Top Grossing Movies Of 1952

The Greatest Show On Earth was easily the biggest box office hit of 1952

This movie page looks at The Top Grossing Movies of 1952.  In 1952, 463 movies were released in theaters.  Average weekly movie attendance was 51 million.  That translates to $2.65 billion (25th best year in movie history) movie tickets sold which generated revenue of $1.24 billion.  So with all of this money flying around you would think somebody would have kept track of how each movie was performing.  Sadly that was the case!

Currently when you type in the search words….”Top Grossing Movies of 1952″ you do not get much information.  Wikipedia provides 10 movies.  The Numbers.com provides 10 movies.  Stats-a-mania offers up 7 movies.  You have to go to the 26th search result to find the next place that lists box office results….UMR’s (that’s us) Marilyn Monroe page which offers up 5 movies.  So in an effort to get more information out there…we have decided to unlock our 1952 movie database vault and share the information we have collected over the years.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1952 (as listed on IMDB.com).  Obviously many movies made in 1951 earned box office dollars in 1952.  On the other side many movies made in 1952 made money in 1953 and later.  This page will looks at 162 Top Grossing Movies of 1952.  The movies are listed in a massive table that shows who starred in the movie, had much the movie grossed when it was released and how that gross means in today’s money.

Drivel part of the page:  Currently our movie database is down for a massive update which includes a new box office formula and a new formula for our movie ranking equation. So we do not have access to all of our information.  For some reason….Wife of Cogerson thinks her full time job takes precendent over this non-revenue generating hobby. Sometimes I just do not understand her….lol.  So without the ability to do a page on a actor or actress…I had to pick a year as our the latest movie page.

My favorite 1952 movie is The Quiet Man
My favorite 1952 movie is The Quiet Man

Our UMR Top 50 of 1952

Top Grossing Movies of 1952 Can Be Sorted 3 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Top Grossing Movies of 1952 by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort Top Grossing Movies of 1952 by domestic actual box office grosses (in millions)
  • Sort Top Grossing Movies of 1952 by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)

Singin' In The Rain, considered the greatest musical ever, was released in 1952
Singin’ In The Rain, considered the greatest musical ever, was released in 1952

1952 Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

How the Box Office Numbers were Calculated 

Sadly in 1952….BoxOfficeMojo was not around to keep track of box office earnings. Back then earnings seem to be a secret and a secret that needed to be safely locked up.  When studios did report box office stats they used “box office rentals”.  Box office rentals were the amount of money the studio got back from the theaters.  It is NOT the box office gross.  According to Film Daily Yearbook the film rentals as percentage of box office grosses was 36% in 1952. That means that box office gross was 2.75 times greater than box office rentals.  It is not an exact calculation….but for 1952 the multiplier we used was 2.75.

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118 thoughts on “Top Grossing Movies Of 1952”

    1. Hey Sidney, I can not find any box office on this movie. From Variety to Harrison Reports to my Paramount book to some online books I have bought. Without book office I can not include it even with it’s Oscar nomination. I will keep looking.

      Reply

      1. Hi,
        Here is the B.O. estimation data from top 20-25 cities.

        The Atomic City
        Released-5/1/1952
        Stars- Lydia Clarke and Gene Barry
        Paramount
        B.O. estimate- $143,300
        Domestic Only, No oversea
        Thx

        Reply

  3. “The Lion and the Horse” 1952 western – Entry no 123 in main chart

    I cannot recall George Gabby Hayes being in this movie. Indeed research now indicates that he made his final movie in 1950, The Cariboo Trail,

    starring his old screen mate Randy Scott – Badman’s Territory (1946) Trail Street (1947) Albuquerque and Return of the Badmen both in 1948; thereafter Gabby did TV work. Here for example is what Wikipedia says on the subject:

    “Westerns declined in popularity in the late 1940s, and Hayes made his last film in the genre in 1950: The Cariboo Trail. He had appeared in 174 westerns. He immediately moved to television and hosted The Gabby Hayes Show, a Western series, from 1950 to 1954 on NBC and in a version in 1956 on ABC.”

    What could be causing confusion is that “The Lion and The Work Horse” has a few Gabby Hayes type characters in the plot. For example 60-something character actor William Fawcett played “Pappy” Cole. Pappy was a name regularly given to “old timers” in Hollywood westerns in their heyday.

    The lead actor is Steve Cochran, who sadly died prematurely in 1965 at the age of 48 on his yacht at sea from catching some kind of lethal disease that made him bloat to about twice his normal size off the coast of Guatemala.

    Reports at the time suggested that the yacht returned to harbour with three wannabe sexy starlets screaming their heads off in terror. Steve had enticed the young girls to sail with him so that he could “audition” them for movie parts!

    As well as acting he had hitherto directed and written briefly for the screen. Main support to Steve in the movie was provided by character-actor Ray Teal and 40’s B movie cowboy hero Bob Steele.

    In memory of Steve, who was the lead bad guy after Cagney in 1949’s classic White heat, he maybe should be mentioned in the co-star column of this 1952 survey.

    HISTORIC: The Cogerson site seems to have a compulsion to throw other people’s movies that he wasn’t in Gabby’s way! For example I recall him being listed in the co-star column of the 1955 B war movie Jump Into Hell and I asked for him to be removed from the listing.

    Why not give him his own page so that he can stop ripping-off other actors’ work?

    Reply

    1. One day Gabby will have his own page. Sadly, this site has taken a back burner to the teaching career. Did I mention that I am currently the Teacher of the Year for my school. I even made the Top 3 of my city to lose on Awards night. It was the closest I will ever come to winning an Oscar. At that ceremony….the showed the three nominees…..they each got a video highlight reel…..and then they announced the winner….and it was not me. I got to smile while clapping for the winner. I now know what Bill Murray felt when he lost the Oscar race to Sean Penn. Usually, I have more time in the summer, but they talked me into doing summer school and I have Teacher of the Year events this summer as well. But, although UMR has been on autopilot WoC and I have decided to keep the website up for years to come.

      Reply

      2. Just to be chosen is a great honor. Some never receive this status.
        Hope the best for your future. Your website is an a great.

        Reply

      3. Congratulations on Teacher of the Year. Too bad you missed out on the top spot.
        Now you know how Robert Taylor felt when he never made Cowboy of the Century!

        Still to be in the frame at all for the top spot is quite an accolade. I am sure that many others would kill to reach even the top 3.

        There is a scene in the film the Oscar (1966) where a character (supposedly based on Sinatra, who won a supporting one) stands up tinking they have awarded him Best Actor (in a lead role) only to find out he has misheard and he has to sit down again deflated.

        At least YOUcould put a smile on it and didn’t have to go through any humiliantion like that one. As a tennis buff I always thought it cruel to, at the close of a major torrnament, make the runner up to stand sheepishly smiling and clapping at the ceremony where everyone applauds the winner.

        Goran Ivanisevic won grand slam Wimbledon tournmennt at a 4th attempt after being a runner up 3 times and he said afterwards “If I had had to hold up that runners up trophy one more time I’d have thrown it at them!.

        Jimmy Connors when he was thrashed by Borg in the 1978 Wimbledon final didn’t wait around for the closing ceremony. Instead without changing and showering he grabbed his top coat from the locker room ,

        and ran out to a waiting taxi and jumped in shouting at reporters who tried to question him ” **** the lot of you – I may not be back here, and the taxi sped off.” Ah Americans!

        Reply

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