West Side Story Trivia
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59 free West Side Story trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This West Side Story trivia quiz covers all three lives of the show: Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' 1957 Broadway musical, the 1961 film that won ten Academy Awards, and Steven Spielberg's 2021 remake. The easy questions handle the basics: the Shakespeare play behind it, the names of the two gangs, who Tony and Maria are, and where the story is set. The harder end is for musical theatre obsessives: the abandoned East Side Story draft about Catholic and Jewish families, the songs Bernstein swapped with Candide, why Columbia Records made Sondheim change the last line of one number, which singer secretly dubbed Natalie Wood, why the Krupke and Cool numbers switched places on film, and which record-setting firsts Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose achieved playing the same role sixty years apart. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the musical, both films, the individual songs and the key performers before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Broadway musicals, Shakespeare and Best Picture winners quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01West Side Story is inspired by which Shakespeare play?
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet supplied the plot, with rival street gangs standing in for the feuding families. One big change: Maria, the Juliet figure, is still alive at the final curtain.
Q 02West Side Story is set among rival street gangs in which American city?
New York
New York, on Manhattan's West Side. The 1961 film shot its opening on condemned blocks that were torn down soon afterwards to make way for Lincoln Center.
Q 03Who composed the music for West Side Story?
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein wrote the score, yet he never conducted the complete show until a studio recording in 1985, nearly three decades after opening night.
Q 04Which show beat West Side Story to Broadway's top Tony Award in 1958?
The Music Man
The Music Man, a sunny tale of an Iowa con man, swept the season's major prizes. The gang tragedy went home with just two Tonys, for choreography and scenic design.
Q 05Who wrote the book (the spoken script) of West Side Story?
Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents made up the gangs' slang himself, because swearing was off-limits on a 1957 stage and real street talk would soon have sounded dated.
Q 06Who conceived West Side Story and directed and choreographed the original production?
Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins kept the actors playing the Jets and the Sharks apart from day one, even at lunch, and pinned news stories about real gang fights to the walls.
Q 07What is the name of Maria's brother, the leader of the Sharks?
Bernardo
Bernardo leads the Sharks and watches over his sister closely. At the rumble he kills the Jets' leader and is stabbed by Tony in return, so the first act ends with two bodies on stage.
Q 08What are the Jets famous for doing as they strut onto their turf in West Side Story's opening?
Snapping their fingers
Snapping their fingers: in the 1957 staging the gang's leader stepped out of the dark alone and began to snap, and the other Jets stubbed out their cigarettes and fell in behind him.
Q 09The 1949 idea that became West Side Story set its feud between which two groups?
Catholics and Jews
Catholics and Jews, feuding on the Lower East Side over Easter and Passover. The team shelved that draft, East Side Story, as too close to the long-running hit play Abie's Irish Rose.
Q 10Which songwriting duo were first choice to write West Side Story's lyrics but could not take the job?
Comden and Green
Comden and Green had written On the Town with the show's composer, but a Hollywood contract is said to have tied them up. The job went to a newcomer with no Broadway credits.
Q 11'One Hand, One Heart' was first written for which other show its composer was working on at the same time?
Candide
Candide was being written alongside it, and tunes moved between the two scores. The melody of the Jets' comic number about a policeman is also said to have begun life in the operetta.
Q 12Which song was written to replace 'One Hand, One Heart' in the fire-escape balcony scene?
Tonight
Tonight took over when the show's book writer argued the first choice was too pristine for hot-blooded teenagers. The slower duet moved to the bridal shop, where the lovers act out a wedding.
Q 13What happens to Tony at the end of West Side Story?
He is shot dead
Q 21Which Hollywood star played Maria in the 1961 film of West Side Story?
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood filmed her scenes singing along to her own recordings, believing they would be used. Only once shooting was over did she learn a ghost singer would replace her voice.
Q 22West Side Story won two Tonys in 1958, for its choreography and for the scenic design of which designer?
Oliver Smith
Oliver Smith had designed the same choreographer and composer's 1944 ballet Fancy Free, and it was he who suggested turning that hit into a full-length Broadway musical, On the Town.
Q 23Which West Side Story song was a late addition, its lyric lifted from a page of the script introducing Tony?
Something's Coming
He is shot dead moments after finding Maria alive, having been falsely told she had been killed. Boys from both gangs then carry his body away together.
Q 14Which film star did West Side Story's book writer first want for the role of Tony?
James Dean
James Dean was the early wish for Tony, but he was killed in a car crash in 1955, two years before opening night. The part went to a little-known stage performer instead.
Q 15Which producing partner of Robert E. Griffith took on West Side Story when others had called it too dark?
Hal Prince
Hal Prince was in Boston nursing a troubled show of his own when the original producer quit, unable to find backers. He flew back, heard the score and took it on.
Q 16West Side Story's cast was granted eight weeks of what, far more than Broadway shows of the day usually got?
Rehearsals
Rehearsals ran for eight weeks, and the director still needed a second choreographer, who worked up the Sharks' steps while he drilled the Jets separately.
Q 17West Side Story opened in 1957 at which Broadway theatre, later home to Cats for 18 years?
Winter Garden
Winter Garden: after closing there in 1959 the production toured the country, then reopened on the very same stage in April 1960.
Q 18Which record label at first refused to record West Side Story's original cast album, calling the score too depressing?
Columbia Records
Columbia Records was the composer's own label, yet its executives first told him the songs had too many words and nothing anybody could sing. It released the cast album all the same.
Q 19Who created the role of Anita in West Side Story's original 1957 Broadway cast?
Chita Rivera
Chita Rivera created Anita on Broadway and repeated the role in London, yet the 1961 film gave the part to Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for it.
Q 20Who played Maria in West Side Story's original 1957 Broadway cast?
Carol Lawrence
Carol Lawrence was the only performer in the cast to earn a Tony nomination, and although she played the heroine, it came in the featured-actress category.
Something's Coming was a last-minute addition, because Tony needed a number to introduce him. The show's book writer urged the songwriters to raid his own scene-setting speech for the words.
Q 24What title was given to the 1960 orchestral suite drawn from West Side Story's score?
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story was first played in 1961 by the orchestra its composer then led as music director, yet he left the premiere to another conductor, Lukas Foss.
Q 25Which opera stars sang Tony and Maria on West Side Story's 1985 studio recording?
José Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa
José Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa turned the casting upside down: a Spanish tenor sang the all-American Tony, and a soprano from New Zealand sang the newly arrived Maria.
Q 26The 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story wove Spanish into its songs using translations by which Tony winner?
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda put Shark songs such as 'I Feel Pretty' into Spanish, but five months into the run some of those lyrics were switched back to English.
Q 27West Side Story's 2020 Broadway revival, which cut 'I Feel Pretty', was staged by which avant-garde director?
Ivo van Hove
Ivo van Hove threw out the show's famous original dances and ran it without an interval. Three weeks after opening night the pandemic closed Broadway, and his production never reopened.
Q 28Which Hollywood director, once the editor of Citizen Kane, directed and produced the 1961 film of West Side Story?
Robert Wise
Robert Wise had made his name with gritty, low-budget black-and-white dramas, and he opened this musical with a helicopter shot swooping down on real city streets.
Q 29Which of its 11 Oscar nominations did West Side Story's 1961 film lose?
Screenplay
Screenplay was the one that got away: Ernest Lehman's script lost to the courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg. One more win would have tied the record eleven Oscars that Ben-Hur had set two years earlier.
Q 30West Side Story's 1961 film was the first to share which Academy Award between two people?
Best Director
Best Director went jointly to a Hollywood veteran and the stage show's choreographer, who had been fired partway through the shoot for running over budget yet kept his credit and his Oscar.