Want to know the best Van Heflin movies? How about the worst Van Heflin movies? Curious about Van Heflin box office grosses or which Van Heflin movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Van Heflin 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.
Van Heflin (1908-1971) was an American Oscar® winning actor. Between 1936 and 1971 Heflin has 66 acting credits on his IMDb page. This page will rank 50 Van Heflin movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His television apperances, documentaries, shorts and movies not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings. To do well in our rankings a movie has to succeed at the box office, get good reviews from critics, liked by movie audiences and receive either some Oscar® or Golden Globe® love. This page was requested by Peterson.
Van Heflin 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 Van Heflin movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Van Heflin movies by actual domestic box office grosses
- Sort Van Heflin movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Van Heflin movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Van Heflin movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Van Heflin movie received and how many Oscar® wins each movie won.
- Sort Van Heflin 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.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Van Heflin Table
- Sixteen Van Heflin movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 32.00% of his movies listed. Airport (1970) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Van Heflin movie grossed $103.90 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 32 Van Heflin movies are rated as good movies…or 64.00% of his movies. Shane (1953) is his highest rated movie while Cry of Battle (1963) is his lowest rated movie.
- Twelve Van Heflin movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 24.00% of his movies.
- Four Van Heflin movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 8.00% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 25 Van Heflin movies scored higher than that average….or 50.00% of his movies. Shane (1953) got the the highest UMR Score while Cry of Battle (1963) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Van Heflin
1. Emmett Evan Heflin, Jr. was born in Walters, Oklahoma 1908.
2. Van Heflin began his acting career on Broadway in the early 1930s. From there he signed RKO movie contract. He made his film debut in 1936’s A Woman Rebels with some actress named Katharine Hepburn.
3. Van Heflin was only nominated for one Oscar® in his career…..but he made it count as he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for 1941’s Johnny Eager.
4. Van Heflin served as a combat cameraman in the Ninth Air Force in Europe during World War 2.
5. Derek Sculthorpe’s book….Van Heflin A Life in Film is a must read for any Van Heflin fan.
6. Van Heflin was married twice and had three children.
7. Many movie buffs know John Dillinger was killed after watching Clark Gable’s Manhattan Melodrama (1934)…but how many know that Lee Harvey Oswald was captured as he was watching Van Heflin’s Cry of Battle (1963)….Cry of Battle was part of a double feature that Oswald was watching.
8. Check out Van Heflin‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
But Wait There Is More! Adjusted Worlwide Box Office Grosses on 20 Van Heflin Movies
- Act of Violence (1949) $60.30 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Battle Cry (1955) $426.20 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- BF’s Daughter (1948) $105.40 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- East Side, West Side (1949) $138.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Grand Central Murder (1942) $43.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Greatest Story Ever Told, The (1965) $224.50 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Green Dolphin Street (1947) $442.00 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Johnny Eager (1941) $204.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Kid Glove Killer (1942) $41.30 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Madame Bovary (1949) $109.60 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Possessed (1947) $183.80 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Presenting Lily Mars (1943) $260.90 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Santa Fe Trail (1940) $217.40 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Seven Sweethearts (1942) $140.00 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Shane (1953) $451.30 Tap Roots (1948) $178.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Tennessee Johnson (1942) $56.30 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Three Musketeers, The (1948) $466.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Till The Clouds Roll By (1946) $439.00 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Under Ten Flags (1960) $53.10 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Woman Rebels, A (1936) $65.00 million in adjusted worldwide box office
Steve’s Van Heflin You Tube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Just added Steve’s Van Heflin Video To The Page. My comment on his channel.
“When I wrote my Heflin page my tally count was 6. Now it is up to 11…almost twice as many. Seen #24 They Came To Cordura…good cast looks good…but slow moving #22 East Side West Side…good who done it #18 Battle Cry…one of his biggest hits. #14 Greatest Story…great cast of cameos #13 Airport….the first time I noticed him as an actor #11 Possessed…Crawford shines #10 Madame Bovary..good Heflin role #7 Woman’s World…love this one…great roles for Heflin and Clifton Webb. #3 Strange Loves of Martha Ivers…classic movie #2 3:10 To Yuma…great western #1 Shane…even greater western. Fun video to watch.”
Overall Van Heflin’s career is regarded by film historians as that of a character actor. However he did get a string of leading man roles in the 1940s and he was undoubtedly a very fine actor, so that I can vividly recall that when the 50s came around one or two critics hailed him as the “new Tyrone Power”.
I could never understand the “new” bit because he was 6 years older than Ty and even though I was a naïve teenager back then I could still observe that Van didn’t have Power’s charisma or popular appeal.
As it turned out in fact Van never made top stardom and the pattern was that he was the lead in a fair number of movies that had no other big names in them such as South of Algiers [aka The Golden Mask] Count Three and Pray [the up-and-coming Joanne Woodward’s debut movie] and Gunman’s Walk
However as your posters faithfully illustrate he was 2nd fiddle or less in Black Widow with Ginger Rogers, Woman’s World with Clifton Webb and June Allyson, They Came to Cordura with Cooper and Hayworth, 3.10 to Yuma with Charley Bill Stuart and any other movies where he was joined by really top stars, including of course the Great Alan in Shane.
Van’s greatest hit in which he was top billed was the 1955 Battle Cry which WH has credited with an adjusted domestic gross of just short of $400 million in the table above. I never saw it but understood it to be very risqué for the times and it was probably the sex that made it the monster hit that it was.
I will mention straight away that for my money your Van Heflin video is one of your very best and my scores for it add up to a 98.5% probably to an extent engendered by a fine run of first class foreign language posters. They probably impress me so much because of course I have never seen any of them before.
The POSTERS that most pleased me are (1) 1st one for Wings of the Hawk (2) Stagecoach (3) Tomahawk [called Battle of Powder River over here] (4) both ones for under 10 Flags (5) foreign language one for They Came to Cordura (6) the 2 foreign language ones for Black Widow [this was Ginger’s final solid box office hit ever with WH listing a nearly $140 million adjusted domestic gross for it] (7) foreign language one for Tap Roots (8) foreign language one for Green Dolphin Street S (9) 2 excellent foreign language ones for Gunman’s Walk (10) sexy one for Madam Bovary (11) The Prowler (12) a truly stunning foreign language one for 3.10 to Yuma (13) a super foreign language one for Shane as well and (14) My Son Joel.
The STILLS I most enjoyed are (1) They Came to Cordura (2) Van with Stanwyck (3) with Judy (4) Van with Marvin and Peter Graves (5) Airport (6) Van with my Joan (7) still AND lobby card for 3 Musketeers (8) Van with Robert Ryan (9) Heflin with Stanwyck and Kirk (10) Van and Laddie and (11) Van and the great Charley Bill.
There is a lonely train called the 3.10 to Yuma
The pounding of the wheels is more like a mournful sigh
There’s a legend and there’s a rumour
When you take the 3.10 to Yuma
You can see the ghosts of outlaws go riding by
Though you’ve got no reason to go there
And there ain’t a soul that you know there
When the 3.10 to Yuma whistles its sad refrain
Take that train (Take that train)
You and Bruce agree on 5 of Van’s Top 6. You correctly in my view rank 3.10 to Yuma 2nd after Shane whereas WH ranks the Charley Bill movie only 3rd – what cheek!
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, comment, generous rating, info, trivia, comparison and song lyrics, always appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the picture gallery.
When you saw Van Heflin’s name I’ll bet you knew straight away which film would be at the top, well it wasn’t going to be Airport. When I was young I knew him best as the sweaty guy with the bomb in Airport ’70. The film that jump started the disaster movie craze of the 1970s.
Looking at the posters Van Heflin was first-billed in 15 of the 35 films, not bad I suppose. Is top-billed and first-billed the same? I think top-billed could also mean the name above the title, no? By first-billed I mean the first name that you see though it might not be that easy on the Towering Inferno poster. 😉
Three films get 10 out of 10 from my sources – Martha Ivers, 3:10 to Yuma and Shane. Four scored 9 – Airport, Madame Bovary, The Prowler and Patterns. Eight more scored 8.
Interestingly Shane isn’t Van’s highest rated at IMDB, tops there is Patterns. Shane is no.1 at Rotten Tomatoes, Bruce’s chart and mine too.
“I just didn’t have the looks and if I didn’t do a good acting job I looked terrible. Louis B. Mayer once looked at me and said, “You will never get the girl at the end”. So I worked on my acting.”
Three more golden oldies next week with more than a hundred films (on the videos) between them.
Thanks for a comprehensive reply to my Heflin posts and your billing stats breakdown which you know always interests me. In answer to your specific question my understanding is that –
1/Top billing is when one actor’s name is listed above the other (s).
JOHN WAYNE
WILLIAM HOLDEN in
THE HORSE SOLDIERS
2/First billing is when an actor is listed first on the same line as another actor(s) whether above or below the title.
JOHN WAYNE/WILLIAM HOLDEN in
THE HORSE SOLDIERS
In each of those arrangements it’s the same thing – the same guy is “Top Dog”
However on some occasions there has been a compromise arrangement such as the following
LEE MARVIN
PAUL NEWMAN
in
POCKET MONEY
Under that arrangement Paul was said to have been given first billing and Lee top billing
STEVE
Regarding my previous post in the example that I gave Marvin’s name is to the right of Newman’s but raised above it. I tried to replicate that arrangement for you but unfortunately once a post is submitted everything automatically moves to the left. If you look at the poster on Wiki for Key Largo you will see what I mean, where Bogie got first billing, Robinson got top billing and Bacall got 3rd billing.
Thanks again for the info Bob.
Btw there’s a nice still of ‘your Deanna’ sitting on the lap of one of next weeks video subjects, (lucky bugger says Bob).
Hey Steve….I am right there with you on Heflin….he was the “sweaty nervous bomb wielding villain” in Airport.
Hey Bob….good thoughts on Heflin, Steve’s video and the posters.
Good stuff as always.
Van Heflin Is The Most Beautiful Brilliant Actor In The World……
The Tempest was a big #1 blockbuster in Italy in 1958 with11,121,071 spectators according to boxofficebenful.blogspot.it an italian historical boxoffice data webblog list from 1945-present.
Hey Kevin….thanks for the box office information on The Tempest in Italy…that is a lot of paying customers to see the movie….I will have to check out boxofficebenful.blogspot…thanks for the headsup on that site.
Cogerson, Just Tell Me About Van Heflin Everyday And Night??????