Want to know the best Betty Grable movies? How about the worst Betty Grable movies? Curious about Betty Grable box office grosses or which Betty Grable movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Betty Grable movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Betty Grable (1916-1973) was the number one pin-up girl of World War II. The popularity of her pin-ups helped her become a Top Ten Box Office attraction for ten (1942-1951) straight years! Her IMDb page shows 84 acting credits from 1929-1958. This page will rank 32 Betty Grable movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Everyone of her movies from 1940 to 1956 are included in the rankings. Most of her pre-1940s were not included in the rankings…but why? Most were either uncredited, small bit parts or movies produced by Paramount. Paramount is by far the worst studio when it comes to finding out box office grosses from the 1930s.
Drivel Part of the Page: When Dan sent us a request to do a Betty Grable page….we have to admit we knew almost nothing about her career. After doing lots of research on her career for this page…we have a new found respect for her awesome movie career. Her box office numbers are some of the greatest ever for any actress. So thanks Dan for helping us see the light…hope you enjoy your requested Grable page.
Betty Grable Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Betty Grable movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Betty Grable movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Betty Grable movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Betty Grable movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Betty Grable movie received.
- Sort Betty Grable movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the sort and search box to make this table very interactive. For example if you type in “Hope” in the search box….the 2 Bob Hope/Betty Grable movies will pop right up.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Betty Grable Table
- Twenty-one Betty Grable movie crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 65.62% of her movies listed. How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Betty Grable movie grossed $142.80 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 24 of Betty Grable’s movies are rated as good movies…or 66.66% of her movies. How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) is her highest rated movie while Campus Confessions (1938) is her lowest rated movie.
- Ten Betty Grable movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 31.25% of her movies.
- Two Betty Grable movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.25% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 26 Betty Grable movie scored higher that average….or 81.25% of her movies. How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) got the the highest UMR Score while Campus Confessions (1938) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Betty Grable
1. Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born on December 18, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri.
2. Betty Grable was one of the 20 original The Goldwyn Girls, among whom were Lucille Ball, Virginia Bruce, and Paulette Goddard.
3. Two million photographs of Betty Grable wearing a white swimsuit were sent to GIs during World War II.
4. Betty Grable’s legs were insured by Lloyds of London for $1,250,00 dollars.
5. Betty Grable suffered from demophobia (fear of crowds) and was a somnambulist (sleepwalker).
6. Betty Grable was married two times. Her first marriage was to actor, Jackie Coogan from 1937 to 1940. Her second marriage was to band leader, Harry James from 1943 to 1965…they had two children.
7. Betty Grable was the number one box office attraction in 1943….Bob Hope was 2nd.
8. Betty Grable’s Top 10 box office rank 1942-1951: 1942 8th (Abbott & Costello 1st), 1943 1st (Grable 1st), 1944 4th (Bing Crosby 1st), 1945 4th (Bing Crosby 1st), 1946 9th (Bing Crosby 1st), 1947 2nd (Bing Crosby 1st), 1948 2nd (Bing Crosby 1st), 1949 7th (Bob Hope 1st), 1950 4th (John Wayne 1st) and 1951 3rd (John Wayne 1st).
9. Betty Grable movies grossed over $4.6 billion in adjusted domestic box office gross. 21 of her movies grossed over $100 million in adjusted domestic box office gross.
10. Check out Betty Grable‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
I’ve seen all 26 of Grable’s “starring” movies from the 1940s & ’50s. Love all except one, but my top 10 favorites are 1943’s Coney Island, 1941’s Moon Over Miami, 1953’s How to Marry a Millionaire, 1947’s Mother Wore Tights, 1950’s Wabash Avenue, 1942’s Springtime in the Rockies, 1945’s The Dolly Sisters, 1948’s When My Baby Smiles at Me, 1950’s My Blue Heaven, 1948’s That Lady in Ermine. Also love her two dramatic movies, the film noir 1941’s I Wake Up Screaming and the romantic war drama 1941’s A Yank in the RAF in which she gives one of her best performances (I wish they had given her more like this one!). The only Grable film I don’t especially like is 1955’s How to Be Very, Very Popular.
Hey Lon C. Very impressive that you have seen all of Grable’s movies. Looks like a good Top 10.
1943’s Coney Island…6th on the UMR ranking table
1941’s Moon Over Miami…18th on the UMR ranking table
1953’s How to Marry a Millionaire…1st on the UMR ranking table
1947’s Mother Wore Tights…2nd on the UMR ranking table
1950’s Wabash Avenue…21st on the UMR ranking table
1942’s Springtime in the Rockies…9th on the UMR ranking table
1945’s The Dolly Sisters…8th on the UMR ranking table
1948’s When My Baby Smiles at Me..7th on the UMR ranking table
1950’s My Blue Heaven…17th on the UMR ranking table
1948’s That Lady in Ermine…31st on the UMR ranking table
So 6 of your favorites are in our UMR Top 10. Added bonus….the one Grable movie you did not like finished near the bottom of our rankings….29th place. Good mini-reviews and good comment. Glad a Grable fan was able to find our page.
Betty Grable had 10 consecutive years in the quigley box office poll and fifteen consecutive years in the theatre owners of america and canada poll.
When she took the lead in hello dolly her prior dolly martha raye was bringing in $44k a week when betty took over the grosses rose to $89k a week, ginger rogers was bringing in $76k phyllis diller $59k a week.
STEVE
1 I see that like Bruce you have been busy in my absence. Many of Betty Grable’s films, like those of Mae West usually seemed so similar to me that often I could take them or leave them. However just as I had a great academic interest in West’s actual career and not her movies themselves I found Betty’s career fascinating too as in her heyday she like Elvis, Shirley Temple as a child and Joan Crawford was the mainstay of almost all of her movies whereas other stars had often the support of performers of their own status or greater.
2 Certainly she was an eye-popper in the movies that she made and I therefore knew your video would be guaranteed a range of dazzling posters. For openers there were those from Three for the Show and Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend and after that I gave up trying to make distinctions as the subsequent high quality was repeatedly even. Stills that stood out for me were those of Ty Power and Betty, the Moon over Miami quartet and especially the ‘film noir’ type one of Mature, Grable and Carole Landis from I Wake up Screaming aka Hot Spot.
3 Bruce and you are agreed on 4 of Betty’s top 5 movies and I give him my personal bonus points for using the I Wake Up Screaming title as I did not like the aka Hot Spot.** However it all evens out as you deserve extra points for excluding from your Top 5 Follow the Fleet which was an Astaire/Rogers flick in essence. Overall the video is in my estimation a 9.4/10. Thoroughly enjoyable.
**Remade in 1953 as Vicki starring Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters and Elliot Reid
Hey Bob…..thanks for the breakdown of Steve’s Betty Grable video. He has indeed been very busy once he got settled in. His You Tube page is really taking off….just goes to show what happens when he finally listened to me and started doing classic pages….lol. 🙂
Hey Bruce, like I’ve mentioned before I get ideas for video topics from your index page, but you have neglected a few greats, Cyd Charisse for instance and more recently – the beautiful Sharon Stone has yet to grace your pages.
Hey Steve….well….I guess I will have to do a Cyd Charisse page in the near future….since you got yours done first…you can tell me how I got all my rankings wrong….the first person to plant the flag always has bragging rights in my book. 🙂
Hi Bob, good to have you back in the fold again, hope you had a nice holiday. Thanks for the review, rating, observation and comparison, always appreciated.
Not a great actress but Betty was some real eye candy for the depressed masses during WWII, watching Hollywood musicals must have been a pleasant escape from the realities of global war.
I used an alternate poster for I Wake Up Screaming aka Hot Spot on this video, you can view the original on the Victor Mature video.
🙂
1 In her Top star years from 1940 until 1953 Betty provided a continuous stream of box office hits and some historians opine that in the 1940s Grable was a bigger movie star than Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth or even Judy Garland
2 By 1953 however there were signs that her home studio 20th Century Fox was coming to regard her as less important than relative newcomer Marilyn Monroe . For example in How to marry a Millionaire whilst Betty’s name was first on the screen because of prior contractual arrangements Marilyn was given top billing in all of the promotion material for the movie as reproduced posters in Wikipedia and IMDB illustrate.
3 However if she felt aggrieved she was very magnanimous about the matter because it is reported that she said to MM “Iv’e had my success now you go and get yours.”
4 Sadly Betty made no more films after 1955.
BOB
Hey Bob
1. It is the wrong Betty….the new Betty page is Betty Hutton..lol.
2. Her box office success is stunning. I think the lack of an all-time great movie is why she is not remembered as much as she should be….true she had tons of hits….but how many get mentioned today?
3. I have read the same thing about Grable, Monroe and How To Marry A Millionaire….that is a smart person….I imagine it was hard to tell herself that she was still the top star when the storm Marilyn Monroe arrived in town.
4. Sad indeed….too bad she did not move on to supporting roles as she got older….if she had…I am sure she would have gotten at least an Oscar nomination.
🙂
1 It is NOT the wrong Betty – as the saying goes watch this space !!
2 Astute observation at 2. Perhaps the Rock Hudson films, Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and perhaps Love Me or Leave Me aside the lack of all time great movies and absence of Oscar success is the reason for the exclusion from AFI screen legends list. that other great box office female Doris Day ?
BOB
BOB
Hey Bob….
1. Thanks for the Grable comment…though poor Betty Hutton is wondering…what did I do wrong….for Bob to skip over me and go to Betty Grable ….lol.
2. I think Day was hurt by the fact that her career did not get going until the 1950s arrive….though it did not hurt Grace Kelly or Sophia Loren. As popular as Pillow Talk was…I think it and almost all of her movies fell into the rom com category…and the AFI voters held that against her. Kinda of like how the Oscars hold a box office successful movie against them….as they seem to think….it can’t be great art if some many people saw the movie.
🙂
Hi
I’ve seen 6 or 7 Grable movies, I really liked Tin Pan Alley and The Dolly Sisters. To be honest, her massive box office appeal I always found a puzzlement because rather than the girl next door, she was more like the leading lady’s best friend. And yet you can not argue with them box office figures, they’re incredible. But I think she was more a star of her time rather than an icon of cinema.
Hey Chris…..your 6 or 7 easily outdistances my total of 1. Though my total will soon double to 2 as I currently have a Yank in the RAF in the house right now. I will have to check out Tin Pan Alley and The Dolly Sisters. I agree with your thoughts on Grable. Only twice has the box office results of a star surprised me when doing these pages….one was Grable as you say they are incredible the other was Dean Martin. Those two actually seem to have a lot in common….easy going acting skills in massively popular movies. Thanks for your thoughts on Betty Grable.