Orson Welles Trivia
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56 free Orson Welles trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Orson Welles trivia quiz covers the whole restless career of the man the BFI voted the greatest director ever: the Kenosha prodigy who bluffed his way onto the Dublin stage at 16, the Federal Theatre wunderkind of the Voodoo Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, the radio star of The Shadow and the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, and the 24-year-old handed the greatest contract Hollywood ever offered. It follows him through Citizen Kane and the war with Hearst, the mutilation of The Magnificent Ambersons, the abandoned It's All True, his marriage to Rita Hayworth and the hall of mirrors in The Lady from Shanghai, Harry Lime and the cuckoo clock speech, the European exile of Othello, Mr. Arkadin and The Trial, the return for Touch of Evil and its 58-page memo, Chimes at Midnight, F for Fake, the unfinished Other Side of the Wind finally released in 2018, and the late years of Paul Masson ads, frozen peas, Magnum P.I. and Unicron. There are only a few Kane questions here; for the film itself, try our Citizen Kane quiz. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on Welles and his films, and each explanation adds one further detail. Play, see your score, and share it with the film buffs in your group chat.
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Q 01In which Wisconsin city was Orson Welles born on May 6, 1915?
Kenosha
Kenosha was home for only four years. His family then moved to Chicago, where he grew up among the musicians who gathered around his mother, a concert pianist.
Q 02In Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, the Martians first land in which US state?
New Jersey
New Jersey: the script set the landing on a farm at Grovers Mill and told it as breaking news bulletins. Some listeners who tuned in late took the invasion for the real thing.
Q 03In Citizen Kane, the dying tycoon's last word, 'Rosebud', turns out to be the name of what?
His childhood sled
His childhood sled, which he was playing with in the snow on the day he was sent away from his parents. Nobody in the film ever finds out: only the audience sees the name as the sled burns.
Q 04At which boarding school did the young Welles come under the influence of teacher Roger Hill?
Todd Seminary for Boys
Todd Seminary for Boys gave him nearly all the formal schooling he ever had. He spent five years there staging and acting in plays, then skipped college to travel.
Q 05Which town did Welles name as 'home' in a 1960 interview?
Woodstock, Illinois
Woodstock, Illinois, 'if it's anywhere,' he said, because he had gone to school there. He came back at 19 to direct a six-week summer theatre festival at its Opera House.
Q 06At which Dublin playhouse did the 16-year-old Welles debut in 1931 by claiming to be a Broadway star?
The Gate
The Gate cast him as a duke in Jew Süss that October and kept giving him featured parts. Within months he had also acted at the Abbey, Ireland's national theatre.
Q 07What was the title of the schoolbook series on Shakespeare's plays that Welles co-edited in the early 1930s?
Everybody's Shakespeare
Everybody's Shakespeare, co-edited with his old headmaster, cut the plays to acting length so that students would stage them. It sold for many years and was later renamed The Mercury Shakespeare.
Q 08Which actress's touring repertory company gave Welles his first professional stage work in America in 1933?
Katharine Cornell
Katharine Cornell took him on after Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott made the introductions. He toured the country with her company and reached Broadway at 19 as Tybalt in her Romeo and Juliet.
Q 09What was Welles's first film, an eight-minute short he co-directed with a friend at 19?
The Hearts of Age
The Hearts of Age was a silent short made with his friend William Vance. It sat forgotten until a film scholar found Vance's print in a Connecticut public library in the 1960s.
Q 10What nickname did Welles's 1936 all-Black production of the Scottish play get?
Voodoo Macbeth
Voodoo Macbeth moved the play from Scotland to a Haiti-like island and turned its witchcraft into voodoo. It opened at Harlem's Lafayette Theatre in April 1936, when its director was 20.
Q 11What is the name of Charles Foster Kane's vast Florida estate in Citizen Kane?
Xanadu
Xanadu stands on a man-made mountain on Florida's Gulf Coast, with its own zoo and an art collection too big to catalogue. Kane ends his days there nearly alone after his second wife walks out.
Q 12Which Marc Blitzstein opera did Welles's company perform impromptu after the government locked the theatre in 1937?
The Cradle Will Rock
The Cradle Will Rock went on that night at a hired theatre some 20 blocks away. Forbidden to appear on stage, the cast sang from seats in the audience while Blitzstein played a piano on stage.
Q 13With whom did Welles found the Mercury Theatre in 1937?
John Houseman
Q 21Which newspaper baron barred all mention of Citizen Kane from his papers and tried to have it suppressed?
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was the obvious model for Kane, and his chain would neither review nor advertise the film. Rival studio heads even offered to buy it outright so that every print could be destroyed.
Q 22Of its nine Academy Award nominations, Citizen Kane won only which award?
Best Original Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay was the film's only win, shared with Herman Mankiewicz. Best Picture and Best Director both went to John Ford's How Green Was My Valley.
Q 23Which Welles film lost over 40 minutes while he was in Brazil?
John Houseman, the producer who had given him his first New York lead two years earlier, managed the company while his partner directed. They fell out in Hollywood, and the partnership ended in 1941.
Q 14Which Shakespeare play did the Mercury Theatre open with in 1937, staged in modern dress as an anti-fascist drama?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar, retitled Caesar, was a smash hit that made the new company's name. Its 22-year-old director also played Brutus, the conspirator who kills the dictator.
Q 15Which radio crime-fighter did Welles play on Mutual from 1937 to 1938?
The Shadow
The Shadow, a crime-fighter who could make himself invisible, made the 22-year-old's deep voice familiar to millions. That was a year before his Martian broadcast made his name.
Q 16Which composer wrote and conducted the original music for The Mercury Theatre on the Air?
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann followed his radio boss to Hollywood and wrote his first film score for Citizen Kane. It was Oscar-nominated but lost to his own music for The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Q 17Which sponsor picked up The Mercury Theatre on the Air after War of the Worlds, renaming it?
Campbell Soup
Campbell Soup signed on as a direct result of the headlines the Martian broadcast made; until then the show had no sponsor. The cost was less freedom over which stories to adapt.
Q 18Which dictator disparagingly mentioned the War of the Worlds panic in a speech?
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler alluded to it in a Munich speech days later. Research since then suggests few listeners truly panicked and that newspapers played the story up.
Q 19Which studio gave Welles the famous 1939 contract with final cut?
RKO
RKO gave a 24-year-old who had never made a feature total creative control over two films, unheard-of terms for a newcomer. The first film he made under the deal was Citizen Kane.
Q 20Three days after his 23rd birthday, Welles appeared in old-age stage makeup on the cover of which magazine?
Time
Time ran the cover on May 9, 1938, with the 23-year-old made up as Captain Shotover, the octogenarian of Shaw's Heartbreak House. He was directing and starring on Broadway while acting on radio.
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons was cut to 88 minutes. Its director disowned the release version, and the episode left him with a lasting name in Hollywood as a risk to finance.
Q 24What was Welles's unfinished Latin American omnibus film for the Good Neighbor policy titled?
It's All True
It's All True took him to Brazil when Washington asked him to film Rio's Carnival as a goodwill gesture to Latin America. His studio withdrew its backing after a change of management, and he never finished it.
Q 25Which Hollywood star became Welles's second wife in 1943?
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth, Hollywood's 'love goddess', had a daughter with him, Rebecca. When he directed her in The Lady from Shanghai they were already estranged, and they divorced soon after.
Q 26Welles starred opposite Joan Fontaine in the 1943 film of which Brontë novel?
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre cast him as the brooding Edward Rochester. It was the first of many acting jobs he took in other directors' films to pay for projects of his own.
Q 27Which 1946 thriller about a fugitive Nazi did better at the box office on release than any other film Welles directed?
The Stranger
The Stranger came in under budget and a day early, his bid to show Hollywood he could be trusted with a film. It was also the first Hollywood feature to include documentary footage of the Nazi camps.
Q 28Welles made The Lady from Shanghai to repay Harry Cohn for bailing out which of his stage shows?
Around the World
Around the World, his Jules Verne musical with Cole Porter songs, lost its producer, so he paid for it himself and ran out of cash. It closed after 75 performances and left him years of debt.
Q 29The famous closing shootout of The Lady from Shanghai takes place where?
A hall of mirrors
A hall of mirrors in an empty funhouse, where the bullets shatter one reflection after another. The studio cut about an hour from the film, including most of the funhouse scenes that led up to it.
Q 30Which studio let Welles direct a low-budget Macbeth in 1948?
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures, a home of cheap westerns, let him shoot it in 23 days. Two years later the studio had him cut two reels and re-record the actors without their Scottish accents.