Want to know the best Burt Lancaster movies? How about the worst Burt Lancaster movies? Curious about Burt Lancaster’s box office grosses or which Burt Lancaster movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Burt Lancaster movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information.
Burt Lancaster (1913-1994) was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique, blue eyes, and distinctive smile. During his long career he was nominated for four Best Actor Oscars®. He won the Oscar® for his performance in 1960’s Elmer Gantry. He was also nominated for five Best Actor Golden Globes®. AFI (American Film Institute) listed Lancaster on their Top 50 Screen Legends list. He was ranked as the 19th greatest actor.
His IMDb page shows 66 acting credits from 1946-1991. This page will rank 67 Burt Lancaster movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, cameos and his straight to DVD movies were not included in the rankings.
Burt Lancaster Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Burt Lancaster 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 Burt Lancaster movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Burt Lancaster movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Burt Lancaster movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Burt Lancaster movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or highis should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Burt Lancaster movie received.
- Sort Burt Lancaster movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (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 buttons to make this a very interactive table…for example you want to just see the Kirk Douglas/Lancaster movies….just type in Kirk in the search box and the 5 movies will pop right up.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Burt Lancaster Table
- Twenty-five Burt Lancaster movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 37.31% of his movies listed. Airport (1970) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Burt Lancaster movie grossed $100.00 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 53 Burt Lancaster movies are rated as good movies…or 79.10% of his movies. Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is his highest rated movie while Vengenance Valley (1951) is his lowest rated movie.
- Twenty Burt Lancaster movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 29.85% of his movies.
- Seven Burt Lancaster movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 10.44% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 39.86. 43 Burt Lancaster movies scored higher that average….or 64.17% of his movies. From Here to Eternity (1953) got the the highest UMR Score while Executive Action (1973) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Burt Lancaster
1. Burt Lancaster was born Burton Stephen Lancaster in Manhatten, New York City.
2. Burt Lancaster starred with Kirk Douglas seven movies…. Victory at Entebbe (1976), Tough Guys (1986), Seven Days in May (1964), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Devil’s Disciple (1959). Victory at Entebbe (tv movie) and The List of Adrian Messenger (cameo role) did not make our rankings.
3. Burt Lancaster was married three times. He had 5 children (3 daughters and two sons). One of his sons, Bill Lancaster, wrote the screenplay for 1976’s The Bad News Bears. It was based on his experience of being coached by his father. The coach played by Walter Matthau was based on Burt, who was known for his grumpiness.
4. Burt Lancaster’s production company, Hecht Hill Lancaster, produced 1955’s Marty…..which won the Oscar® for Best Picture.
5. Burt Lancaster directed two movies in his career….The Kentuckian and The Midnight Man.
6. The first film Burt Lancaster directed is also the first film Walter Matthau ever appeared in….1955’s The Kentuckian
7. Burt Lancaster appeared nude in 1968’s The Swimmer.
8. For another very interesting tribute to Burt Lancaster check out this page by Lary Wallace….. Burt Lancaster.
9. Roles Burt Lancaster turned down, auditioned for or was seriously considered for: Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston role), Old Gringo (Gregory Peck role), Patton (George C. Scott role), The Poseidon Adventure (Gene Hackman role) and Under Capricorn (Joseph Cotten role) and The Wild Bunch (William Holden role).
10. Check out Burt Lancaster‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Yes have a reply Mr Lancaster was in my opinion one of the best screen actors of our times. How many actors can command a screen presence. most or his movies are so believable you actually feel like you are the character.and or feel what the character feels. And that my fine feathered friend is acting.!
Hey Alfonzo….I agree Burt was a acting legend for sure. Great comment….glad a Lancaster fan found this page.
1 I’ve been looking our for this update for some time now and the wait has been worthwhile. Bruce’s tabulation of Burt’s hit after hit after hit from 1946-1970 illustrates once again that one is right to question the objectivity of the Quigley Top 10 which virtually excluded Burt throughout his exceptional long career.
2 Separate Tables was produced by Burt’s own company and a big talking-point at the time was that Rita Hayworth and Deb Kerr got into a billing dispute so that two posters and two different cast lists had to be issued which alternated top billing between the two women. Even today the alternative cast lists are available for inspection one in IMDB and the other in Wikipedia.
3 To avoid complicating matters further Burt billed himself last among the 5 stars of the film and he argued in an interview that in an ensemble picture special last billing was just as prestigious as first billing. It might have been difficult to convince Spencer Tracy of that. Burt did though make changes to the script to ensure greater on-screen prominence for his own character. Anyway the poster showing Burt’s special last billing has been reproduced on Wikipedia.
4 David Niven won the Oscar for the movie but Burt originally sought Larry Olivier for the Niven part and Vivien Leigh for the Hayworth role. Burt did though secure Larry’s services the following year for The Devil’s Disciple alongside Burt and Kirk.
5 Burt seems to have been one of the drove of stars who sought a part in Godpop (as Variety nicknamed it at the time) and it would appear that he was after the title role. “I would have been subtler as Don Coerlone.” he said in a later interview.
6 Apparently acting was not the only field in which Burt sought to better Marlon. In her autobiography Shelley Winters confesses to having had a “long love affair” with Burt in the early days; and one of Burt’s own biographers tells of how Burt called at Shelley’s apartment with flowers one evening bur was not admitted because Bud was already in the apartment !”. Wikipedia suggests that the Winters affair happened at a time when Burt was married so he must have been quite the ladies man in his day !
7 In his autobiography Burt humbly confessed that the only star by whom he ever felt “frightened” of being out-acted was Monty Clift in From Here to Eternity and separate reports on the making of that film suggest that associates had to calm down Burt at times if he thought that Clift’s acting risked dominating the film.
8 I loved the taglines on the posters for the 1958 submarine film Run Silent Run Deep starring King Gable and Burt. TOGETHER! TERRIFIC! IN ALL THE SEVEN SEAS NEVER TWO LIKE THESE! Clark was officially the first billed star but so popular was Burt in my Belfast in 1958 that I clearly recall that the cinema owners placed Burt’s name first on their marquees.
9 I have said before that I find Bruce’s Possibly Interesting Facts very useful and informative; and for me an additional benefit of that section of the page is that it has the knock-on effect of stirring in my memory long-forgotten nostalgic talking points such as those now mentioned above. So I hope that other readers don’t mind me indulging myself ! !
BOB
Again, since I have already written on this page, I will wait for long comment making when Bruce is home.
1 I too have always been a great Burt fan. Indeed AFI’s screen legends list once again mystifies me in that I think it places Kirk Douglas a couple of places above Burt. I agree that both deserve to be on it; but when it comes to the fine tuning Burt should in my opinion have been accorded any ranking edge in that by any familiar measure of stardom he always bested Kirk:
(1) His films out-grossed Kirk’s and his box office average was better. 67.4/100.6 for Burt & 5.19/69.9 for Kirk according to Bruce’s updated 100 greatest stars list.
(2) Burt was top-billed in all of the films that he and Kirk made together.
(3) Whilst the (in my view) highly over-rated and at times inaccurate Quigley polls of Top 10 movie stars accorded Burt an unrealistic two entries only in his entire career, Quigley NEVER had Kirk as a top-tenner.
2 Indeed one of Kirk’s biographers opined that a big hangup of Kirk’s was that all his life he was not content with being Kirk Douglas but wanted to be Burt Lancaster !
3. A great apparent quality of Burt’s was that he was a good friend. For example it will be noticed that he found in several of his films parts for his old circus chum Nick Cravat.
4 However according to a Lancaster chronicler whilst Burt and Kirk had a great and mutually-respectful professional relationship they did not have the close friendship always mooted in the media. The biographer concerned claimed that Burt told him that the friendship was a myth generated by Kirk to give them both publicity. Indeed Burt apparently used to publicly poke fun at Kirk’s alleged thirst for publicity.
5 Burt’s final years were sad ones, housebound in a wheelchair because of a series of strokes. Ironically he is said to (with the first of those) have collapsed in front of his friend Dana Andrews while visiting Dana in hospital. I personally heard Kirk complain in a television interview some years ago that he had repeatedly tried to see Burt after the latter was housebound, but had been able to gain access. Kirk seemed to blame Burt’s wife; but in the light of what I have said in 4 above I have often wondered whether the blame did lie with THE WIFE.
6 I am not too much into modern stars (Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and MICHAEL Douglas being exceptions). and my hangup is with the Old Guys such as Bogie, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, Brando and Burt. I am also a great Kirk fan and I admire his constitutional strength as he is almost 100.. He has done well in that respect and has bodily outlived his old co-star by about a quarter of a century. Thankfully though DVDs and our TV sets the other giant also still lives on.
Robert:
Since Burt was a producer, he wore several hats.
I will say this.
Of the films the two did together, my favorurite is Gunfight at the OK Corral and that is my favourite version of that classic battle.
Have you checked out the Henry Fonda page yet?
It is also over 5 years old, but Bruce lost the comments in cyberspace.
FLORA
I don’t think that i realised that Bruce had updated this page but anyhow the updates are not in my database so when I’ve considered them I’ll probably have a comment. Thanks for drawing the page to my attention
BOBBY
I remember seeing some of Lancaster’s movies when I was a kid on TV, like The Crimson Pirate and The Rainmaker (he gives his best performance in this movie, I think) and was fortunate enough to have seen Atlantic City when it came out. He was a really cool guy who pushed for interesting movies to be made. Sweet Smell Of Success is certainly a masterpiece which hasn’t aged one bit and some of the other movies he made with his production company were great movies too – Separate Tables, Kiss The Blood Off My Hands, Marty, even with the fun movies like The Crimson Pirate or Trapeze he made sure that great directors and talented DP’s were behind the camera.
Other not above mentioned movies worth checking out IMHO are All My Sons, The Unforgiven, A Child Is Waiting, Cattle Annie and Little Britches, Ulzana’s Raid, Apache, The Swimmer, The Leopard.