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.
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)
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.
Our Other Yearly Review Movie Pages
-
- 1939 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Gone With The Wind
- 1946 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Best Years of Our Lives
- 2011 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Help
- 2012 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Argo
- 2013 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Gravity
- 2014 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? American Sniper
- 2015 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Martian
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Hi
Considering the massive drop in cinema attendance from 1946, 52 was a good year for movies. Hollywood was still making plenty of money with hit movies. I can see why The Greatest Show on Earth was the top grosser, it was really entertaining. But I’m puzzled that it won the Oscar over Singing in the Rain, High Noon or The Quiet Man. It seemed the Academy just wanted to share out the love with everyone that year. Nevertheless, there were some really good movies. I particularly enjoyed Pat and Mike, Sudden Fear and Carrie.
By this time, television was starting to take a real hold on the public and the decline would really start to set in over the next few years. One thing hasn’t changed, if Hollywood makes good movies, people will comes. It was true then and still applies today.
Hey Chris…by 1952 television was starting to really hurt weekly movie attendance….but it was still about 150% better than today’s weekly attendance. Many people consider GSOE one of the worst movies to win the Best Picture Oscar. I almost think it was a career Oscar win for DeMille….plus back then GSOE was easily the epic movie…I think the other three have gained serious followings since 1952…so their legend grows…while GSOE continues to fade. Pat and Mike is a very good movie…I have not seen Sudden Fear….but Olivier is awesome in Carrie…one of my favorite performances by him. I agree if the movie is good….people will come and see the movie. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on 1952 movies.
I’m about to do a podcast on my alternative Oscar choices for films released in 1952. I’m surprised that 152 movies made $1 million or more. (If I’m not mistaken that was a decent Box Office return for those days).
I’m surprised to see The Bad and The Beautiful was 37th; I thought it would be higher somehow. It’s too bad Talk About A Stranger is ranked so low, it’s a unique movie that deserves more of a following.
It’s good that Singin in the Rain was in the top 5; if the Oscars couldn’t appreciate it, at least the audiences did.
Hey TawfikZone….you should share your podcast link here…and I will put it in the main part of the page. Gotta admit that I was not even aware of Talk About A Stranger until I wrote this page. A MGM movie that did not get a lot of press or support. Singin’ In The Rain….is the best musical ever.
I just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I’m a stats guy anyways so this fits right in with me. I’ll be looking at this for a while.
Lists like these help us to understand the films when they were released. What people’s tastes were. What got people excited.
Good work !
Hey GGGGerald…..glad a stats guy like myself was able to check out this page. I agree with you 100% that helps understand what people enjoyed and supported oh so many years ago. Thanks for visit and the comment….both are greatly appreciated.
Of the added movies, I have seen The Woman In White and Fearless Fagin
Hey Flora….I not only got shutout with the 14 movies added…I had never even heard of them before. Thanks for the update.
I just see there’s no numbers for the movie “Feraless fagan” (number 134).
Hey Laurent…..thanks for the catch….not sure how that happened….but Fearless Fagan’s box office numbers are now on the table….it was in the right spot though.