This movie page looks at 1931 Top Box Office Movies. Finding box office information for movies made in the 1930s and 1940s is extremely difficult. For somebody looking for box office information on 1931 it is very very frustrating. Over the years, we have researched and collected information on over 36,000 movies. So we figured we would show all the 1931 movies in our database.
To make this list a movie had to be made in 1931. Obviously many movies made in 1930 earned box office dollars in 1931. On the other side many movies made in 1931 made money in 1932 and later. This page looks at 141 1931 Top Box Office Movies. The movies are listed in a massive table that lets you rank the movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.
The following massive table only includes the movies made in 1931 that are in our database. Since we are constantly adding new movies to our database….this page will quickly become obsolete. We will try and update this page on a regular basis.
Our UMR Top 50 of 1931
1931 Top Box Office 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 1931 Top Box Office Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
- Sort 1931 Top Box Office Movies by domestic actual box office grosses
- Sort 1931 Top Box Office Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort 1931 Top Box Office 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 1931 Top Box Office Movies received.
- Sort 1931 Top Box Office Movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking Score (UMR). Our UMR score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Top earners in 1931 for Adjusted USA Box Office:
Adjusted Worldwide Box Office:
- Trader Horn (1931) $529,631,856.00
- Mata Hari (1931) $291,670,350.00
- The Lady Who Dared (1931) $139,390,077.00
- Hell Divers (1931) $273,093,399.00
- Bought! (1931) $173,763,773.00
- Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) $190,318,670.00
- Local Boy Makes Good (1931) $144,445,058.00
- Alexander Hamilton (1931) $131,302,224.00
- A Free Soul (1931) $179,703,311.00
- Parlor Bedroom and Bath (1931) $124,478,018.00
- Possessed (1931) $192,340,633.00
- Sidewalks of New York (1931) $108,049,463.00
- Dance Fools Dance (1931) $160,241,793.00
- Inspiration (1931) $142,423,050.00
- The Mad Genius (1931) $85,681,305.00
- Reducing (1931) $190,192,273.00
- Sporting Blood (1931) $112,851,651.00
- Private Lives (1931) $142,170,311.00
- The Millionaire (1931) $105,521,967.00
- Strangers May Kiss (1931) $160,747,226.00
- The Secret Six (1931) $125,615,414.00
- Politics (1931) $172,752,764.00
- The Phantom of Paris (1931) $82,269,252.00
- Cimarron (1931) $185,642,815.00
- The Easiest Way (1931) $114,115,353.00
- The Squaw Man (1931) $88,335,142.00
- Guilty Hands (1931) $86,692,314.00
- Born To Love (1931) $82,016,459.00
- Beau Ideal (1931) $72,664,822.00
- This Modern Age (1931) $112,598,912.00
- Young Donovan’s Kid (1931) $78,098,893.00
- Kiss Me Again (1931) $48,527,449.00
- Sit Tight (1931) $97,813,150.00
- Laughing Sinners (1931) $96,675,844.00
- The Common Law (1931) $90,117,024.00
- Svengali (1931) $62,934,076.00
- Gentleman’s Fate (1931) $64,324,166.00
- West of Broadway (1931) $58,890,140.00
- The Star Witness (1931) $82,016,513.00
- Smart Money (1931) $76,203,271.00
- Stepping Out (1931) $57,626,357.00
- Cracked Nuts (1931) $77,972,542.00
- Peace O’Reno (1931) $72,032,948.00
- Father’s Son (1931) $61,417,599.00
- Caught Plastered (1931) $69,379,111.00
- Little Caeser (1931) $132,945,051.00
- The Finger Points (1931) $79,741,757.00
- The Road To Singapore (1931) $66,346,175.00
- Chances (1931) $62,049,464.00
- The Guardsman (1931) $64,450,518.00
- Devotion (1931) $68,494,534.00
- The Public Enemy (1931) $118,412,073.00
- Night Nurse (1931) $86,818,701.00
- Men Call It Love (1931) $48,780,188.00
- Broadminded (1931) $59,774,716.00
- Children of Dreams (1931) $59,774,716.00
- Millie (1931) $80,247,244.00
- Everything’s Rosie (1931) $34,752,767.00
- Safe In Hell (1931) $41,324,145.00
- The Maltese Falcon (1931) $50,928,539.00
- The Hot Heiress (1931) $59,965,687.00
- The Reckless Hour (1931) $39,175,829.00
- Gold Dust Gertie (1931) $56,109,871.00
- Compromised (1931) $31,087,930.00
- Illicit (1931) $69,252,715.00
- I Like Your Nerve (1931) $39,428,568.00
- The Last Flight (1931) $56,868,141.00
- Transgression (1931) $39,175,838.00
- The Bargain (1931) $32,857,155.00
- Captain Applejack (1931) $24,769,202.00
- Men Of The Sky (1931) $28,939,525.00
- Party Husband (1931) $38,417,577.00
- The Gay Diplomat (1931) $16,554,942.00
- 50 Million Frenchmen (1931) $54,340,691.00
- Woman Hungry (1931) $32,983,498.00
- God’s Gift to Women (1931) $21,230,752.00
My Main Sources
Source 1: Eddie Mannix MGM Ledgers
Source 2: C.J. Tevlin RKO Ledgers
Source 3: William Schaefer Warner Brothers Ledgers
Source 4: Year In Review Variety Editions
Source 5: Grand Design: Hollywood As A Modern Business Enterprise 1930-1942 by Tino Balio
Source 6: Twentieth Century-Fox A Corporate and Financial History by Aubrey Solomon
Source 7: Wikipedia
Source 8: IMDb.com
Source 9: “Revenue sharing and the coming of sound” by H. Mark Glancy
Source 10: Hollywood Power Stats by Christopher Reynolds
Hi Mr. Cogerson,
Can you please add the following 1931 films.
1.The Struggle (1931), Hal Skelly and Zita Johann. Box office $100,000. source-Wikipedia
2.Huckleberry Finn (1931),Jackie Coogan and Junior Durkin. Box office $2.5 million.
source-Wikipedia
3.Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931),Matahi and Anne Chevalier. Box office $472,000 worldwide. source-Wikipedia
Thx
mike
Hi Mr. Cogerson,
Can you please add the following 1931 films.
1.The Struggle (1931), Hal Skelly and Zita Johann. Box office $100,000.
2.Huckleberry Finn (1931),Jackie Coogan and Junior Durkin. Box office $2.5 million.
3.Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931),Matahi and Anne Chevalier. Box office $472,000 worldwide.
Thx
mike
FYI… I don’t see Feet First in 1930 or 1931 movie list.
Hey Chris….Feet First is now on the 1930 page…coming in at #64. Got the box office number from IMDb…..but they do not say where the figure came from……but we used it.
Hello Bruce, i just have some questions about your worldwide grosses estimation for the yearly reviews in general :
1) Where do they come from? The studios ledgers ? Because i know that variety , imdb and box office mojo only give US gross for the films of this period until the 80’s….
2) And why do you have worldwide grosses for some movies and not for others?
Is it because the ledgers of the different studios that you consulted do not always give the worldwide gross or because when you consulted them you could not take all the infos ?
3)Do you have all the gross figures available (domestic and foreign) in the various studios ledgers that can currently be consulted ?
Thanks a lot !!
Hey Max…..thanks for the comment and the visit. So to answer your questions….(1) MGM, RKO, and Warner Brothers worldwide box office come from the ledgers for those companies. Fox has some good sources as well. Using the rental numbers they have let’s us come up with an adjusted worldwide gross. It is far from an exact science….but given the limited resources….we feel they are at least in the neighborhood. The actual numbers will probably never been known.
(2) So for studios like Paramount, Columbia and Universal….we rarely have worldwide box office numbers. (3) At the end of many of the classic pages and yearly reviews we post the movies we have numbers for….we are working on doing something that will put these numbers together. Hope that answers you questions.