1961 Top Box Office Movies

Finding box office information for movies made before 1980 is not an easy task.   For somebody looking for box office information on 1961 it is very very frustrating.  Over the years, we have researched and collected information on over 30,000 movies.  So we figured we would show all the 1961 movies in our database.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1961.  This page will looks at 106 1961 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.    This only represents about 25% of the movies made in 1961….but should cover the top box office movies.

1961’s West Side Story

 

Our UMR Top 50 of 1961

1961 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 1961 Top Box Office Movies by movie titles and movie trailers
  • Sort 1961 Top Box Office Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort 1961 Top Box Office Movies by stars of the movie
  • Sort 1961 Top Box Office Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort 1961 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 each 1961 Top Box Office Movies received and how many Oscar® wins each 1961 Top Box Office Movies received.
  • Sort 1961 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.
1961’s El Cid

 Top earners in 1961 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

My Main Sources

Source 1: Variety – January 10th, 1962 Pages 13 & 58

Source 2: Twentieth Century-Fox A Corporate and Financial History by Aubrey Solomon

Source 3:  Wikipedia

Source 4:  IMDb.com

Source 5:  BoxOfficeMojo.com


Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

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38 thoughts on “1961 Top Box Office Movies

    1. Hey Sidney…added Viridiana to the table…it has an UMR score of 76.83….so it should come in at 41 when the entire website gets updated later today. Thanks for the suggestion.

  1. One, Two, Three has on Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
    (Daniel L. Fapp)

  2. Hi Mr. Cogerson,

    Please review the following movies made in 1961 with box office data not listed in UMR database.

    1961 Wings of Chance $9,000,000 SOURCE-Wikipedia
    1961 Duel of the Titans $1,450,000  SOURCE-Wikipedia
    1961 Taste of Fear/Scream of Fear $800,000  SOURCE-Wikipedia

    Please see if you have box office data on this movie.

    1961 Time Out for Love Starring-Jean Seberg and Maurice Ronet

    Thx
    Mike

    1. Hey Mike thanks for the suggestions. Let’s look at the three movies….I added Duel of the Titans to the yearly review. That one got released in Italy in Decemeber of 1961. It apparently did not reach USA theaters until 1963…which made it show up in the 1963 Top Grossers…that must have confused me when I was doing these yearly reviews. It should be on the table on the next complete website update.

      Taste/Scream of Fear shows $800,000 in Europe…..nothing for the United States….I checked my Hammer movie book and it offers up nothing on box office gross….but does offer up some great photos. So at this time….I am not adding it in.

      Which gets us to the most confusing one. Wings of Chance. Wikipedia bases the box office on an article of the movie and quotes the producer of the movie. 9 million in gross would make Wings of Chance a Top 30 box office hit of 1961. Variey does not list the movie in 1961, 1962 or 1963. It does not show up in Variety’s May 4th, 1983 alphabetical order all-time top grossing movies (a great Variety to track down) or Variety’s February 24th 1992 Top Grossers by Decade (another great Variety to track down). Something does not add up…so at this time….I will have to do some further research.

      Thanks as always for the suggestion. Might have to break the emergency glass on this one and see what Bob knows about the movie.

  3. Hi Mr. Cogerson,

    You have the film The Last Challenge(1967), item 103 listed in the year 1961.
    Please correct when you can.

    Thx

    Mike

    1. Hey Mike……well that is the first time I have seen an error like this in the database. Good catch…running an update as I type….The Last Challenge will soon be gone from this table. It has been on the right page for awhile….no clue how it got here. I guess it Wrecked-It-Ralphed it….lol. Thanks again.

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