, by thousands of men and by Tom Cruise in Collateral.