1962 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 1962 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 1962 movies in our database.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1962.  This page will looks at 108 1962 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 1962….but should cover the top box office movies.

Gregory Peck in 1962’s To Kill A Mockingbird

Our UMR Top 50 of 1962

1962 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 1962 Top Box Office Movies by movie titles and movie trailers
  • Sort 1962 Top Box Office Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort 1962 Top Box Office Movies by stars of the movie
  • Sort 1962 Top Box Office Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort 1962 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 1962 Top Box Office Movies received and how many Oscar® wins each 1962 Top Box Office Movies received.
  • Sort 1962 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.
 
Trevor Howard, Marlon Brando and Richard Harris in 1962’s Mutiny on the Bounty

 Top earners in 1962 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

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35 thoughts on “1962 Top Box Office Movies”

    1. Hey Mark…..sadly I do not have box office information on that movie…..but I will keep looking. For our UMR score to work we need box office grosses…so sadly many many movies do not make these yearly reviews.

      Reply

  3. 1 It does not surprise me that Bruce is totally familiar with the negative financial reputation of the 3 films that he mentions in his post on 24 Feb at 11.56am However a number of modern observers have suggested that in reality “the jury may still be out” about the actual profit and loss in relation to those 3 movies:

    (1) CLEOPATRA. According to several major movie sites [Wiki for example] Cleopatra cost $31.2 million to make and not the $44 million quoted by other sources. It is said to have ultimately grossed $72 million worldwide and a further $6 million in DVD/Video sales. Those combined earnings together with hefty TV sales are said to have ultimately allowed Liz’s Cleo to recoup its costs though Cleo did unfortunately cause Fox financial problems at the time of its release

    (2) MUTUNY ON THE BOUNTY 1962. Bruce quotes an actual domestic gross of $28 million for that flick and that is roughly consistent with Richard Harris’ claim in an interview that its earnings reached nearly $30 million in the States in 1962/63. According to respected film historian David Shipman Bounty earned approx. the same amount overseas so if David IS right then based on Bruce’s domestic figure Bounty grossed around $56 million worldwide.

    (3) Its cost in 1962 is said to have been $19 million but some historians claim that that figure was artificially padded with notional charges such as the original purchase of the ship back in 1935 which was again used for the 1962 flick. Accordingly against its actual budget the substantial worldwide theatrical gross plus later Video, DVD and TV sales at inflated prices turned a tiny profit for the film eventually according to at least 2 historians and Harris too said it made money.

    (4) Indeed Bruce’s adjusted domestic figures for all of Mr Mumbles’ 1960s flicks give the Great Mumbler an average of around $84 million for the 13 films he made in the 1960s and whilst that is not spectacular it is respectable enough to suggest the magnitude of his flops has been possibly exaggerated and indeed one film historian claimed in a recent radio interview that some of the supposed failures did make money. Certainly an $84 million average is far healthier than Stallone’s $49 million average for his non-franchise films in their entirety “When the legend’s more exciting than the truth print the legend!” [The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962] but other viewers should take note that this may be the only time the Work Horse has been statistically fair to Mr M.

    (4) WATERWORLD [WW]. The makers of this movie claim that whilst its production cost was a massive $175 million and its actual domestic gross a disappointing $90 million outstandingly buoyant overseas earnings and other sales eventually put the movie into profit. The Lees’ movies site provides some evidence to support that contention as it lists WW’s worldwide actual theatrical gross as $256 million [eventually rising to $264 million] and Video/DVD/TV sales as a further $116 million which is an overall gross earnings figure of about $380 million.

    (5) Also Rose Clooney’s famous nephew at a University lecture on the financing of the modern film business said that WW [and indeed some other more modern films regarded as commercial failures] should not be so regarded as those who castigated them as flops simply did not understand how the financing of movies nowadays was structured. Gorgeous George went on to say that particularly there seemed to be in ignorance of the elaborate and complex measures that film financiers took to ensure themselves against losses in the theatrical marketplace.

    2 However the only way we would ever be able to test the competing contentions about the profit/loss situation regarding Cleo, Bounty and WW is if we got sight of properly audited honest detailed accounts for those films and that is highly unlikely to ever happen

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob….those movies all had the “it’s going to be a blockbuster” buzz….so when it fell short…it got the label of bust…even though it made a ton of dough at the box office. The high cos t of the movies put a serious strain on the movie studios…..as “breaking even” after numerous years was not the goal. Still good information throughout the comment….thanks for sharing.

      Reply

    2. In re Cleopatra, I happened to live in the same town where FODZ (Friend of Darryl Zanuck) Elmo Williams retired. Williams was involved in the post-production on Cleopatra when Zanuck persuaded the Twentieth Century Fox board to say goodbye to Spyros Skouras and reinstall Zanuck. Elmo (Academy Award winner for editing High Noon) said that Fox eventually broke even on Cleopatra and made some money through television sales, which continue — it was on TCM two nights ago.

      Mutiny on the Bounty may have had “notional charges” inserted into its budget, but the ship wasn’t one of them. MGM commissioned a working replica of the Bounty, which was built in Nova Scotia. According to the source cited in Wikipedia, the ship that had been re-rigged for the 1935 film was broken up in Cape Town, South Africa in 1945. The delay in building the replica for the 1960s film got things off on the wrong foot for the production, and things got complicated from there.

      “Mr. Mumbles.” Really? Dragging that old horse carcass out to flay it again? Surely some more original snideness could be thought up.

      Reply

    3. Also in re Cleopatra: Zanuck was quoted as saying the Mankiewicz phase of production cost $35 million. Zanuck subsequently did battle scene reshoots and some other pickups. The initial phase under Mamoulian supposedly cost $7 million. 35 + 2 + 7 = 44. Whoever wrote that section of the Wikipedia article claims that the Mamoulian phase was reimbursed by insurance, a claim that is news to me. Perhaps some part of it was covered, or indeed, the whole fiasco phase. If so, Fox would have been better off paying whatever else Liz’s contract called for, and just forgotten the whole thing. MGM did that with the production of the film adaptation of the Andre Malraux novel Man’s Fate, directed by Fred Zinnemann. James Aubrey shut down the production one week before filming was to start, with the cast, including David Niven, Peter Finch, and Liv Ullman, ready to go, and sets and costumes done.

      Reply

  4. Hi Bruce,
    So after 1933, we fast-forward back to the 60s 🙂 I liked the 1933 and 1934 pages but I did not have a lot to say because I have seen rather few films from these 2 years. 1962, on the other hand, is a year that includes so many movies I like that it is difficult to identify just a top few. However, I have attempted to make my personal top 10 list for the year:

    1. To Kill a Mocking Bird
    2. The Longest Day
    3. Advise and Consent
    4. The Man Who shot Liberty Valance
    5. Birdman of Alcatraz
    6. Days of Wine and Roses
    7. Dr No
    8. The Manchurian Candidate
    9. Mutiny on the Bounty
    10. Lolita

    I recognize Lawrence of Arabia is a great film, but it was never one of my favorites, though I never saw it on the big screen where it is supposedly best appreciated.

    On another note, I may be wrong but I think it can be argued that the All-Star Cast concept was launched in 1962 with The Longest Day and How the West Was Won (although technically the latter was released in 1963 in the US). While previously, there were films where many stars made cameo appearances (and others with robust casts), I think these two films took star-studded casts to a new level. All-star casts became increasingly common through the 1960s and 1970s as the studios and producers tried to find ways to deal with decreasing box office attendance.

    Reply

    1. p.s. one film that did well at the box office in 1962 that you could consider adding is The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm…unless I’m missing it.

      Reply

        1. Hey PhilHoF17
          1. Thanks for the comments to our 1962 movie page.
          2. Glad you liked our early 1930s pages….I like you….do not have much to say about many of those films……especially since I have seen so few.
          3. I have seen all of your Top 11….and I liked all of those movies….I was recently re-watching Advise and Consent when my library copy messed up and I had to stop watching it.
          4. Of the 11….I think Lolita is my least favorite of those…..granted it has lots of good stuff…like Mason, Sellers and Kubrick….but the story line is not a barrel laughs to watch.
          5. I will ignore your thoughts on Lawrence of Arabia…..lol. My dad loved that movie…and I have picked up the flag for him….granted I can see…..the long extended takes can become tiresome……but O’Toole is amazing in that movie.
          6. As for Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm…..having a real hard time finding a good source for box office….the only one I see is on Wiki….and it lists the “grosses”…..all of my Variety sources fail to even mention it a single time…..I will keep looking.
          7. Kirk Douglas in Lonely Are The Brave is amazing too….sad that movie is rarely mentioned…..added bonus is Walter Matthau in a supporting role.
          Good stuff.

          Reply

          1. Hey Bruce,
            Don’t get me wrong, I also like Lawrence of Arabia, it’s just not among my top movies. But I realize I am clearly a philistine (not a PhilHoF) on this one 😉
            Thanks for trying to find some box office information on the Brothers Grimm. Weird that Variety does not mention it. The Wiki gross of $8.9 million comes from The Numbers, but IMDB has it as $14.17 million (no clue where that comes from), so it’s probably up there somewhere, but who knows.
            Glad you also liked (1) Advise and Consent, a great political drama with wonderful cast, though sorry you could not re-watch until the end, and (2) and Lonely Are the Brave, which has very touching performance from Kirk Douglas and yes, memorable support from Walter Matthau as the gum-chewing sheriff.

          2. Hey PhilHoF17….understood about Lawrence. As for Brothers Grimm….I will have to do some deeper digging. The Numbers is not one of my favorite sources for sure…..like Mojo….they specialize in current numbers. Ah….the joys of being a classic movie box office treasure hunter….lol.

  5. Hello Bruce,
    Congratulations on another incredible research on 1962 films! You are truly making a remarkable contribution to the study of U.S. films.
    I just wanted to mention two things. The star of Merrill’s Marauders was Jeff Chandler (in his last role), not Jeffrey Hunter.
    Also, the film Barrabas with Anthony Quinn was released in Italy in 1961, but in the U.S. during October 1962. This was probably’s Quinn’s greatest year in film. He gave three superb performances in three different roles: Lawrence of Arabia, Requim for a Heavyweight (easily one of the very best boxing films of all time), and Barrabas. He definetly deserved an Academy Award nomination that year.
    Thank you once again for your groundbreaking work.

    Reply

    1. Hey Frank
      1. Thanks for the kind words about our latest page.
      2. I fixed that Jeff error…..I guess I need to do pages on them Hunter and Chandler so I will not continue to mix them up.
      3. IMDb lists Barrabas as a 1961 movie….so it is in this page…..https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/1961-top-box-office-movies/
      4. It is ranked as the 26th best movie of that year.
      5. I agree with you about Quinn having a great year in 1962….with his role in Lawrence being one of my favorite supporting roles of all-time.
      Great comment…..thanks for taking the time to share it with us.

      Reply

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