1951 Movies

Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and Humphrey Bogart in African Queen

This movie page looks at 1951 Top Box Office Movies.  Finding box office information for movies made in the 1940s and 1950s is extremely difficult.   For somebody looking for box office information on 1951 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 1951 movies in our database.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1951.  Obviously many movies made in 1950 earned box office dollars in 1951.  On the other side many movies made in 1951 made money in 1952 and later.  This page will looks at 199 1951 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 1951 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 1951

1951 Top Box Office Movies Can Be Ranked 7 Ways In This Table

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

  • Sort 1951 Top Box Office Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort 1951 Top Box Office Movies by domestic actual box office grosses (in millions)
  • Sort 1951 Top Box Office Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions).
  • Sort 1951 Top Box Office Movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort 1951 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 1951 Top Box Office Movies received.
  • Sort 1951 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.
Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift & Shelley Winters in 1951’s A Place in the Sun

1951 Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

Top earners in 1951 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

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

Worldwide Adjusted Box Office Grosses (in millions)

  1. Quo Vadis (1951) $1,039,828,818.00
  2. The Great Caruso (1951) $469,126,591.00
  3. Show Boat (1951) $376,695,148.00
  4. An American in Paris (1951) $367,935,224.00
  5. A Place in the Sun (1951) $341,057,148.00
  6. Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) $263,602,574.00
  7. Painting The Clouds With Sunshine (1951) $236,416,852.00
  8. Father’s Little Dividend (1951) $232,314,278.00
  9. Across the Wide Missouri (1951) $227,420,852.00
  10. Westward the Women (1951) $197,516,574.00
  11. Flying Leathernecks (1951) $195,242,852.00
  12. Royal Wedding (1951) $192,870,278.00
  13. Operation Pacific (1951) $190,942,574.00
  14. Texas Carnival (1951) $188,817,148.00
  15. On Moonlight Bay (1951) $184,368,574.00
  16. The Thing from Another World (1951) $168,057,148.00
  17. Go For Broke! (1951) $164,943,148.00
  18. Distant Drums (1951) $161,680,852.00
  19. I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951) $157,973,722.00
  20. Vengenance Valley (1951) $155,502,278.00
  21. Lullaby of Broadway (1951) $152,487,148.00
  22. Rich Young and Pretty (1951) $148,236,278.00
  23. Strangers on a Train (1951) $145,122,278.00
  24. Jim Thorpe–All American (1951) $142,749,722.00
  25. The Enforcer (1951) $142,008,278.00
  26. Come Fill the Cup (1951) $125,993,426.00
  27. Fort Worth (1951) $115,761,722.00
  28. Payment on Demand (1951) $114,921,426.00
  29. Too Young To Kiss (1951) $114,081,148.00
  30. Starlift (1951) $113,784,574.00
  31. Excuse My Dust (1951) $113,586,852.00
  32. Soldiers Three (1951) $110,571,722.00
  33. Three Guys Named Mike (1951) $110,225,722.00
  34. Force of Arms (1951) $97,621,443.00
  35. Along the Great Divide (1951) $96,880,000.00
  36. The Tanks Are Coming (1951) $92,332,574.00
  37. I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951) $86,944,852.00
  38. Teresa (1951) $86,351,722.00
  39. The People Against O’Hara (1951) $83,781,426.00
  40. Tarzan’s Peril (1951) $82,792,852.00
  41. Angels in the Outfield (1951) $82,348,000.00
  42. Best of the Badmen (1951) $81,557,148.00
  43. Grounds For Marriage (1951) $78,443,148.00
  44. My Forbidden Past (1951) $77,850,000.00
  45. Goodbye My Fancy (1951) $75,526,852.00
  46. The Law And The Lady (1951) $67,222,852.00
  47. Callaway Went Thataway (1951) $66,135,426.00
  48. The Light Touch (1951) $63,318,000.00
  49. Sealed Cargo (1951) $59,314,278.00
  50. Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951) $57,584,278.00
  51. Lightning Strikes Twice (1951) $56,546,278.00
  52. Cry Danger (1951) $54,371,426.00
  53. The Painted Hills (1951) $53,630,000.00
  54. Red Badge of Courage (1951) $53,382,852.00
  55. The Strip (1951) $48,538,852.00
  56. Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951) $45,919,148.00
  57. Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951) $43,942,000.00
  58. Strictly Dishonorable (1951) $43,546,574.00
  59. Night Into Morning (1951) $40,482,000.00
  60. Inside Straight (1951) $38,010,574.00
  61. Cause for Alarm! (1951) $37,961,148.00
  62. The Man with the Cloak (1951) $37,714,000.00
  63. Mr. Imperium (1951) $37,318,574.00
  64. The Unknown Man (1951) $35,143,722.00
  65. No Questions Asked (1951) $32,425,148.00
  66. It’s a Big Country (1951) $32,375,722.00
  67. The Tall Target (1951) $30,645,722.00
  68. Kind Lady (1951) $24,714,278.00
  69. Bannerline (1951) $22,588,852.00
  70. Home Town Story (1951) $16,509,148.00
  71. Footlight Varieties (1951) $10,874,278.00
  72. Saddle Legion (1951) $7,167,148.00

My Yearly Review Pages

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35 thoughts on “1951 Movies”

  2. Both Francis Goes to the Races and Frances Goes to the Races are listed on this page in the first two tables. I believe those are the same film, as they have all the same data except slightly different Review scores.

    Reply

  5. April 30, 2020 at 10:20 am
    Hi Mr. Cogerson,

    Happy Birthday to your loved one.

    I want to review a new movie to list for the year 1951.

    “The Fighting Seventh/Little Big Horn”, Box Office 500,000 USD, source WIKIPEDIA
    LINK- http://www.teako170.com/box50-59.html
    This is a website called Stat-a-Mania
    it views by year and reads as follows:

    1951

    001 $ 30.0 n/a $ 30.0 Quo Vadis (1951)
    002 $ 4.5 n/a $ 4.5 An American in Paris (1951)
    003 $ 2.7 n/a $ 2.7 Call Me Mister (1951)
    004 $ 2.6 n/a $ 2.6 Meet Me After the Show (1951)
    005 $ 2.5 n/a $ 2.5 On the Riviera (1951)
    006 $ 1.1 $ 0.2 $ 1.4 Goodbye, My Fancy (1951)
    007 $ 0.5 n/a $ 0.5 Little Big Horn (1951)

    THX
    Mike

    Reply

    1. Hey Mike….I am in the process of adding in Little Big Horn to the page….should be here on the next major website update. As for the rest of the numbers on this website….they are pretty close to the ones I have….though the lack of movies is bothersome when figuring out how accurate the information. Pretty sure that website has been around awhile. I am interested in some of the other low grossers….maybe some more ones to add from those years. As always…thanks for sharing this information.

      Reply

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