Want to know the best Elvis Presley movies? How about the worst Elvis Presley movies? Curious about Elvis Presley box office grosses or which Elvis Presley movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Elvis Presley movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences…and which Elvis movie got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place …. because we have all of that information.
Elvis Presley (1935-1977) the singer was the “King of Rock and Roll”. The “King” has sold over 2.5 billion in worldwide records. Following in the footsteps of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, Presley went from singing to acting in movies. Elvis Presley’s first number one song, Heartbreak Hotel, was released in January 1956. By the end of 1957 he had appeared in three movies (Love Me Tender, Loving You, and Jailhouse Rock) and they were all box office hits. After Presley finished filming King Creole he was drafted. He would return to movies with G.I. Blues in 1960. For the rest of the 1960s he averaged nearly three movies a year.
When looking at his IMDb page you find some pretty interesting Elvis Presley credits. Presley has 31 acting credits. His music has been featured in 397 movies and television shows. And he appeared as himself in 23 projects…including many documentaries. This page will rank 31 Elvis Presley movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings….I did include two of his most famous documentaries in the rankings.
Elvis Presley Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Elvis Presley 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 by Elvis Presley movie titles…link takes you to that movie’s trailer
- Sort by Elvis Presley’s co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Elvis Presley movies by actual domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Elvis Presley movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Elvis Presley movies by movie’s domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Elvis Presley movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort Elvis Presley 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.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Elvis Presley Table
- Seven Elvis Presley movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 21.21% of his movies listed. Love Me Tender (1956) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Elvis Presley movie grosses $68.70 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 14 of Elvis Presley’s movies are rated as good movies…or 42.42% of his movies. King Creole (1958) is his highest rated movie* while Change of Habit (1969) was his lowest rated movie. *Documentaries excluded.
- Zero Elvis Presley movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 0.00% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60. 12 Elvis Presley movies scored higher that average….or 36.36% of his movies. Jailhouse Rock (1957) got the the highest UMR Score while Change of Habit (1969) got the lowest UMR Score.
Check out Elvis Presley‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
If you are interested in Elvis’ Top 40 Billboard Hits…..we have 107 Elvis Songs Ranked Best To Worst as well. Elvis Top 40 Hits.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Hey Bob. Boxing pretty died when Tyson went to jail. But during Ali’s peak boxing was huge. Jordan is big….but not thinking he was as big as Ali. I doubt Bugs has anything to do with that. I think the days of male movie stars being the main forces behind fashion are long gone. Gable ruined the t-shirt business when he did not wear one in It Happened One Night…..I do not think anything like that will ever happen again. Johnny Depp’s off screen look never took off….and he seems to be the closet current actor to be associated with influencing clothing choices. As always….thanks for the feedback.
1-The Beatles
2-Elvis Presley
3-Marilyn Monroe
4-Steven Spielberg
5-Madonna
6-Frank Sinatra
7-Sat Night Fever
8-Michael Jackson
9-Lucille Ball
10-The Simpsons
11-Bob Dylan
12-Marlon Brando
13-Barbara Streisand
14-Alfred Hitchcock
15-The Rolling Stones
16-Audrey Hepburn
17-John Wayne
18-Elizabeth Taylor
19-Aretha Franklin
20-Robert DeNiro
23-Jack Nicholson
25-Robert Redford
27-Clint Eastwood
32-Paul Newman
37-Harrison Ford
38-Meryl Streep
41-James Dean
43-Tom Hanks
52-Tom Cruise
84-Sir Sean Commery
Hey Bob….this is the Legends list? Gotta admit I am getting confused about which list is which. But thanks for posting it.
Bob & Cogerson
This is the Entertainment Weekly “legends” or “icons” of the second half of the 20th century?
What I notice is that of the top ten, only Spielberg (not a performer, and so an odd choice) and Monroe are primarily identified with movies. Of the others, only Sinatra really had a durable and outstanding movie career. The others in the top 11 dabbled in movies, but I don’t know if movies added much of anything to their fame.
This is very different from the first half of the century. I think any list of enduring icons from that era would be heavily filled with those who were primarily movie stars or like Crosby and Hope became big movie stars.
HI JOHN
1 This is exactly EW’s point that with the coming of TV and the explosion of pop music courtesy of the rock n roll scene led by Elvis all kinds of entertainers became household names so that whereas previously as you suggest the big names tended to be dominated by movie stars so that the latter half of the 20th century was by far the more competitive and thus EW argues the most definitive part of that century.
2 Conversely if you confine your survey to movies stars only Elvis would be on no sensible list of Greats as he was a poor actor, most of his films were dire and repetitive and overall his box office was not vertiginous; and of course to allow Elvis to include his CV as a singer so as to get him on a list but to exclude other types of entertainers from the equation would simply be bias.
2 In the first part of the century the big names outside of the movies tended to be the opera stars like Caruso and Gigli and McCormack who was both an operatic and a serious singer. Bing idolised McCormack and did radio shows with him and Sinatra is said to have modelled some of his own techniques on McCormack’s popular singing styles. Where EW dovetails with Time Magazine and Variety is that the latter two proclaim The Beatles as the greatest entertainers of any kind THROUGHOUT the 20th Century. You may disagree with it but the Beatles WERE massive so it’s a matter of opinion and EW did consult its readers and others.
3 Of course the competition has now widened even further with footballers like Ronaldo and tennis stars like Federer and Nadal being regarded as entertainment icons as well as top flight sportsmen. Indeed here EW was ahead of the game in that respect because in its 2003 list it has Michael Jordan as the 80th greatest entertainer of the second half of the 20th century. As the saying goes we live in interesting times.
Bob and Cogerson
Several things stand out.
“the competition has widened even further with footballers like Ronaldo and tennis stars like Federer and Nadal being regarded as entertainment icons”
I don’t know if things have changed though (speaking of the USA). Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey in the 1920’s were big box office draws. The Tunney-Dempsey fight in 1927 really helped sell radios and put radio on the map.
“Caruso and Gigli and McCormack”
And Melba & Bori. Yes, stage singers. The opera artists mentioned here, or pop singers like Jolson and Lauder, dominated in the early years of the century. But that brings up what I think is the real key to the development of popular entertainment–technology.
Basically inventions have brought the big changes in popular culture. Movies and recordings at the turn of the century. Radio, the microphone, electrical recording, and talking pictures in the 1920’s. TV in the fifties. Cable TV in the seventies. And now the internet. Today movies and music from the entire 20th century and from over the world are available. Want to watch a Bollywood movie, or a Chinese movie, or a Turkish movie. Go to the internet.
All these technological changes wrought changes in performances. For all their differences in technique, McCormack and Jolson come from the same era of singing directly from the stage. Crosby and Sinatra sang to the microphone. In that sense, the crooners of the twenties were far more revolutionary than someone like Presley.
Same with acting. It was the camera which changed things. Low key underplaying went back at least to Gary Cooper, long before Brando or Clift.
This is a very interesting topic, and I think worth exploring. I would be interested in your opinion, and Cogerson’s or others.
Who was really more revolutionary. Crosby or Presley? Cooper or Brando?
My take is the true revolutionaries in the sense of really changing performance techniques were Crosby and Cooper more than Presley and Brando. The reason is that there were riding the wave of vastly important technological changes.
HI JOHN
1 I would agree with most of what you say but in a round about way you are really reinforcing what Entertainment Weekly was saying about the development of techniques and mediums especially TV making things more competitive so that in the 2nd half of the Century the competitive ante had been upped enormously and therefore from 1950 onward was really more definitive.
2 The only other thing that I would say is that I think that Cooper for me was one of the worst examples that you could pick to advance your argument as I regarded him as rather wooden until he got older. The famed film historian David Shipman said that Brando was innovative in a way that enabled him to do things that the likes of Cooper would “never even think about” and that he undertook a range of roles that none of the old classic era stars “would even dare attempt.” The great film Doyen Roger Ebert said that Brando was “the most influential actor in movie history”; he was one of only 4 Hollywood personalities included in Time magazine’s 100 Greatest People of the 20th Century; and was the only actor in Life Magazine’s 100 Greatest Americans. Those surveys were published after widespread consultations with historians film experts studio experts, journalists and members of the public.
3 Even among Brando’s fellow actors the accolades come cascading down: Jack Lemmon regarded him as having given the greatest performances in history; Henry Fonda said that he was “the best when he wanted to be” Sir Laurence Olivier described him as an acting “genius” Elizabeth Taylor said “There will never be another Marlon Brando.” and moving outside movies George W Bush formally mourned his passing away.
4 I’m no expert but I have to assume that all of these authorities and individuals know something about the game and nowhere is Cooper ever mentioned – only Tracy and Sir Larry Olivier are normally considered as being on a par with Brando though of course individuals will always have their own personal taste. Whilst I loved the older Cooper not only do I regard the young Cooper as wooden but I found some of his on-screen antics almost ridiculous and even an insult to the intelligence.
5 A prime example is In The Plainsman where to learn the warpath plans of the combined supposedly most dangerous Indian tribes in the West Cooper creeps in among them on a horse with a buffalo hide pulled over it to ‘disguise’ it as one of the nearby grazing buffalo,and when he manages to get beside say Sitting Bull he pokes the hide up with a little stick and leans his ear out to hear what they are saying. When he has heard enough the stick is removed, the hide drops down again and the horse saunters away once more with the savage horde oblivious to the fact that a spy had been right in their midst. Not only was all this laughable but it pandered to the myth that the Indian population were all imbeciles. Brando and Clift had their faults they made many bad films and love or loathe them, but they gave us something more intelligent to think about than ALL THAT. .
“Marlon Brando is widely considered as the greatest movie actor of all time rivalled only by the more theatrically orientated Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Brando has eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950. Only the lustre of Spencer Tracy’s reputation hasn’t dimmed in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by force of personality. Brando did.” The current International Movie Database. .
“There is Before Brando and AFTER Brando – that’s the dividing line” Martin Scorsese.
Hey John….I agree as technology has improved so has the power of celebrities. So thoughts your comment made me think of while reading your comment.
1. Only a few sports people have become world wide icons…Muhammad Ali and Pele might be the only ones to reach a global icon status….icons in the states like Peyton Manning, Derek Jeter and Tom Brady are barely known outside of the United States will legends in other countries like Ronaldo, Federer and Nadal are barely known in the States. Ali was one of the most famous people on the planet for years.
2. Your technology reference made me think of Judge Roy Bean (either Paul Newman or Walter Brennan’s performance..take your pick) and how on one performance and one picture he became a huge fan of Lillie Langtry….imagine today being a fan of someone and that was your only way to follow that star.
3. Technology since I became an adult…..when I was a teenager…I got all of my Hollywood news and reviews from 4 people….local entertainment writers Henry Edgar and Mal Vincent…..and Siskel and Ebert…..now there are 1000s entertainment outlets for me.
3A. Speaking of Mr. Edgar….that gives me an idea to share my story of Mr. Edgar, my dad, me and a young and upcoming actor Bruce Willis.
4. So times when I am trying to come up with a quick post for the day…I will look up celebrity birthdays…..almost everytime…..the first name that pops up will be a “You Tube star”…and I always say….who? As an example….today….the first person that pops up on Celebrity birthdays is “PewDiePie”…WHO? But I bet lots of younger people know who he is……it just goes to the theory of how technology is expanding and expanding everything.
To Bob’s comment at 10:38 AM which was addressed to John….good stuff….I like the Martin Scorsese line. Whenever I think I know something about movies….I will listen to him talk about movies and realize I know almost nothing…lol. And now that I am caught up on comments…I head to work.
🙂
HI BRUCE
1 Excellent point about Ali which actually occurred to me when I saw that Michael Jordan was the only sportsman included in EW list of greatest entertainers 1050- 2000. Is it something to do with the fact that American Football is far bigger than boxing?
2 My own point was though that as John says you had great sports personalities years ago but they were considered as athletes and not entertainers but today footballers and tennis stars in particular are increasingly referred to as entertainers at least within their own industry and unfortunately at times those whose behaviour is the worst are often regarded as the greatest entertainers. But as Bob Dylan sand “Everything passes, everything changes.” Opera stars like Caruso were regarded as the pop stars of their day and if you recall stars like Cary Grant and William Powell used to always wear suits, collars and and ties on screen even when sitting in their own living rooms and people like Tracy and Pat O’Brien loved being seen in braces and I think that even the ‘rebel’ Stanley appeared with braces in one Streetcar scene? none of which would be considered “cool” today. And whatever happened to the stylish hats that Cagney and Bogies wore in their gangster movies?
BRUCE
2 corrections – I meant to say Is basketball bigger than boxing in America? and the period of the EW list was of course 1950-2000. What I mean is why would EW list Jordan and not Ali – is it something to do with the Bugs Bunny association?
Hey John…..good points….I agree with your comment….100%….thanks for adding your thoughts about this list.
HI STEVE
1 I see that your recent videos on two of the 1950s three ‘Method Boys’ have received a respectable number of views at around 100 but that Dean has surprisingly fallen far behind. Are moviegoers at last catching on to that ‘mountebank’? But look at how the King of Rock n Roll is powering ahead of all of the new pack ! If he keeps going at that rate he alone might enable you to usurp Bruce’s recently earned title of “The 8 Million Views Man”!
2 I have mentioned before that reportedly about 20 years ago a survey of university students revealed that only some 50% of them knew who the King of the movies Clark Gable was. I think that it’s a safe bet that a similar survey today would show that familiarity with the King of Rock n Roll would exceed that % !
Hi Bob, it’s good to see the King doing so well, Elvis fans are legion, as are Doris Day fans I suspect. 😉
Scanning my videos I see that Richard Widmark is doing very well too, I wonder if Flora has anything to do with that? Burt Lancaster has twice as many views as Widmark and Kirk is trailing behind. But king of the swashbucklers Errol Flynn has beaten them all with over 1100 views, I suspect our chief had a hand in that, linking the video to a Flynn fan site. Cheers Bruce.
Of course all my video views are dwarfed by the number of hits Bruce gets on his movie pages, his Flynn page has had over 61,000 hits. I think his most popular actor page is John Wayne’s with about 150,000 hits. Go Duke Go! 🙂
But I’m doing okay on the video channel, ‘Keira Knightley – Highest Grossing Movies’ is my most popular video with over 39,000 views, that’s not too shabby.
Thanks for your further run down of the respective popularity of your videos
From my own perspective when I see the quality of work that you and Bruce both produce I just think of the Duke’s Rio Bravo quote “I sure wouldn’t like to live on the difference!”
Hey Bob and Steve…..this is also when one my most popular pages…good to see he is bringing Steve some traffic as well. Good Wayne quote.
Bob & Steve & Cogerson
“20 years ago a survey of university students revealed that only 50% of them knew who . . . Clark Gable was.”
Yes, but what percentage of senior citizens know who Justin Bieber (sp.) is, or, perhaps more importantly, care.
I don’t think it at all surprising that an actor who has been dead for half a century is unknown to a large segment of young folks. Hell, I wonder at what point I knew who Douglas Fairbanks was. More critical, I think, is the fragmentation of popular culture. In the forties almost everyone knew who forties icons like Crosby, Hope, Garland, Benny, etc. were. There was a largely unified culture. With the internet and cable, I don’t think this is true anymore and even the most popular entertainers are probably unknown, or at least off the interest radar, to great gobs of the public.
By the way, Gable at 50% recognition is probably doing better than the Secretary of State, the Speaker of the House, sitting Justices on the Supreme Court, or foreign leaders, would do. At least that is my guess.
Hey John….in my household…..6 kids went through here….and it was a household heavily influenced by movies (I know a shock…lol)…..but until the second oldest one went to college and took some film courses….none of them cared at all about classic movies and classic stars. I would wager the only classic movie that most of those 6 have seen is Cary Grant’s Father Goose….which gets watched almost every year in my house. Heck most of those kids think Billy Madison and Toy Story are classic movies….lol.
I think only film buffs care about the classics movies and performers…..but thankfully there are lots of us to…..we might be outnumbered….but we are still keeping the flame lite…lol.
I agree 50% for Gable is still very impressive.
Thanks for all the great comments and feedback.
‘Elvis That’s the Way It Is’ and ‘Elvis on Tour’ are the best movies.
Hey Barry …..those are two of the best documentaries ever….thanks for stopping by.
Roustabout and G.I. Blues should get more mention here as fun movies, plus good soundtracks. For some reason the Roustabout album often gets overlooked, but in late ’64 at the height of Beatlemania, Roustabout his #1 on the Billboard Album charts–quite a feat at the time. Both G.I. Blues and Roustabout have some really good rock songs. Girl Happy is also a well-done and enjoyable romantic comedy.
Hey Michael H. Thanks for a great and informative comment. I enjoyed reading about the music side of Elvis and his movie soundtracks. Good to know that Elvis still topped the Beatles even in their heyday. When we first put together this page…I thought since it was about the Elvis movies it would not be too popular….boy was I wrong….this has turned out to be one of my more popular pages….I will never underestimate the power of the King again…lol.