Some Like It Hot
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49 free Some Like it Hot trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Some Like It Hot is the film the American Film Institute named the funniest ever made, and almost nothing about it went smoothly. Billy Wilder built a gangster plot onto a forgotten French farce, put Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in dresses, and then spent the autumn of 1958 coaxing Marilyn Monroe through take after take while the two men bet on how many she would need. These 49 questions cover the story and the making of it: Sugar Kane's band and her ukulele, the Shell Oil heir with the Cary Grant accent, the millionaire who pursues Daphne, the Mafia convention hiding behind an opera society, and the last line that was only ever meant to be a placeholder. There are production questions too, from the female impersonator hired to coach the leads and the San Diego hotel that stood in for Miami to the colour tests that sent the film to black and white, plus the Oscar it won and the Broadway musicals it spawned in 1972 and 2022. Easy questions stick to the cast and the big lines; the hardest ask about an unsold TV pilot, a Bollywood remake and a quarterback who once played Joe on stage. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a classic movie night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which later cross-dressing comedy finished second to Some Like It Hot in the American Film Institute's 2000 poll of the funniest films?
Tootsie
Tootsie was the runner-up. The winner had a rocky start of its own: a first preview audience in Pacific Palisades barely laughed, and only a second screening for students in Westwood brought the roars.
Q 02Which song with a 'boop-boop-a-doop' hook does Marilyn Monroe sing in Some Like It Hot?
I Wanna Be Loved by You
I Wanna Be Loved by You was the 1928 hit of Helen Kane, widely seen as the model for Betty Boop; she sued the cartoon's makers for stealing her singing style and lost.
Q 03Which dance does Jack Lemmon's character perform until dawn with his millionaire admirer in Some Like It Hot?
Tango
Tango: the pair pass a rose from mouth to mouth as they dance to a Cuban band, and by morning Lemmon's character has accepted a proposal of marriage.
Q 04Which pressure group judged Some Like It Hot 'seriously offensive' to traditional standards of morality in 1959?
The Legion of Decency
The Legion of Decency, the Catholic film watchdog, heard 'outright smut' in the dialogue, but its disapproval did the film no harm: it was one of the biggest box-office hits of 1959.
Q 05In the final scene of Some Like It Hot, Joe, Jerry and Sugar escape the gangsters in what?
A motorboat
A motorboat is waiting at the pier to run them out to a millionaire's yacht; on the way Joe pulls off his wig and owns up to Sugar, who wants him anyway.
Q 06What is the name of the all-female band Joe and Jerry join?
Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators
Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators lose two players just before their train leaves for Florida, which is how two strangers land the jobs by telephone, one of them speaking in falsetto.
Q 07Which Florida city is the all-girl band's train bound for in Some Like It Hot?
Miami
Miami never actually appears on screen: every one of the film's 'Florida' scenes was shot on the other side of the country, in California.
Q 08Which instrument does Joe play?
Saxophone
Saxophone, which is awkward: Sugar says she joined an all-girl band precisely to escape sax players, the men she can never resist and who always let her down.
Q 09What female names do Joe and Jerry take when they go into disguise?
Josephine and Daphne
Josephine and Daphne: the plan was for Jerry to be Geraldine, but when the bandleader asks their names on the platform he blurts out a different one on the spot.
Q 10Joe woos Sugar by posing as the heir to which fortune?
Shell Oil
Shell Oil is improvised from a prop: Joe is holding a basket of seashells, says collecting them runs in the family, and adds that this is why they named the oil company after them.
Q 11Whose accent does Joe imitate while playing the millionaire Junior?
Cary Grant
Cary Grant's voice is a sly anachronism: the story is set in 1929, three years before Grant made his first film, and Jerry duly snaps that nobody talks like that.
Q 12In Some Like It Hot, what is the name of the much-married millionaire who pursues Jerry in disguise?
Osgood Fielding III
Osgood Fielding III owns the yacht that Joe passes off as his own, which is why Jerry has to keep the old boy busy ashore for a whole night.
Q 13Which comedian played the smitten millionaire who delivers the last line of Some Like It Hot?
Joe E. Brown
Q 21Sugar Kane dreams of marrying a millionaire who wears what, a detail Joe promptly adds to his disguise?
Glasses
Glasses: Sugar reckons men who wear them are gentler, so Joe steals the band manager's pair for his millionaire act, and her kisses duly steam them up.
Q 22Which real California resort doubled as the Seminole Ritz in Some Like It Hot?
Hotel del Coronado
Hotel del Coronado was picked because the Victorian seaside resort had barely changed in decades and could pass for the 1920s.
Q 23Why was Some Like It Hot shot in black and white?
Drag makeup looked ghoulish in colour
Joe E. Brown was a top box-office clown of the 1930s, famous for his enormous mouth; a generation later this small role handed him the line he is now best remembered for.
Q 14What is the celebrated closing line of Some Like It Hot?
Well, nobody's perfect!
"Well, nobody's perfect!" was a last-minute stopgap: the writers pencilled it in on the eve of shooting, meaning to come up with something better, and never did.
Q 15What is the name of the Chicago mob boss who owns the speakeasy?
"Spats" Colombo
"Spats" Colombo gets his comeuppance at a mob banquet in Florida, where a rival has him shot for making too much noise in Chicago and letting two witnesses get away.
Q 16Which actor played the mob boss hunting Joe and Jerry?
George Raft
George Raft sends up his own past: when a young hood flips a coin, the trick Raft made famous in Scarface, his character sneers, 'Where did you pick up that cheap trick?'
Q 17Which informant tips off the police, leading to the raid on the speakeasy?
"Toothpick" Charlie
"Toothpick" Charlie soon pays for the tip-off: the gangsters he betrayed gun down him and his men in his own garage, the killing Joe and Jerry stumble into.
Q 18The garage shooting the pair witness was inspired by which real event?
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 saw seven men tied to Bugs Moran's gang lined up in a Chicago garage and shot by killers disguised as policemen, a hit long linked to Al Capone.
Q 19Who co-wrote the screenplay with Wilder?
I. A. L. Diamond
I. A. L. Diamond had written with Wilder only once before; the two went on to make ten more films together, and Wilder credited the film's famous last line to Diamond alone.
Q 20Some Like It Hot traces its plot back to which French film of the 1930s?
Fanfare of Love
Fanfare of Love has two jobless musicians dress as women to join an all-female orchestra bound for the Riviera; the gangsters were Wilder's own addition.
Drag makeup looked ghoulish in colour tests, and Monroe, who had wanted colour, gave way once she saw the footage of her co-stars.
Q 24Who designed Monroe's gowns and the men's drag outfits?
Orry-Kelly
Orry-Kelly was hired to dress Monroe; when the rented stock frocks tried on the two men fitted hopelessly, Wilder had him make theirs as well.
Q 25Some Like It Hot won its only Academy Award in which category?
Best Costume Design
Best Costume Design was its lone win from six nominations: Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder both lost to Ben-Hur, which took a record eleven Oscars that night.
Q 26Monroe kept fluffing 'Where's the bourbon?', so Wilder pasted the line inside what?
The drawers
The drawers were ones she had to rummage through on camera; after dozens of takes Wilder pasted the line in one, she opened the wrong one, and he had it pasted in every drawer.
Q 27Which star was in line to play Jerry in Some Like It Hot before the part went to Jack Lemmon?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra was the bigger name wanted for the part; accounts differ on whether Wilder dropped him or he lost interest, and it was Monroe's signing that let Wilder cast Lemmon.
Q 28Which comedian turned down the part later played by Lemmon because he refused to do drag?
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis would not spend half a film in a dress and came to regret it: decades later he said Wilder had dubbed him the schmuck who turned down Some Like It Hot.
Q 29In Some Like It Hot, the Chicago speakeasy where Joe and Jerry play is disguised as what?
A funeral parlour
A funeral parlour: the whiskey arrives by hearse in a coffin, drinks are served as coffee, and the password is that you have come to Grandma's funeral.
Q 30In Some Like It Hot, Sugar Kane says she always gets 'the fuzzy end of' what?
The lollipop
The lollipop is Sugar's image for her luck with men, who borrow her money, spend it on other women and vanish, leaving only old socks and a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste.