Want to know the best Mitzi Gaynor movies? How about the worst Mitzi Gaynor movies? Curious about Mitzi Gaynor box office grosses or which Mitzi Gaynor movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Mitzi Gaynor movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Mitzi Gaynor (1931-) is an American actress, singer, and dancer. She is best known for 1954’s There’s No Business Like Show Business and 1958’s South Pacific. Her movie career lasted from 1950 to 1963. Mitzi Gaynor’s IMDb page shows 19 acting credits from 1949-1963. This page will rank 17 Mitzi Gaynor movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.
Mitzi Gaynor 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 Mitzi Gaynor movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Mitzi Gaynor movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Mitzi Gaynor movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Mitzi Gaynor 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 Mitzi Gaynor movie received.
- Sort Mitzi Gaynor 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 Mitzi Gaynor Table
- Five Mitzi Gaynor movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 29.41% of her movies listed. South Pacific (1958) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Mitzi Gaynor movie grosses $111.80 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 8 Mitzi Gaynor movies are rated as good movies…or 47.05% of her movies. Les Girls (1957) is her highest rated movie while Take Care of My Little Girl (1951) is her lowest rated movie.
- Five Mitzi Gaynor movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 29.41% of her movies.
- Three Mitzi Gaynor movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 18.75% of her movies.
- An average “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 8 Mitzi Gaynor movie scored higher that average….or 47.05% of her movies. Les Girls (1957)) got the the highest UMR Score while Take Care of My Little Girl (1951) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Mitzi Gaynor
- Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber was born in Chicago, Illnois in 1931.
2. Growing up her nickname was “Mitzi”. When a Fox executive heard the name Mitzi Gerber, he thought it sounded like the name of a delicatessen, and they came up with a name that used the same initials. So Mitzi Gaynor was born.
3. Mitzi Gaynor biggest box office hit was 1958’s South Pacific. When looking at our All-Time Ticket sellers, South Pacific currently sits in the 71st spot. UMR All-Time Ticket Sellers
4. Mitzi Gaynor on her co-stars. “I never worked with a stinker. How great is that!”.
5. Mitzi Gaynor was not nominated for an Oscars®. She did received a Best Actress Golden Globe® nomination for 1958’s South Pacific.
6. Mitzi Gaynor was married one time. She was married to Jack Bean, a talent agent and public relations executive from 1954 to his death in 2006.
7. Following her film work, Mitzi Gaynor remained a popular favorite of the time. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, she starred in nine acclaimed television specials that garnered 16 Emmy® nominations
8. Many people thought Mitzi Gaynor’s best performance was her show-stopping appearance at the 39th Academy Awards® where her singing and dancing “Georgy Girl” stopped the show. The Academy® had a hard time getting the audience to sit down and stop applauding.
9. Mitzi Gaynor’s one-woman show, Razzle Dazzle: My Life Behind the Sequins, toured the United States and Vancouver, from 2009 thru 2014, including an acclaimed 2 week engagement in NYC.
10. Check out Mitzi Gaynor‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark.
Added Steve’s Mitzi video to the page. Out thoughts on her career and his video.
Nice video. I have not seen many of her movies…but the ones I have seen are all in the Top 7. #7 Anything Goes….some good dance routines in this one. #6 We’re Not Married…..nice multi-story movie….though I admit I do not really remember her part. #5 My Blue Heaven…she gets her career off to a good start. #3 South Pacific….looks awesome. So only 4. Voted up and shared on our Mitzi UMR page. FYI…I kept waiting for Seven Brides for Seven Sisters to pop up…..it never did….probably because that is a Jane Powell movie…lol.
Bruce, your 4 beats my 2, Flora has seen 7.
I’ve seen There’s no Business Like Show Business and South Pacific. I was surprised her movie career was so short, 17 movies in 13 years. Thanks for commenting on my video, appreciate the vote and share.
Glad to help US out. Your video gets another backlink…and our page gets an added feature.
HI STEVE I have been a bit slow in getting this one to you because Bruce and I have lately been conversing in Klingon and my automatic pilot had this post written in that language before it occurred to me that you might not be too proficient in Klingon yourself, though Cthulhu and his grandfather Yog spoke a Klingon–sounding language.
Mitzi had a run of lead role/top billed films in the early 1950s and South Pacific in 1958 was her high point but she was 2nd billed in that one to Rossano Brazzi and after it her big screen career quickly faded and ended in 1963. IMDB credits her with 5 acting awards and 1 nom and her reported net worth is $50 million.
Mitzi’s earliest star years were from 1950 onward and nostalgically coincided with my boyhood discovery of the magical movie world in Gaynor films like Down Among the Sheltering Palms and Take Care of my Little Girl so as your even though short video has brought back to me all that I very much welcome the presentation and despite its brevity it was so full of goodies that I give it a “Vote Up!” with a 98% rating.
It does seem from Mitzi’s quote that your Eugene was a bit of a chauvinist as he claimed that dancing was “a man’s game”. That ties in with Esther Williams’ claim that he was rude to her because he resented a woman being taller than he. It is worth recording that Laddie was a perfect gentleman towards his female co-stars.
Again it would have been almost impossible to lists posters that were not raunchy. It seems that under the cloak of musicals they were able to get away with a lot of semi-nudity in Mitzi’s day despite overall stricter morality codes.
Bruce credits Mitzi with an overall adjusted domestic gross just short of $2 billion and an average gross per movie of around $112 million.
HI STEVE
Looking again at my previous post I see that I have made a mess of my 3rd paragraph – that’s what translating back from Klingon to English can do on one! Anyway apologies and here is a substitute amended paragraph precisely reflecting what I meant to say.
“Mitzi’s earliest star years were from 1950 onward and nostalgically they coincided with my boyhood discovery of the magical world of movies. Gaynor films like Down Among the Sheltering Palms and Take Care of my Little Girl were among those that enthralled me at that time. Even though your video is short it has brought those joys back to me so that I very much welcome the presentation and despite its brevity it was so full of goodies that I give it a “Vote Up!” with a 98% rating.
The best POSTERS for me are(1) 1st one for Birds and Bees (2) both for 3 Young Texans (3) Down among the Sheltering Palms (4) 1st one for Happy Anniversary (5) Golden Girl (6) 2nd one for Love or Money (7) Bloodhounds of Broadway (8) Take Care of my Little Girl (9) The I Don’t Care Girl (10) 1st one for Anything Goes (11) 2nd one for My Blue Heaven (12) 1st one for No Business/Show Business – though Ethel merman was top billed in that one and Monroe 3rd after Donald O’Connor (13) 2nd one for South Pacific and (14) 1st one for Les Girls.
Les Girls was arguably Eugene’s last great musical [as a STAR] and one of the markers of the decline of the Hollywood musical, though WH gives it a respectable adjusted worldwide gross of approx $175 million. However Wiki states that because of high production costs it lost 15 million for MGM in 2019 dollars.
I think I liked almost every STILL but these certainly greatly entertained me (1) I think that separated by posters you have two stills of Mitzi and Jeffrey Hunter in Three Young Texans? (2) Mitzi with the Great Centurion (3 l Don’t Care Girl (4) two lobby cards for No Business/Show Business (5) solo Mitzi on beach in South Pacific (6) both of Eugene with sexy trio and (7) closing black/white one.
You and WH agree about Mitzi’s Top 5 best reviewed movies. Although I never liked South Pacific, I was surprised at you ranking it just 3rd overall whereas The Work Horse makes it joint top with Les Girls and you have The Joel is Wild and Les Girls at 1 and 2 respectively. However both of you have almost the same % rating for South Pacific with Bruce recording a 73% and you awarding 72.2%. IMDB gives it just 69% so it would appear that I may have over-estimated the historical reputation of South Pacific as a great Hollywood musical Anyway only The Master and his protégé can get EVERYTHING right!
Hi Bob, thanks for the posts, review, comments, generous rating, info, trivia and comparison, it is appreciated.
Happy the pictorials met with your approval.
Flora was surprised South Pacific wasn’t no.1 on my video but I didn’t want to cheat and place her most popular film at the top when other films were rated higher, at least from my sources. The top 3 were in the 7 to 8 score range, actually South Pacific barely nudged 7. I gave it a slight boost.
I don’t think I’ve seen Les Girls and as a Gene Kelly fan I should have by now. I’ll keep an eye out for it on the TV schedules.
The Joker is Wild was Mitzi’s no.1 at both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
Mitzi on her co-stars – “I never worked with a stinker. How great is that!”
Mondays video will be a more ‘meaty’ top 30. The stills feature – Cary, Frank, Kirk and Laddie, and the lady does have a UMR page.
HI STEVE
Thanks for the usual comprehensive and thoughtful response.
When Les Girls was on the go back in 1957 I was just 16 and was completely oblivious of any grosses stats, and indeed they were few and far between in those days, but I did sense that that movie was possibly Kelly’s dancing career going into decline.
As I’ve said I never liked South Pacific but it always stuck in my mind because of Rossano Brazzi. He was one of the new wave of “Latin Heartthrobs” at the time whom women adored and men hated possibly because of jealousy.
In the shipyard where I worked the guys loved giving actors nicknames especially if a risque connotation could be attached and it delighted them to refer to Rossano derisorily as Rossano Brassiere!
You certainly seem to have some lineup intended for next week! I look forward to it and as my son has gone back to London I’ll get peace to enjoy anything you have to offer about Laddie. Bring it on! Meanwhile take care.
Mitzi Gaynor came across as a sweet, “unthreateningly sexy” ingenue in the seven movies I’ve seen her in. Like Jane Powell or June Allyson, Mitzi never was an actress I cared too much for. Yet, there is a fan channel on yt where numerous clips from her TV specials are shown, and I really think that she was more lucky on and perhaps even more suited to the small screen. Loved the inclusion of Mitzi rocking the Oscar’s here, I am sure it would have been awesome seeing her in Las Vegas or in a Broadway Show, much more exciting than most of her film appearances. I like South Pacific, her one shot at superstardom, but the movie is not among the best stage musicals turned into a movie musical imo. I did enjoy Mitzi in There’s no Business like Showbusiness, especially in her musical number with Monroe, “Lazy”, where she did all the work while Marilyn stayed true to the number’s title. She did well for herself in Les Girls, too and I also like Take Care of my little Girl. Good to learn here that Mitzi had one of those rarities, a long lasting Showbiz marriage 🙂
Hey Lupino
1. Great breakdownon Mitzi Gaynor.
2. Tally count….a tie for first…as you and Greg have seen 7…,Flora is right behind you at 6. As for me and Steve…..well at least we partcipated.
3. Glad you liked the Oscar video….I have read that Oscar story for years….but this was the first time I had actually seen.
4. I will have to see her routine in There’s No Business…..Monroe was at her peak in that one.
5. Good feedback as always.
great insight on ms. Gaynor’s Oscar performance. thanks dan on the connectedness, always appreciated.
Hey bob cox. Good to hear from you. Glad you like our Mitzi Gaynor page. Thanks for thr kind words.
I used to have Golden Girl, The I Don’t Care Girl and South Pacific. There is only one person on the 2016 Oracle of Bacon Top 1000 Center of the Hollywood Universe who appeared in a film with her and he was gone by 2017. Mitzi herself was never on any of the lists.
912 ARTHUR TOVEY Les Girls (1957)
The following actors who were on the first list in 2000 and have since fallen of all worked with Mitzi;
32 KIRK DOUGLAS For Love or Money (1963)
53 CHARLES BRONSON Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952)
76 EDDIE ALBERT The Joker Is Wild (1957)
102 DAVID NIVEN Happy Anniversary (1959)
102 DAVID NIVEN The Birds and the Bees (1956)
177 MARCEL DALIO Anything Goes (1956)
198 YUL BRYNNER Surprise Package (1960)
222 BESS FLOWERS Anything Goes (1956)
222 BESS FLOWERS Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952)
222 BESS FLOWERS For Love or Money (1963)
222 BESS FLOWERS My Blue Heaven (1950)
222 BESS FLOWERS The Birds and the Bees (1956)
236 LEE MARVIN Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953)
236 LEE MARVIN We’re Not Married! (1952)
270 FRANK SINATRA The Joker Is Wild (1957)
273 GEORGE COULOURIS Surprise Package (1960)
290 GEORGE WALLACE We’re Not Married! (1952)
420 MAURICE MARSAC Les Girls (1957)
421 MICHAEL ANSARA Three Young Texans (1954)
424 ZSA ZSA GABOR We’re Not Married! (1952)
446 RAY WALSTON South Pacific (1958)
459 DABBS GREER We’re Not Married! (1952)
476 ROSSANO BRAZZI South Pacific (1958)
531 LILYAN CHAUVIN Les Girls (1957)
562 PAUL BRYAR The Joker Is Wild (1957)
571 CHARLES LANE The Birds and the Bees (1956)
583 PAUL STEWART We’re Not Married! (1952)
593 LESLIE PHILLIPS Les Girls (1957)
599 JOHN DOUCETTE There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954)
606 ALBERTO MORIN Anything Goes (1956)
606 ALBERTO MORIN For Love or Money (1963)
606 ALBERTO MORIN Les Girls (1957)
612 JEFFREY HUNTER Take Care of My Little Girl (1951)
612 JEFFREY HUNTER Three Young Texans (1954)
617 PAUL FREES For Love or Money (1963)
743 WILLIAM WINDOM For Love or Money (1963)
777 ERIC POHLMANN Surprise Package (1960)
793 PATRICK MACNEE Les Girls (1957)
824 FRANK WILCOX Three Young Texans (1954)
832 DON BRODIE The I Don’t Care Girl (1953)
859 MYRON HEALEY My Blue Heaven (1950)
914 DOUG MCCLURE South Pacific (1958)
963 FRANK FERGUSON The I Don’t Care Girl (1953)
965 MARY WICKES Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952)
969 BYRON FOULGER We’re Not Married!
Mitzi did a little better than June Haver appearing with 8 Oscar winners;
BING CROSBY Anything Goes (1956)
DAVID NIVEN Happy Anniversary (1959)
DAVID NIVEN The Birds and the Bees (1956)
FRANK SINATRA The Joker Is Wild (1957)
GIG YOUNG For Love or Money (1963)
GINGER ROGERS We’re Not Married! (1952)
JANE DARWELL We’re Not Married! (1952)
LEE MARVIN Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953)
LEE MARVIN We’re Not Married! (1952)
PATTY DUKE Happy Anniversary (1959)
Hey Dan
1. Nobody left…..so sad.
2. I see Bess Flowers got on the second list 5 times…..the lady was a machine.
3. 8 Oscar winners is low,but with only 17 movies….that is a good percentage.
4. Thanks for sharing these lists….as always….they are greatly appreciated.