Want to know the best Dick Powell movies? How about the worst Dick Powell movies? Curious about Dick Powell box office grosses or which Dick Powell movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Dick Powell movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Dick Powell (1904-1963) was a singer, actor, producer and director. Powell’s career is pretty impressive as he successful went from a singer…..to successful supporting character (early 1930s)….to a successful leading man in comedies, dramas and thrillers (1935-1954). In the 1950s he became a successful producer and film director. His IMDB page shows 72 acting and 6 directing credits from 1932-1963. This page will rank 61 Dick Powell movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Shorts, documentaries and television performances were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part: Well…we thought this page was at the request of TCM’s Top Billed. Top Billed has been working on a weekly January blog that looks at select classic performers. Turns out we wrote down the wrong performer…as he had not requested a Dick Powell page. We blame the movie…..The King’s Vacation….I had that movie written down in my notes…..and we picked the wrong star of that movie. Well since I did all the research on Mr. Powell…we figured we should go ahead and share the information. Not sure if I can get a George Arliss page done before the end of the week.
Dick Powell 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 Dick Powell movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Dick Powell movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Dick Powell movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions) *** If worldwide and domestic totals are equal then worldwide grosses are unknown
- Sort Dick Powell 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 Dick Powell movie received.
- Sort Dick Powell movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Dick Powell Table
- Twenty-two Dick Powell movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 36.07% of his movies listed. Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Dick Powell movie grosses $90.70 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 30 Dick Powell movies are rated as good movies…or 49.18% of his movies. The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is his highest rated movie while The Conqueror (1956) is lowest rated movie.
- Thirteen Dick Powell movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 21.31% of his movies.
- Four Dick Powell movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.55% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 39.86. 37 Dick Powell movies scored higher that average….or 60.65% of his movies. Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) got the the highest UMR Score while Riding High (1943) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Dick Powell
1. Richard Ewing Powell was born in Mountain View, Arkansas in 1903.
2. In 1932, Warner Brothers signed Dick Powell to a movie contract after seeing Powell perform as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, PA.
3. Dick Powell spent most of the 1930s playing boyish crooners in many successful Warner Brothers musicals. His frustration with the never changing roles resulted in Powell buying his way of his contract in 1940.
4. Dick Powell was the first actor to play the famous fictional detective Phillip Marlowe. He played Marlowe in 1944’s Murder, My Sweet.
5. Dick Powell was never nominated for an Oscar® or a Golden Globe®….but he does have 3 stars on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.
6. Dick Powell was married 3 times and had 4 children. His second marriage was to frequent co-star Joan Blondell. His finally marriage was to actress June Allyson.
7. Dick Powell’s daughter, Ellen Powell, has 22 IMDb credits in the makeup department. She worked on 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and 2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. His son, Dick Powell Jr., played his father in 1975’s The Day of the Locust.
8. Dick Powell’s adjusted career domestic box total is $5.53 billion.
9. Dick Powell is one of many members of the cast and crew of 1956’s Conqueror that eventually died of a type of cancer. The Conqueror is sometimes called “An RKO Radioactive Picture.” It was filmed near a nuclear test site, and the set was contaminated by nuclear fallout. After location shooting, contaminated soil was transported back to Hollywood in order to match interior shooting done there. Over the next 20 years, many actors (John Wayne) and crew members developed cancer.
10. Check out Dick Powell‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
I love dick powell movies. He was good in every one.
Well, I was able to get to one of your regular pages, which is great. But your home page is confusing. It is bookmarked. Maybe I will try to bypass it until it is fixed.
Hey Flora….currently the entire website is having some issues. My website provider is trying to figure out what is going on. Their quick answer is …..go to the next level (more money) of service. Funny…this happened last March….right when our yearly agreement was coming to an end. Last night the entire website was down for about 90 minutes. Now it seems to be mostly working…currently only the home page and posts that are messed up. Been up all night trying to get this fixed. Sorry for the issues.
I meant to update my total of Dick Powell films I have seen since he was TCM’s Star of the Month in December. I have now seen 40 Dick Powell movies.