Want to know the best Humphrey Bogart movies? How about the worst Humphrey Bogart movies? Curious about Humphrey Bogart ’s box office grosses or which Humphrey Bogart movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Humphrey Bogart 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.
Did you know that the American Film Institute ranked Humphrey Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema? Bogart however did not find an easy road to the title of greatest male star ever. After trying numerous jobs including playing chess for money he turned to acting in 1921. He found regular work on Broadway through the rest of the 1920s. When the Great Depression reduced the demand for plays, he turned his attention to movies. His first full length film was 1930’s Up the River which was directed by a very young John Ford and co-starred Spencer Tracy (also his first film). His first movie contract with Fox Films was terminated when they concluded he was not star material. Shortly there after he signed with Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers gave Bogart plenty of work from 1936 to 1940.
He appeared in twenty movies in that time frame, almost all the movies were low budget B movies. He did manage to get strong notices from two of the movies made during this time….1936’s The Petrified Forest and 1937’s Dead End. So by the end of the 1930s, Bogart either appeared as the one of stars in horrible low budget film, or as the 3rd or 4th lead in a higher budgeted movie. In the higher budgeted movies he would usually get the cowardly bad guy role and many times killed by James Cagney.
Two films in 1941 changed everything for Bogart. High Sierra was a surprise hit, it did very well at the box office and critics loved the movie and proved Bogart could carry a film. Later that year The Maltese Falcon was released to even bigger box office and an Oscar® nomination for Best Picture. After the success of those two films, Bogart found himself in better movies. In 1942 he made his greatest film, Casablanca. Bogart’s role of Rick in Casablanca would cement his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Bogart would appear in 29 more movies from 1943 to 1956, all of which were big budget and he was always the star. Some of his greatest success during this time would include 1944’s To Have and Have Not (his first film with 4th wife Lauren Bacall), 1951’s African Queen (won Oscar® for this movie), 1954’s The Caine Mutiny (his biggest box office hit) and 1956’s The Harder They Fall (his final movie). Humphrey Bogart passed away in early 1957 after a battle with cancer. John Huston’s eulogy says it all… “He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be another like him.”
His IMDb page shows 85 acting credits from 1928-1956. This page will rank Humphrey Bogart movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, shorts, cameos and uncredited movies that were included in the rankings.
Humphrey Bogart Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Humphrey Bogart 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 Humphrey Bogart movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Humphrey Bogart movies by actual domestic box office grosses
- Sort Humphrey Bogart movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Humphrey Bogart 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 Humphrey Bogart movie received.
- Sort Humphrey Bogart 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.
Humphrey Bogart Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses
Let’s take a quick moment to look at two of Bogart’s worst movies. Don’t worry you Bogart fans he thought these two movies were horrible too.
1937’s Swing That Lady: Bogart plays a wrestling promoter who brings his wrestler Joe, to the Ozarks, to wrestle a female hillbilly Amazon named Sadie Hills….naturally Bogart falls in love with Sadie and they all live happily ever after in this musical comedy…..Bogart’s thoughts on this movie….”It’s a stinker”
1938’s The Return of Dr. X: Bogart’s only science fiction movie….he plays a mad evil genius doctor who figures out a way to bring the dead back to life. For some reason Bogart refused to talk about this movie later in his life.
Check out Humprey Bogart‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
AFI’s Top 25 Screen Legend Actors….with links to our movie pages on the Screen Legend
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Robert Taylor coveted a very obscure award called “Cowboy of the Century” but it DID exist and in Bogie’s case there was an accolade that didn’t exist but1950s publicists bestowed it upon him anyway and it was “The screen’s toughest tough guy”. Ironically though one of his directors who knew him claimed Bogie couldn’t have fought to save his life VIDEO COMMENTS
(1) I honestly don’t think that in my experience there has been such a unique series of thrilling posters as has been displayed in this video. I always quickly jot down my favourites as I go along but here they came so thick and fast that I gave up jotting after the first 5 that appealed to me and decided to just leave it there. That is until I saw the very final one for Casablanca and made it 6 – absolutely s-t-u-n-n-i-n-g! The other 5 were Deadline, Harder they Fall, All thru the Night, Dead Reckoning and Enforcer.
(2) Unsurprisingly in a Bogart collection there was a fine range of black & white stills from Key Largo, Maltese Falcon, Big Sleep and Casabalnca.
(3) Some critics opine Bogie’s finest performance was in the 1950 In a Lonely Place. It therefore illustrates how high the bar was set in this video when that movie was ranked at just No 12 and yet marked high
(4) You and Bruce agree on 3 of the Top 5 but you have both given each of those 3 identical ranking numbers and I’m pleased to see that Bruce ranked In a Lonely Place no 8
(5) 9.5/10 – easily and nothing to do with Bogie being my 6th all time fave actor. Can’t think why it took me so long to watch his video
Thanks Bob, glad you liked the video, much appreciated. Yes I was spoilt for choice on poster artwork for Bogart, I had to leave a few out and used them on the Hepburn, Cagney, Bergman and Bacall videos.
The top 11 were all pretty high scorers, a great run of top rated films, the making of a Hollywood icon.
Looking at Bruce’s critics chart there are some similarities with mine the same no.1 of course, but Treasure of the Sierra Made is a little low on his chart and barely made the top 10, ranking below one of your favorites In a Lonely Place which is in 9th place. I have it in 3rd position above The African Queen and The Big Sleep. It’s one of the greatest films of the 40s IMO and is also rated 3rd greatest Bogart film on the AFI 100, the other two are Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.
http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx
Bogart did not make a color movie prior to The African Queen in 1951
He made five color movies in total. The Caine Mutiny & The Barefoot Contessa, as well as The African Queen, are good ones.
Hey John….thanks for the Bogart stats. I love The Caine Mutiny….the movie that gave us the name Michael Caine while The African Queen was my grandmother’s favorite movie. When she passed away she had two movies in her entire VHS collection…The African Queen and The Wizard of Oz.
1 Yesterday some friends and I watched a 1973 interview that Ingrid Bergman gave to an English television company and the interviewer naturally asked her about her relationship with Bogart during the making of Casablanca.
2 She shocked us by saying that she never really got to know Bogart because he rarely spoke to her when not before the cameras and in fact kept very much to himself throughout the filming of that movie and took not much to do with anyone in the cast or crew. It was obvious that Bergman was serious but clearly this was not the extrovert, gregarious Bogie of legend and for Ingrid his attitude contrasted with the warm friendship she had experienced when filming with Archibald Alexander Leach.
3 It occurred to me though that Bogie had had a long apprenticeship of playing second fiddle in his career and although Maltese Falcon set him on the path to stardom the latter was still new to him and it was probably the success of Casablanca that put him up among the greats so that he may not have totally found his confidence among his peers until after the release of that movie, and it was therefore only in the later years that the hell raising Bogie of folklore emerged at least more publicly.
4 Certainly according to Katie Hepburn (African Queen) and Gene Tierney (Left Hand of God)
he got on well enough with them and everyone else when filming the movies just mentioned. True he is said to have repeatedly needled and almost came to blows Golden Holden on the set of Sabrina but that was EXTROVERT behaviour, so have either of you ever read anything about the more introvert Bogie?
This is all news to me Bob, I always assumed Bogie was a shy and quiet man. I probably got that impression from some of the roles he played.
Right there with you Steve.
Hey Bob.
1. Sounds like a good interview…but hearing that behind the scenes these two that played the greatest couple of all, barely talked, it actually disappointing.
2. Good to know that Mr a Grant was on the other end of the see saw of great co-stars.
3. I have read a few Bogie books but this is the first I am reading about this..his drinking caused lots of stress….but other than thought..the stories always put him in a favorable light.
Isn’t it Deadline U.S.A., not Dateline.
1 When you posted your original Humphrey Bogart page I found the domestic grosses not overly impressive for a massive star such as Bogie and they came to well under $100 million om average . Your update of those grosses improved matters considerably providing a new average of around $115 million for an even. greater number of movies.
2 Now the 44 worldwide grosses have solidified Bogie’s stats even further and they come to approx $7.9 billion by my calculations with some 62% of that figure falling into the period from 1941 onward when Bogie was the star of all his movies.
3 Nearly $8 billion is very impressive for his kind of film in those days as (a) the 44 were not marketed as blockbusters but constituted simply a run of solid entertainment movies with some of the 1930s ones being either B movies or close to that level and (b) as we know from the stats for other Classic Era stars foreign earnings could be very small back then.
4 And look at the overall figure for Casablanca ! An adjusted worldwide gross of some $630 million reflects an exceptionally high foreign take for a movie at that time and if he’s seen it I’m sure that even Steve was unable to suppress a “WOW!” though of course he won’t admit that to us. Good ‘hunter-gathering’ Bruce. My own database is starting to smile more frequently these days !
NOTE/OVERALL AVERAGES RELATED TO 44 WORLDWIDE GROSSES:
$127 million per film for 24 films in Bogie’s pre-star days
$243 million per film for 20 films from 1941 onward
$180 million per film for all 44 movies.
[Figures rounded]
BOB
Hey Bob….glad you enjoyed this updated page. (1) Yes the original page before the formula changed really shortchanged Bogie….but now these numbers seem to match the legend that he became. (2) $7.9 Billion in worldwide grosses for only 44 movies…now that is some impressive numbers. (3) 62%/38% seems like a reasonable breakdown for domestic vs foreign box office. (4) I agree the numbers for Casablanca are staggering…but it is one of the greatest movies ever made. (5) Good breakdowns on his worldwide grosses….I think the $127 million of his pre-star days goes more to the power of Warner Brothers versus Bogie’s box office power.
Thanks for a great comment.