Want to know the best Dorothy McGuire movies? How about the worst Dorothy McGuire movies? Curious about Dorothy McGuire box office grosses or which Dorothy McGuire movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Dorothy McGuire movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Dorothy McGuire (1916-2001) was an Oscar® nominated American actress. McGuire’s acting career last over 6 decades. She is most famous for her roles in 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement, 1957’s Old Yeller and and 1959’s A Summer Place. Dorothy McGuire’s IMDb page shows 55 acting credits from 1943-1990. This page will rank 28 Dorothy McGuire movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her one short films and her 26 television roles were not included in the rankings. This Dorothy McGuire page was requested by Greg, Lupino and FilmNoirFan.
Dorothy McGuire 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 Dorothy McGuire movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Dorothy McGuire movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Dorothy McGuire movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Dorothy McGuire 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 Dorothy McGuire movie received.
- Sort Dorothy McGuire 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.
- Blue link in Co-star column takes you to that star’s UMR movie page
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Dorothy McGuire Table
- Seventeen Dorothy McGuire movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 60.71% of her movies listed. Swiss Family Robinson (1960) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Dorothy McGuire movie grosses $137.40 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 31 Dorothy McGuire movies are rated as good movies…or 71.42% of her movies. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945) is her highest rated movie while Summer Heat (1987) is her lowest rated movie.
- Twelve Dorothy McGuire movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 42.85% of her movies.
- Three Dorothy McGuire movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 10.71% of her movies.
- An average “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 20 Dorothy McGuire movie scored higher that average….or 71.42% of her movies. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) got the the highest UMR Score while Summer Heat (1987) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Dorothy McGuire
- Dorothy Hackett McGuire was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1916.
2. Dorothy McGuire first gained some notice with her voice work in radio.
3. After radio, Dorothy McGuire moved to Broadway. First appearing as an understudy to Martha Scott in Our Town, and subsequently starring in the domestic comedy Claudia
4. After seeing her performances on Broadway, super producer David O. Selznick, brought her to Hollywood.
5. Dorothy McGuire was nominated for 1 Oscars®. She received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement.
6. Dorothy McGuire was married one time. She was married to John Swope from 1943 to his death in 1979. They had two children.
7. Dorothy McGuire’s connections to Star Wars – Part 1 In 1960, McGuire starred in Swiss Family Robinson; which was directed by Ken Annakin. George Lucas was a huge fan of Swiss Family Robinson and would eventually name Annakin Skywalker after the director.
8. Dorothy McGuire’s connections to Star Wars – Part 2 The final climatic scene in Swiss Family Robinson was a direct influence on the final Ewok skirmish in 1983’s Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.
9. Dorothy McGuire starred with 2 members of the Mills family in 2 different Disney films. She played John Mills’ wife in 1960’s Swiss Family Robinson and Hayley Mills’ mother in 1963’s Summer Magic.
10. Check out Dorothy McGuire‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Steve’s Dorothy McGuire Movie Ranking Page.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark.
HI B & B My worry would be that a UMR page from me about billing issues would get me into even more hot water with those who do not regard it as important as I do. Look for example at the grief poor ole The Work Horse gets from Steve for bringing stats together in comprehensive form.
Spencer Tracy might disagree but my favourite billing story on this site is the rather morbid one about character actor Wallace Ford who seldom if ever got equal billing to the stars let alone top billing. When Wally died he had it engraved on his tombstone “Here lies Wallace Ford Top Billing at last!
However Yanks, being known for doing crazy things – look at Johnny Depp – vandals broke into the graveyard one night and defaced Wally’s headstone so that next morning it read-
CLARK GABLE
Here Lies Wallace Ford top billing no longer.
Despite its morbidity I always liked that story because Wallace obviously shared my belief in the great importance of billing to movie stars – after all he took the matter to the grave with him – and even a bunch of hooligans paid attention to the billing!
EXTRA FAVE OF MINE
Legendary Brit actor Peter Cushing, OBE [Officer of the Order of the British Empire] appeared on The Morecambe and Wise TV 1970 Christmas show in England and participated in the following comic sketch
ERIC MORECAMBE, OBE Welcome Mr Cushing
ERNIE WISE [OBE, -it’s getting a bit repetitive isn’t it?] I hope you are going to give us some examples of fine acting Mr Cushing. We have some good material for you. I’ve written it myself.
PETER CUSHING Yes but what about my fee? What about my billing? Nobody’s told me yet what they are going to be.
HI BOB COX Nice to hear from you these days. I’ve been keeping an eye on your posts.
The Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky once advised young would-be revolutionaries “If you want to maintain peace of mind don’t get involved in politics.”I would not presume to give you THAT kind of advice but I will say to you that if you don’t want to be tormented in mind don’t get embroiled in the debates on this site about billing arrangement in movies.
Take it from one who knows. I am the Lone Ranger of the site as regards my efforts to convince others of the paramount importance of billing to stars, especially in Old Hollywood when Big Beasts like Tracy, Gable, Wayne, Crawford and Grant roamed Tinseltown.
By good fortune today’s new page on Nick Nolte again reminds me how right I am to treat the matter as one of extreme importance. In the 1962 Cape Fear Greg Peck played the lawyer Sam Bowden and Bob Mitchum was the baddie Max Cady. Greg was the bigger star [and indeed voted historically the bigger legend by AFI] and he was billed above Big Bob. In the 1991 Scorsese version DeNiro played Cady and Nolte the good guy Bowden but this time the one who played the baddie got the billing as DeNiro was a bigger star than Nolte.
Moral of that story: don’t let guys like The Work Horse highly knowledgeable as they are about most movie things mislead you about someone being top dog on a movie because he/she performed a certain part in a school play and/or his/her nice old grandmother bequeathed the film rights on her deathbed. The guy/gal whose name is first on that bill is the one who counts most among stars and many others besides.
“ I was fortunate enough in my early Hollywood years not to be bothered too much by lecherous studio power figures because I had the protection of a powerful star whom I married – Tom Cruise” [Nicole Kidman]
Hey Bob….well….The Lone Ranger is a pretty popular guy. I like the quote by Tom Cruise.
This is a friendly bar room debate. Friendly as long as you really know, that I right and you are mistaken….lol.
The title of the Cooper/McGuire film that I recently highlighted in my exchanges with Steve about Dorothy’s video probably gets my intentions in our debates just about right “Friendly Persuasion”!
Hey Bob….got it….this in regards to you 9:06 AM comment.
HI STEVE
Thanks for drawing my attention to my incomplete Old C quotes[and the C stands for Cantankerous and nothing else!].
The full quote as I remember it from about 40 years ago is as follows
INTERVIEWER You have a great friendship with Miss Hepburn In the many films you have made with her you never once ceded top billing to her. Why not let her go top at least once? – Ladies First you know!
OLD C It’s a movie, not a lifeboat, Chowderhead!”
Apart from the fact that the interviewer began talking in the plural and Old C answered in the singular I can see nothing else wrong with that exchange even if you don’t agree with Tracy’s logic? Do YOU see yet another ‘mistake’?
Bob, that version of the quote makes more sense, but did you spot the mistake in your previous quote of that exchange?
Ladies first indeed, today women want to be treated equal more than ever, does this mean I would be ungallant if I didn’t get up and offer my seat to a lady on the tube? No special favors right? 😉
HI STEVE
Thanks for elaborating. In one cast list [for Sea of Grass] on.Wiki they actually erroneously as their poster shows list Katie before Spence and I thought that that’s what you were going to hit me with and I had a whole detailed rebuttal formulated in my head.!
They may have been lumbered with the Hayes Code back in Hollywood’s Golden Era but there wasn’t as much “political correctness” about in those days. I’m told that today for example if you saw me falling off a ship into the sea you can no longer shout “man overboard” but have to yell “person overboard” Also large Kleenex tissues can no longer be referred to as “man sized”
I might not think that you were ungallant if your refused to surrender your seat to a woman but if that women was an actress I might think “Hey that guy has something against actresses!” But whatever happened to the chivalrous Englishman of the Ian Carmichael/Terry Thomas-films?
Linking the “political” to movies as we have done prompts me to ask if you think Theresa May’s husband looks a bit like Woody Allen? Certainly she must think highly of him – “I forget all about the despatch boxes when I enter the bedroom” – Theresa May
HI BRUCE Thanks for your interest in the exchanges between Steve and me here and on Lucy’s page. Whilst it’s academic the weight that I attach to billing the stars themselves paid a lot of attention to it. Tracy and Gable for example insisted on top billing clauses going into their contracts when they renegotiated them in 1940.
The King is said to have confided in his agent that he was “sick of getting billed under” actresses who were not the box office stars that he was. You in fact on your Melvyn Douglas page gave us a quote from him that emphasised how important the pecking order at MGM was to the top stars. A thought for Sunday – would Tracy or, later, McQueen have agreed with you that I pay too much attention to billing/? !!
INTERVIEWER: In all your films together you never let Miss Hepburn have top billing despite your great friendship with her. Could you even just for once not let her have top billing?
OLD CANTANKEROUS: It’s a movie, not a lifeboat Chowderhead!
Not only was billing a matter of status but there was a correlation that a performer’s money could go down if his/her billing started to decline. For that reason Flynn is said to have fought, albeit to no avail, against 4th billing in the 1957 The Sun Also Rises where he was billed after not just Power and Gardner but also Mel Ferrer [never a big star].
Errol’s main concern there was apparently that he would get billing that permitted him to draw the pay checks that would continue to finance his extravagant lifestyle of wild parties and bucket loads of booze! Conversely though the Great Alexander Archibald Leech insisted upon top billing over my Jimmy and Katie Hep in 1940s Philadelphia Story but then commendably immediately proceeded to donate his entire salary for the movie to the war effort at that time. Continued in Part 2
.HI BRUCE Dorothy McGuire being billed after performers such as Peck and Lancaster but EQUAL to them was respectable because they were mega stars but not getting equal billing to Cooper [who was named alone above the title] in 1956’s Friendly Persuasion was a sure sign of decline due to the “Curse of 39”
Coop’s career lasted just a further 5 years but he was top-billed right until the end. He was even billed before Marlon Brando Senior [awful state of affairs!] who produced Gary’s final flick, 1961’s The Naked Edge.
Conversely Dorothy’s career lasted a further 34 years but only once [in 1957’s Old Yeller] did she ever again get 1st billing in a cinematic movie, being billed below the likes of Richard Egan, Robert Preston, Ron Moody, Connie Stevens, Troy Donahue, John Mills and his daughter Hayley, Stephanie Zimbalist and Jack Wild. All good people but none of them having the status that Dorothy had in her heyday. However whilst Spence ‘s top billing continued until the end of his life he sadly bowed out age 67 whereas Dorothy lived until 85.
However the important thing for me is that your post agreed that I have nothing against actresses. As I have indicated I would be mortified if anyone retained an idea that I would discriminate on grounds of gender etc and given how I have drooled and enthused over the likes of Joan, Doris and Deanna on this site I am puzzled that Steve could ever have gotten such an idea whatever his views about my take on Dorothy’s individual career. He’ll say next that I have a down on Joel !!
NB My apologies to the estate of Archie Leach for incorrectly spelling his surname in my last post. Additional Trivia – Arch’s net worth on his death in 1986 was reportedly $60 million dollars, big money for those days and worth $135 million today according to the US bureau of Labor Statistics. Archie’s mentor, the Great Alfred, left a net estate worth approx $635 million in today’s dollars. Hitch is said to have personally gotten in 2018 dollars $120 million from Psycho alone.
Good stuff Bob. You’ve written so much on movie billing here at the UMR, you should join all your posts together and create a book. Call it “Top of the Bill” or how about “First Billed”? [wink]
At least you agree that for the most part leading ladies are nearly always billed after the leading man in old Hollywood, legendary actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Katie Hepburn being the exception to the rule. But even they get kicked into 2nd position on occasion.
That’s why you mentioning ‘inferior billing’ in your post for Dorothy McGuire had me raising the old eyebrows. Even box office queen Myrna Loy had to accept ‘inferior billing’ by the late 50s. 😉
Btw Bob the interviewer in your ‘Old Cantankerous’ quote above has got it wrong, read it carefully and see. Maybe Bruce can fix it for you. I think this is the second time you’ve posted that quote and with the same mistake!
Hey Steve…I agree…Bob has so many “billing” stories…he should put them all down on paper….and we will publish it here….he can have his own by-line as well. So far…he has not decided to go that route. As for his error….I like it that way…lol.
Hey Bob….I agree Top Billing has it’s merits…..but you gotta give the second star some credit too. Philadelphia Story is a great example….Cary Grant got top billing….but it was the greatness of Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart that made the movie such a success. I love that movie….and I love Grant….but his part is essentially a supporting one. In my mind it was all three f them that made it a classic…not just Grant because he was first billed.
HI BRUCE I agree with a lot of what you say with the following caveats-
1/Grant’s C K Dexter Haven was to my mind the real lead in Philadelphia Story and certainly could not be called a supporting character. I think proof of that lies in the fact that in the musical remake Bing played Haven and he at that juncture was still a bigger star than Sinatra/Kelly and got top billing. Bing didn’t do supporting roles! “Bing always top-billed me.” LESLIE TOWNES HOPE
2/People like Grant, Gable, Wayne, once they hit their heyday NEVER got billed less than 1st unless it was in ensemble alphabetically billed movies or cameos [Cary appeared in a cameo in Without Reservations for example and Claudette Colbert and The Duke were the top billed stars].
3/Command of billing reflected status as the biggest box office stars. Your own ranking charts demonstrate that beyond doubt.
4/Katie Hep was regarded more for her great acting than as a very top box office star – and she never got to need that lifeboat when she was in Tracy’s company!
4/My Jimmy, although a very important prolific star from the 1930s onward with Destry, Wonderful Life, Mr Smith etc, never came into his own as a VERY TOP mega star until 1950. As late as 1948 and even 1950 he was respectively being billed 2nd to Joan Fontaine [never one of the Great Legends] in You Gotta Stay Happy and to Tracy [surprise! surprise!] in East of the Rising Sun/aka Malaya. It was really the 1950s that saw Jim join the ranks of the mega Legends – and boy did he do that with a vengeance!
However I agree with you that many performers who got billed 2nd to the likes of Grant, Gable etc were massive stars in their own right who brought indispensable things to the table in all of their movies regardless of billing , though that to my mind that again demonstrates just how big Cary and the others were.
So maybe we can close off this friendly debate by agreeing to compromise with the use of a classification for the top Legends that’s employed in constitutional textbooks to describe the status of the British Prime Minister in comparison to the rest of his/her cabinet colleagues. The Prime Minister is constitutionally designated not as Commander in Chief as with your President but as “First among Equals.”
Would you therefore settle for Cary’s status in Philly being described as that? [Though I suppose for you the TRUE Philadelphia Story was Stallone and you running up and down steps there!] Anyway great having these pleasant exchanges with you.
Hey Bob….well….we are going to have agree to disagree on this one. The Philadelphia Story was a stage success for Katharine Hepburn….it was her comeback after being labeled “box office poison”. Hepburn had veto power over producer, director, screenwriter, and cast. The stage play was written for Hepburn and bought by Howard Hawks for her as a gift.
Her Tracy Lord is the main character in the movie….with the exception of one scene with Stewart (he’s drunk) and Grant….the entire story is around Hepburn. Grant’s character is in the first scene in the movie….then he is absent from the movie for a good chunk of the first half of the movie. And when he arrives….he is sharing screen time with Stewart as one of the three suitors for Hepburn.
The first time I saw The Philadelphia Story I did not like it, I thought it was a bad role for Grant…as he had to play second fiddle to Stewart and Hepburn. The more times I watch it, the more I appreciate his performance. Stewart got the Oscar for the role….but I now think Grant gave the better performance….but it is still a Katharine Hepburn movie….she was just nice enough to let Grant and Stewart play in the sandbox with her….lol.
HI BRUCE
1/Screen time is not everything. For me C Dexter Haven’s presence on and off screen permeated the movie in both High Society and Philly Story just as Wells’ presence in 3rd Man and that of Mr Mumbles in Godpop hovered throughout those movies despite neither being on the screen for the greater part of the time.
2/ David Niven and Sir Anthony Hopkins hold the record for shortest leading Oscar winning roles by a male star – David in Separate Tables [23 mins and 39m secs] and Sir Tony as Hannibal [just 24 mins and 52 secs] and yet Lecter has become a Legendary figure in cinema horror folklore like Mother Bates, Freddie and Michael Myers
3/Kate owning rights to Philly has nothing directly to do with on-screen domination but rather is a completely separate technical consideration. Welles, again, directed and produced 1943’s Journey into Fear but his great pal and protégé Joe Cotten was the star and got top billing. Also screen acting requires different skills and presence from stage acting
4/We have agreed that Cary was shamefully neglected by the Academy for Oscar love and my Jimmy has always contended that his pal Hank Fonda should have got the award instead that year for Grapes Wrath.
5/However if you ARE right and Katie and Jimmy dominated the screen in Philly in which Archie was the one who could command top billing then I would contend that the situation merely supports the significance that I place on the correlation between billing and star power.
However we will as you say agree to differ and it’s always a pleasure to lock horns with you in ANY debate. You and I unlike perhaps you and Hirsch are not joined at the hip and when we argue we as Rafa and Roger say about each other “are “competitors and not enemies!”
One thing we completely do about though is the star power of Sir Maurice. See my separate post today.
I amazingly agee with cogerson (LOL) on Philadelphia story, I agree with The Bob on top billing and would love his published thoughts and research supported with his quotes and anecdotes . would like special emphasis comparing the timing of prominence of each star in their celestial path and top billing status. and I love the comments of both and Steve , Flora , Pierre, philHOF, helakoski, Dan, Mike , john, Laurent, bill, layla, aaron, lyle, Bern, Woc and assorted cogersons and all the other commenters. yea UMR.
Hey bob cox….glad to have you on board with the debate on The Philadelphia Story….plenty more room for Belfast Bob…lol.
I agree….a Belfast Bob on tidbits he has collected on billing would make a wonderful UMR page. UMR is read in over 200 countries every month….come on Bob….you can do it…lol.