Want to know the best Cary Grant movies? How about the worst Cary Grant movies? Curious about Cary Grant’s box office grosses or which Cary Grant movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Cary Grant movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.
I would say my favorite three actors of all-time are Sir Michael Caine, Mr. Bruce Willis, and Archibald Leach….better known as Cary Grant (1904-1986). I discovered Cary Grant when I was in high school. During a sick day, I was stuck at home and bored out of my mind while watching television. As I flipped through the channels I came across a black and white movie. Back then I extremely disliked black and white movies. But I started to watch the movie that was on television. It took about 5 minutes before I realized I was enjoying the movie and another 45 minutes to realize I needed to see the beginning of the movie. That movie was called Bringing Up Baby and it opened the wonderful doors of Cary Grant movies.
Cary Grant made 73 full length movies from 1932-1966. When I wrote the page the first time I was able to find all the required information on 50 of the movies. Since then I have found box office information on the rest of the 23 movies. In the table below Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks 73 of his movies in 5 different sortable columns. Television roles, shorts and straight to DVD movies were not included in the rankings.
I have seen 51 of the 73 movies listed in the following tables. So I figure I would add my personal Top Ten Cary Grant movies…..located at the bottom of the page
Cary Grant Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Cary Grant 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 Cary Grant movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Cary Grant movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Cary Grant movies by domestic yearly box office rank or trivia
- Sort Cary Grant movies 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 Cary Grant movie received.
- Sort Cary Grant 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.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Cary Grant Table
1. 41 of Cary Grant’s movies crossed the magical $100 million mark. That is a percentage of 64.06% of his movies listed. His top box office hit was Operation Petticoat (1959).
2. An average Cary Grant movie grosses $147.10 million in adjusted box office gross.
3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 49 of Cary Grant’s movies are rated as good movies…or 77.77% of his movies. His highest rated movie is 1959’s North by Northwest. His lowest rated movie is The Last Outpost (1935).
4. 28 of Cary Grant’s movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 44.44% of his movies.
5. 8 of Cary Grant’s movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 12.63% of his movies.
6. A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 48 of Cary Grant’s movies scored higher that average….or 76.19% of his movies. The Philadelphia Story (1940) got the highest UMR Score. Born To Be Bad (1934) got the lowest UMR Score.
7. Cary Grant starred in 6 movies that were nominated for a Best Picture Oscar® nomination. She Done Him Wrong (1933), The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Suspicion (1941), The Talk Of The Town (1942), and The Bishop’s Wife (1947).
Cary Grant Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide
Cary Grant made many great movies….so picking a personal Top Ten for him is very very tough…but here goes my list in alphabetical order.
1. The Awful Truth (1937)….Cary Grant and Irene Dunne made a great screen couple, this was their first of three movies together. Grant is hilarious in the movie. Movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar® and won the director, Leo McCarey an Oscar® for Best Director.
2. Charade (1963)…..Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn team up in this almost Hitchcock like movie. Is Grant the good guy or the bad guy? A great supporting cast in James Coburn, George Kennedy and Walter Matthau.
3. Gunga Din (1939)…Gunga Din was one of my father’s favorite Cary Grant movies….so this story of soldiers in 19th century India makes my list….great action, great fun and a terrific ending.
4. Father Goose (1964)…Father Goose is a movie can I watch again and again. Grant is stuck on an island with a school teacher(Leslie Caron) and her 7 students(all girls) during World War II. Great lines throughout this movie.
5. His Girl Friday (1940)….one of the few times that Cary Grant got to be instigator of the comedy mayhem….versus being the one that had to react to all the craziness. A fast pace, fast talking comedy classic.
6. My Favorite Wife (1940)….his second movie with Irene Dunne and another classic. Dunne is assumed to have perished in a boat sinking seven years ago, she is rescued and returns home just as Grant remarries….and then the fun begins.
7. North by Northwest (1959) ….Grant’s fourth and final film with Alfred Hitchcock…. great scenes throughout the movie like the crop dusting plane, the auction scene and of course the Mount Rushmore finale.
8. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)….one of his lesser known classics from the great movie year of 1939…Howard Hawks directed this story about pilots that risk their lives flying in South America…a great supporting cast of Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur and Thomas Mitchell.
9. The Philadelphia Story (1940)….Grant and Katharine Hepburn made 4 movies together…this by far is their best movie together….and yet James Stewart is the one that won the Oscar® for this movie…..this movie gets better every year.
10. To Catch A Thief (1955)…Grant thought his movie career was over….and then Hitchcock talked him out of semi-retirement to play a cat burglar nicknamed “The Cat”. This movie gives you a Cary Grant and Grace Kelly falling in love on screen and off screen…direction by the great Alfred Hitchcock….with the French Riviera as a backdrop…what more could you want?
Other great movies that just missed my Top Ten cut….Notorious, Operation Petticoat, Arsenic and Old Lace, An Affair To Remember and Bringing Up Baby.
Our brand new Cary Grant You Tube Video.
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Want more Cary Grant information? Then I highly recommend http://www.carygrant.net/articles/i%20cary.htm
My Cary Grant letterbox.com reviews. Highly recommend Letterboxd.com. It is free and great way to keep track of the movies you have watched.
Cary Grant appeared in 14 color movies. His first color movie was Night and Day in 1946. Interestingly, he made only one color movie until 1955. His last thirteen movies from 1955 to 1966 were all in color.
Grant had color classics in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and Charade.
Hey John….as a huge Cary Grant fan….got admit that I did not realize that Cary Grant’s only color movie from the early 1930s to his return from his “retirement” was Night and Day….which is one of his worst movies (in my humble opinion). Cary Grant and color movies did well together….his last 10 years of his career were very very successful ones. I would included To Catch A Thief as one of one of his color classics. Good stuff!
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste it’s sweetness on the desert air.
1 Cary Grant had probably the most deceptive style of all of the Hollywood Greats in that it was so casual that it was often considered frivolous but in effect masked a perfect technique that could be seamlessly applied to both comedy and drama. The highly respected Italian actor/director Vittorio De Sica called Grant “a great actor.”
2. VIDEO COMMENTS
(1) I was shocked to see the likes of That Touch of Mink and Indiscreet so low in your chart until I realised that the bottom bar was set reasonably high and your presentation therefore illustrated the great number of high quality movies Grant made.
(2) I thought your Top 5 selection was excellent and therefore wanted to see what our own resident Cary Grant expert thought of it. 4 of his Top 5 selections agree with yours but I was surprised at the gap between you and him regarding To Catch a Thief. You have it at No 23 with an albeit fine 7.3 but he has it at No 8 critic/audience with almost an 85% rating
(3) Best stills in my view are the funny one with Monroe and Cary, the cosy, huggy Grant/Loren photo and the dramatic closing one.
(4) I especially loved the posters for His Girl Friday, North by Northwest and the two Mae West movies. Apparently West used to boast that she had ‘discovered’ Grant and made him a star. She said that she saw Grant walking past her dressing trailer in white tights and decided she wanted him for those two West/Grant movies. This was put to Cary in an interview in later times and he took exception to her claims, and I thought that the main reason for his displeasure was that he was interpreting the tone of the comments as a hint that the young Grant had been a Gigolo in his connections with West.
3 Grant was very critical of Marlon Brando when the latter came on the scene but later admitted that he had been wrong in his criticisms. Anyway a 9/10 video – so splendid!
Thanks Bob, much appreciated. I dug up my old video and gave it a quick scan, forgot about the Monroe / Grant photo and was wondering if they’d ever made a movie together. 🙂
The highest rating I could find for To Catch a Thief was from Rotten Tomatoes which gave it an 8 out of 10. My other sources weren’t so generous. Bruce must have got his ratings from a Hitchcock Forever fan page. [cue Bruce biting fist] 😉
“The script and the actors keep things popping, in a fast, slick, sophisticated vein. Mr. Grant and Miss Kelly do grandly, especially in one sly seduction scene. If you’ve never heard double-entendre, you will hear it in this film.” (Bosley Crowther NYTimes)
“It was a lightweight story” (Hitchcock)
I have nothing against Hitchock’s Holiday Adventure I even wrote a hub on it at Hubpages, worth a look for the rare screenshots and posters – here’s the link –
http://hubpages.com/entertainment/Hitchcocks-To-Catch-a-Thief-1955-Illustrated-Reference
Hey Steve….Rotten Tomatoes has one of the biggest weighted % in my formula I use….I remember when we (WoC) set that formula up…I knew all the %….but after using all these years…I have forgotten the %….which changes…..it depends on which sources I find and use.
Thanks for this link….just added your Grant video to a recent comment here….good video on one of my all-time favorites.
Hey Bob….as for To Catch A Thief and our differences….just double checked my resources…..and despite some minor differences (IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes are always slightly changing) I stick by my numbers.
Hey Steve….another winning video. Here is the link….even if you got TCAT wrong….lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT4Nc_TtP0c
“A man convinced against his will remains unconvinced still.” !!
🙂
Thanks Bruce, I keep forgetting to add a link to the video in discussion. You should add Leonard Maltin to your sources and watch those ratings plummet. 🙂
Huge GRANT’s filmography is on Carey Grant’s page.
Thanks Kevin….that has been fixed….man did I make some mistakes when I updated this Grant page. First I gave Hugh Grant, Cary Grant’s career and now I gave Cary, Hugh’s career. Thinking I should label my table names better. Thanks again.
What a great post. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I am always changing my mind on which is my favorite. I could watch most of them over and over. I did not enjoy Gunga Din.
Thank you Janet. The first time I saw Gunga Din I was not too impressed either…..but it is a movie that gets better with each new viewing. Now it is one of my favorite Grant performances. Glad you enjoyed our Grant tribute.
The AFI final 4 were Bogart, Grant, Hepburn, Davis.I think Cary was the better all around actor. Comedy better than Bogart. Drama pretty equal. Film Noir is were Bogart has the edge.
Hey Harvey….that is a pretty stout Final Four. I agree with your assessment of them. Both are without a doubt one of a kind talents that will never be equaled.