Want to know the best Robert Montgomery movies? How about the worst Robert Montgomery movies? Curious about Robert Montgomery box office grosses or which Robert Montgomery movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Robert Montgomery 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.
Robert Montgomery (1904-1981) was a 2-time American Oscar® nominated actor, director and producer. In the 1930s he was one of the biggest stars working in movies. His IMDb page shows 64 acting and 5 directing credits from 1929-1960. This page ranks 57 Robert Montgomery movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, documentaries and shorts were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: Wow!…… did we have some problems doing this page. Problem 1: While adding information for his Lady In The Lake movie…we some how broke our database….as strange Chinese code started showing up. This required emergency computer programming by Wife of Cogerson. Problem 2: When finally ready to write and publish this page…our website provider would not allow changes to be saved….so I had to rewrite the entire page more than once. Problem 3: Even though most of his movies were made by MGM…the Eddie Mannix ledgers only listed about half of his movies. This required us to come up with another way to calculate box office grosses using the Harrison Reports from the 1930s and 1940s to get the other half. Once again…Wife of Cogerson had to perform some emergency programming work. The bill for her services is going to be huge! Finally we were able to overcome all of these obstacles and finish this Robert Montgomery page.
Robert Montgomery 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 Robert Montgomery movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Robert Montgomery movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Robert Montgomery movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Robert Montgomery 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 Robert Montgomery movie received.
- Sort Robert Montgomery 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 Robert Montgomery Table
- Fourteen Robert Montgomery movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 24.56% of his movies listed. They Were Expendable (1945) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Robert Montgomery movie grosses $80.70 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 29 Robert Montgomery movies are rated as good movies…or 50.87% of his movies. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) is his highest rated movie while Free and Easy (1930)is his lowest rated movie.
- Ten Robert Montgomery movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 17.54% of his movies.
- Three Robert Montgomery movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 5.26% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR )Score is 40.00. 33 Robert Montgomery movies scored higher that average….or 57.89% of his movies. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) got the the highest UMR Score while Eye Witness (1950) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Robert Montgomery
1. Henry Montgomery, Jr. was born in Fishkill Landing, New York in 1904.
2. Robert Montgomery was nominated for two Best Actor Oscars®: 1937’s Night Must Fall and 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
3. After World War II broke out in Europe in September, 1939, and while the United States was still officially neutral, Robert Montgomery enlisted in London for American field service and drove ambulances in France until the Dunkirk evacuation.
4. During the D-Day invasion, Robert Montgomery was one of the first to enter Cherbourg harbor and was awarded the Bronze Star for his service.
5. Robert Montgomery was widely considered to be one of the best dressed men in Hollywood and for years did not carry a wallet because it ruined the drape of his suits.
6. Robert Montgomery was married two times. He had three children. His daughter, Elizabeth Montgomery, became an actress…and was best know for her role as Samantha Stevens on the television series, Bewitched.
7. Robert Montgomery was president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1935-38 and 1946-47.
8. Check out Robert Montgomery ‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Astute readers will notice that three movies are missing….we were unable to find any box office information on: 1929’s Three Live Ghosts, 1930’s Sins of the Children and 1932’s But The Flesh Is Weak. Also we have worldwide box office grosses on about 30 of his movies…if interested…just leave a request on the comment box…and we will make sure you get that information.
During our research on Robert Montgomery we found this wonderful website from a huge Montgomery fan. Classic Robert Montgomery Blogspot.
STEVE
CORRECTION Careless wording in my previous post. The box office Queen to whom I was referring in para 4 was of course Durbin and not Loy whom John and WH have made a Pretender to the throne to use historical terms about monarchs. PHEW! Glad I caught it out as my adversaries might otherwise have had field day.
STEVE
1 Thanks for the confirmation about Donna Reed – I should have got that one.
2You asked about the strength of my feelings about Myrna pre WH going wildly hyperbolic about her and the short answer is that they have always been mixed. On the NEGATIVE side I was never impressed with her star credentials as I felt that she relied too heavily on the likes of Gable and Bill Powell to carry her movies. On the positive side I admired her for her war stance and her support for human rights particularly in relation to African Americans and I think she must have been a really nice person from what I’ve read about her.
3 In relation to female commercial stardom in MOVIES Myrna’s Cogerson box office totals are well over three times that of Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland’s for example are far more than twice Durbin’s but Deanna’s career was built on largely stand-alone movies as was Grable’s in her heyday so I admire Durbin and Grable’s stardom more than the other two who had great help from as said in Myrna’s case the King and Powell and in Judy’s the likes of Rooney, Astaire, Van Johnson, Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich etc..Also Deann’s Cogerson average gross was actually tied with Loy’s
4 Unfortunately I have never been able to form an opinion of Deanna the person as when she was in the movies Universal would have made sure all publicity about her was ‘sweetness and light’ and when she suddenly quit Hollywood her private life was shrouded in secrecy and even the manner of her death has never been fully explained. However in a couple of reports I read observers described her as to use their words “stuck up” and even “a pain in the ***!” I have never read anything negative about the off-screen Loy. However what a box office queen!
5 In my opinion having carefully weighted all the relevant Cogerson stats provided to date the following are the TRUE female box office champions of all time:
1Elizabeth Taylor
2Joan Crawford
3Barbra Streisand
4Doris Day
5Betty Grable
6Deanna Durbin
7Julia Roberts
8/Lana Turner
9/Judy Garland
10/Mary Pickford
6 I can visualise WH and Stonewall Torrey tut tutting and shaking their head because I know they look at box office totals in a very arbitrary way but as the saying goes “that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.”
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing and rating my Robert Montgomery video, always appreciated. Glad you liked the stills and posters too.
That was actually the lovely Myrna Loy in that photo from When Ladies Meet, sorry about that. I thought you’d know what she looked like by now after all the fuss ‘you’ made of the poor girl these past few months. And remember Bob she was your beloved Joan’s best friend, you should give her a break. The Thin Man series would be duller without Loy… there would be no joy without Loy. 😉
The subject of adding captions to the photos – it’s a good idea but I like to think people watching the videos are trying to recognise the actors and guess what movie is coming up next, it’s like a game, they have 10 seconds to name the film before the poster comes up. 🙂
I’m sometimes not sure who the ladies are in the photos and on more than one occasion the people who uploaded a still on the net have labeled it wrongly, either wrong film or wrong actors. So I always double and triple check before adding a picture to the video. The very last still on the video is a close up of Robert with Evelyn Keyes from Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
Only two of Robert’s films got 10 out of 10 from my sources – Here Comes Mr. Jordan and They Were Expendable (the prequel to the Sylvester Stallone action series). I see Bruce and I have the same no.1 but veer off after that.
I always mix up Robert’s name with that other actor George Montgomery. I don’t think they were related.
Oh yes nearly forgot your other photo query – that was pretty Donna Reed in the still from They Were Expendable. I should do a video on her too some day. I’m almost sure Bruce has a page on Donna but I don’t see her name on his index page.
STEVE
1 Thanks for your explanation about the lack of captions. Guess I’ll just have to live with it because unlike some others on this site I don’t want to spoil the fun of fellow site contributors.
2 Would never have guessed that was Loy in the When Ladies Meet still. If John or WH posted videos I would be on the lookout for Moy being inserted to annoy me but never thought you would do that. Consider my rating of Monty’s video reduced to 80%!!!! Hard on him but Myrna did always tend to drag fellow performers down with her. However if you want to see the definitive leading lady in When Ladies Meet watch the 1941 version!!
3 I can find no evidence of Robert and George Montgomery being related and I have never confused THOSE two because George was one of my cowboy B movie heroes when I was young and I am familiar with most of his westerns – Robbers Roost, Gun Belt, The Lone Gun, Battle of Rogue River etc. I have though always tended to mix up Robert Montgomery and Robert Young so I guess we all have our blind spots.
Oh come on I did add a dash of Crawford to the mix, that should make up for you mistakenly giving that Loy photo the thumbs up. 🙂
Explain one thing if you may, did your animosity towards Myrna Loy start after Bruce innocently labeled her Hollywood’s box office queen some time last year, or has she always raised your ire?
I meant that I get Robert Montgomerys ‘name’ mixed up with George’s I know they are very different actors. Even recently when I was creating that video I was staring at photos of Georgie M in a state of confusion. [sniggers]
HI AGAIN STEVE
1 This isn’t a criticism because your videos are always highly informative and I know that if you drown them in content viewers could get bored but is it possible for you to say underneath stills who the subjects are? I just guessed at Ann Harding in When Ladies Meet [and I certainly hope that it wasn’t Robert’s 2nd leading lady in that one or I’m taking some of my markings back!!]. Also you will see that I don’t know at all who was with Bob and the Duke in the They were Expendable still. Yet I simply had to mention those two photos in my last post because of their classiness.
2 It should be remembered that when it comes to movies that were made in the thirties and forties even ‘old timers’ like me can struggle to recognise even the greatest of stars from their old photographs because their looks could have markedly changed when we started to familiarise ourselves with them in our own times. In more recent times contrast for example Carrie Fisher’s appearance in her 1983 and 2014 Star Wars outings though admittedly there was a 31 year gap there. Changing fashions in hair and clothes can of course also compound the problem of the ageing process in attempting recognition.
3 I think I’ve told before on this site about the sycophantic English disc jockey [are there any other kind in England?] called Benny Green who idolised Sinatra and Bing and rabbited on about them and played their recordings every week on his radio show. He told of how he went to one of Frankie’s final concerts and a woman in behind him commented to her friend that Frank’s voice wasn’t as beautiful as it used to be and Green angrily turned on her and savaged her by saying “Neither is your face but you still trot it out in public!” He seemed proud of his conduct – ah the English, they’re such an emotional race!
STEVE – CORRECTION TO MY PRECEDING POST
The Carrie Fisher Star Wars gap was 32 years from 1983-2015.- Apologies.
STEVE 1 Robert is another actor whose career was over by the time I started watching movies in or around 1950. Indeed his final film [as an actor] was Your Witness [aka Eye Witness] released that year and it fact I became immediately aware of him from the posters for that movie that were displayed at my local Gaumont cinema.
2 Best POSTERS in your video I thought were Inspiration, Forsaking all Others, The Divorcee, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney and Riptide. STILLS that I liked were those from When Ladies Meet with Montgomery and I think Ann Harding, They were Expendable with Monty, A N Other and the Duke, Here Comes Mr Jordan and the happy-go-lucky one from The Last of Mrs Cheyney with Crawford, Robert and William l Powell. It struck me that Bill might have been in such an upbeat mood in that shot because he at last had a REAL leading Lady. BUT PLEASE READ MY NEXT POST TO YOU
3 However for me the best pick in the entire video was the marvellous still from Lady in the Lake. That is one of the few Monty pictures that I have seen and it has remained in my mind because my memory was of a gimmick by which the audience seldom or never saw Montgomery as Phillip Marlowe except as a reflection in a mirror and your still seems to be spot on in confirming my recollection. Chandler apparently detested the film because of the gimmicky mirror stuff and neither you or Bruce seem to think too much of it [66.% and 62.5% respectively] but according to Wiki it made a small profit of $6.5 million in 2017 dollars
4 You and Bruce agree on 4 of Robert’s Top 5 but I support his lower marking for June Bride your No 5 at 72.2% though I wouldn’t have put it in a spot quite as low as his no 34 and 62.5% . Great opening quote and overall I thought the video was of a 94% standard. I actually had 93% in my notes after a 1st viewing but when I watched it a 2nd time and marvelled again at your Lady in the Lake photo I concluded I was being as hard a marker as you and WH often are!.