1931 Top Box Office Movies

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.

Charlie Chaplin in 1931’s City Lights

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.

Bela Lugosi in 1931’s Dracula

Top earners in 1931 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

Adjusted Worldwide Box Office:

  1. Trader Horn (1931) $529,631,856.00
  2. Mata Hari (1931) $291,670,350.00
  3. The Lady Who Dared (1931) $139,390,077.00
  4. Hell Divers (1931) $273,093,399.00
  5. Bought! (1931) $173,763,773.00
  6. Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) $190,318,670.00
  7. Local Boy Makes Good (1931) $144,445,058.00
  8. Alexander Hamilton (1931) $131,302,224.00
  9. A Free Soul (1931) $179,703,311.00
  10. Parlor Bedroom and Bath (1931) $124,478,018.00
  11. Possessed (1931) $192,340,633.00
  12. Sidewalks of New York (1931) $108,049,463.00
  13. Dance Fools Dance (1931) $160,241,793.00
  14. Inspiration (1931) $142,423,050.00
  15. The Mad Genius (1931) $85,681,305.00
  16. Reducing (1931) $190,192,273.00
  17. Sporting Blood (1931) $112,851,651.00
  18. Private Lives (1931) $142,170,311.00
  19. The Millionaire (1931) $105,521,967.00
  20. Strangers May Kiss (1931) $160,747,226.00
  21. The Secret Six (1931) $125,615,414.00
  22. Politics (1931) $172,752,764.00
  23. The Phantom of Paris (1931) $82,269,252.00
  24. Cimarron (1931) $185,642,815.00
  25. The Easiest Way (1931) $114,115,353.00
  26. The Squaw Man (1931) $88,335,142.00
  27. Guilty Hands (1931) $86,692,314.00
  28. Born To Love (1931) $82,016,459.00
  29. Beau Ideal (1931) $72,664,822.00
  30. This Modern Age (1931) $112,598,912.00
  31. Young Donovan’s Kid (1931) $78,098,893.00
  32. Kiss Me Again (1931) $48,527,449.00
  33. Sit Tight (1931) $97,813,150.00
  34. Laughing Sinners (1931) $96,675,844.00
  35. The Common Law (1931) $90,117,024.00
  36. Svengali (1931) $62,934,076.00
  37. Gentleman’s Fate (1931) $64,324,166.00
  38. West of Broadway (1931) $58,890,140.00
  39. The Star Witness (1931) $82,016,513.00
  40. Smart Money (1931) $76,203,271.00
  41. Stepping Out (1931) $57,626,357.00
  42. Cracked Nuts (1931) $77,972,542.00
  43. Peace O’Reno (1931) $72,032,948.00
  44. Father’s Son (1931) $61,417,599.00
  45. Caught Plastered (1931) $69,379,111.00
  46. Little Caeser (1931) $132,945,051.00
  47. The Finger Points (1931) $79,741,757.00
  48. The Road To Singapore (1931) $66,346,175.00
  49. Chances (1931) $62,049,464.00
  50. The Guardsman (1931) $64,450,518.00
  51. Devotion (1931) $68,494,534.00
  52. The Public Enemy (1931) $118,412,073.00
  53. Night Nurse (1931) $86,818,701.00
  54. Men Call It Love (1931) $48,780,188.00
  55. Broadminded (1931) $59,774,716.00
  56. Children of Dreams (1931) $59,774,716.00
  57. Millie (1931) $80,247,244.00
  58. Everything’s Rosie (1931) $34,752,767.00
  59. Safe In Hell (1931) $41,324,145.00
  60. The Maltese Falcon (1931) $50,928,539.00
  61. The Hot Heiress (1931) $59,965,687.00
  62. The Reckless Hour (1931) $39,175,829.00
  63. Gold Dust Gertie (1931) $56,109,871.00
  64. Compromised (1931) $31,087,930.00
  65. Illicit (1931) $69,252,715.00
  66. I Like Your Nerve (1931) $39,428,568.00
  67. The Last Flight (1931) $56,868,141.00
  68. Transgression (1931) $39,175,838.00
  69. The Bargain (1931) $32,857,155.00
  70. Captain Applejack (1931) $24,769,202.00
  71. Men Of The Sky (1931) $28,939,525.00
  72. Party Husband (1931) $38,417,577.00
  73. The Gay Diplomat (1931) $16,554,942.00
  74. 50 Million Frenchmen (1931) $54,340,691.00
  75. Woman Hungry (1931) $32,983,498.00
  76. 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

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41 thoughts on “1931 Top Box Office Movies”

  1. I have seen 38 movies from 1931.

    The highest rated film I have seen is The Champ at number 1.

    The highest rated film I have NOT seen is Trader Horn at number 3. So once again I miss a top 5 film which is usually not the case.

    The lowest rated film I have seen is Sidewalks of New York at 130.

    My viewings by rankings are as follows:

    8/10
    14/20
    19/30
    22/40
    26/50
    30/60
    31/70
    31/80
    34/90
    35/100
    36/110
    36/120
    38/130
    38/137

    Before I get to my top ten favourites, a comment regarding Steve’s post about Universal Horror Films and Frankenstein and Dracula. I have seen many Universal horror films including Frankenstein. But I have never been able to get through Dracula, or any other version of the story. I attribute this to the bugs and spiders that appear in the movie. So apologies to Steve for not having seen Dracula.

    My Top Ten Favourite 1931 Movies:

    Frankenstein
    The Champ
    Little Caesar
    The Public Enemy
    M
    Private Lives
    The Smiling Lieutenant
    A Free Soul
    Platinum Blonde
    City Lights

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora
      1. Thanks for the visit and the comment….it is greatly appreciated.
      2. So I have seen 19 of these movies….exactly half of your total.
      3. Seein 70% of the Top 20 is pretty impressive….I have only seen 50% of the Top 20.
      4. My first miss is Trader Horn too….for as big as a hit as it was…I have not heard much about the movie.
      5. Both Frankenstein and Dracula are classics….but if I was going to miss one of them it would be Dracula….as I think Frankenstein is the better of the two.
      6. Of your favoites…I have seen 8 of the ones you mention…having not seen The Smiling Lieutenant or Private Lives.
      Good feedback as always.

      Reply

  2. Huge Gable fan. The thing that really surprised me is that he had 10 movies in 1931. I never realized that before reading this page. He had a career in one year. Nice find.

    Reply

    1. Hey Rhett Fan….yep his 10 movies in 1931 is almost other actors’ entire career. We I saw the 10 movies pop up on the leaders of 1931 I thought I had made a big mistake…..but no….the man was very very busy. Glad a huge Gable fan found his page. We have a page that looks at his entire career….you might like that one too. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/clark-gable-movies/

      Reply

  3. Hi, I’m wondering if there’s any plans to standardize the worldwide grosses sections of the pages. The page on 1932 has a great table, a lot of older pages like 1946 have English sentences, and this page appears to be the table, minus the table. In addition, since they appear to be plain text, do the worldwide sections get updated automatically like the domestic tables do?

    Reply

    1. Hey Bobby…..I did an experiment with one of these yearly pages….that worldwide box office page is just collecting dust. Thinking of doing a massive page that shows all the worldwide grosses we have for 1930 to 1960….that page would be dynamic…and would update automatically. Plus it would create a pretty impressive Top 20 box office hits. You are correct…the current way we post the worldwide grosses will not update…..which means I would have to manually update this pages everytime we update the stats. Good feedback as always.

      Reply

      1. If I may make a suggestion, I recognize that it would completely change the direction of your site, but what about this:

        * Since you have all of this data sitting behind the site, and it’s just a matter of when you expose it on a corresponding page, why not make one page where users can search the data for themselves? They specify which fields they want to search by, which fields should come back, and which field they want it sorted by, and there we go. Then the users are also always getting the latest data.
        * That done, then that gives you the time to write some interesting blog posts when you do make a new page. For example, that recent Wedding Movies page would’ve been a great example of a post you could make about a group of movies that a user couldn’t really search for on the above page, but you could still group together and write a bit talking about that group of movies, some or your favorites, etc.
        * That removes the need for all of the cookie cutter pages slowly trickling out, and gives you the ability to take your time writing some cool blog posts about different groups of movies like I mentioned, or whatever relevant things comes up, like maybe with that Avengers: Infinity War page could be a cool breakdown of the different actors careers and holy crap here they all are together now, or something.

        Reply

  4. Hello Bruce.
    I’m Happy you’ve done this page. I’m going to have a lot of fun figuring out the math. And I get to redo my own page. I’ve loved working on the 1930’s. For the adjusted box office figures are you using the current average ticket price of $8.97 or another figure? Great page Bruce. Thanks Again.

    Reply

    1. Hey Lyle….glad you like this page…..I think our reviews that run from 1931 to 1963 are pretty impressive….patting myself on the back…lol. Yep the current average ticket price we are using is $8.97. At one point we added in the projected 2018 average ticket price but it was causing some strange numbers so we went back to the 2017 actual price of $8.97.

      Reply

  5. 1931 is a special year for horror movie fans, the success of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein kickstarted the horror genre which has remained popular ever since.

    I’ve seen 10 of the 137 films on the chart, less than I thought. I have 30 films from 1931 in my movie collection, I haven’t watched them all.

    Favorites include – Dracula, Frankenstein, Little Caesar, Public Enemy, Monkey Business and Fritz Lang’s ‘M’.

    Good to see the Marx Bros zany antics high up on the critics chart.

    James Whale’s Frankenstein is highly rated and not just by horror fans, it should score a bit better than Tod Browning’s Dracula. On my chart Frankenstein has a score average of 9.02, whilst Dracula is at 8.85. Fritz Lang’s M is even higher with a score of 9.3.

    Looking at the worldwide box office – whoa ho! Trader Horn was a massive hit, half a billion adjusted. They used stock footage from that film in the Weissmuller Tarzan films.

    Good stuff as always Bruce. Vote Up!

    Now let’s see how long this post takes to show up on the page. Maybe tomorrow? 😉 I’ll make a copy just in case.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve…..thanks for sharing your thoughts and movie watching totals for movies made in 1931. Your 10 is about half of my total of 19…..while 19 is about half the total of Flora…..which means you are way far behind her. I figured you would mention the horror classics…Frankenstein and Dracula. We have Frankenstein slightly lower than Dracula…..but the difference is pretty small…..the movies with a 80% or above rating are some of the most famous movies of all-time.

      Trader Horn was a major surprise when putting this page together. Sorry for the delay in the comment….so far it seems Spam Buster is working……got the fingers crossed that it stays working. Good feedback as always.

      Reply

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