Want to know the best Donna Reed movies? How about the worst Donna Reed movies? Curious about Donna Reed box office grosses or which Donna Reed movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Donna Reed movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Donna Reed (1921-1986) was an Oscar®-winning American actress who appeared in many box office successes from 1941 to 1960. Her IMDb page shows 51 acting credits from 1941-1985. This page will rank 39 Donna Reed movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Reed’s 8 television roles, her two uncredited roles and her short were not included in these rankings. This page comes from a request by John and Lupino.
Donna Reed Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Donna Reed 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 Donna Reed movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Donna Reed movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Donna Reed movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Donna Reed movies by 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 Donna Reed movie received.
- Sort Donna Reed movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (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 Donna Reed Table
- Eighteen Donna Reed movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 46.15% of her movies listed. From Here To Eternity (1953) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Donna Reed movie grosses $109.80 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 21 Donna Reed movies are rated as good movies…or 53.84% of her movies. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) was her highest rated movie while The Far Horizons (1955) was her lowest rated movie.
- Eight Donna Reed movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 20.51% of her movies.
- Four Donna Reed movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 10.26% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 22 Donna Reed movies scored higher than that average….or 56.41% of her movies. From Here To Eternity (1953) got the the highest UMR Score while Mokey (1942) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Donna Reed
1. Donna Belle Mullenger was born on a farm near Denison, Iowa in 1921.
2. She was first billed as Donna Adams and then MGM finally decided on Donna Reed. MGM changed her name as there was anti-German prejudice during World War II.
3. While at Los Angeles City College, Donna Reed appeared in several college stage productions. At one of those stage plays Reed was spotted by an MGM talent scout and was signed to a contract.
4. Donna Reed appeared in 12 $100 million adjusted box office hits during the 1940s and 5 $100 million adjusted box office hits in the 1950s.
5. Donna Reed was nominated for one Oscar®….but she made it count….as she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for 1953’s From Here To Eternity.
6. Donna Reed was married three times and had 4 children.
7. After Donna Reed’s movie career slowed down she became an evener bigger star on television. The Donna Reed Show ran from 1958 to 1966….she appeared in 275 episodes of that show.
8. Check out Donna Reed‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Not enough stats for you?….Then check out 17 Donna Reed worldwide adjusted grosses
- Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942) $53.80 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942) $200.80 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Dr. Gillespie’s Criminal Case (1943) $62.10 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Eyes in the Night (1942) $81.60 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Faithful In My Fashion (1946) $40.60 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Green Dolphin Street (1947) $442.00 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Human Comedy, The (1943) $306.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Last Time I Saw Paris, The (1954) $259.00 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Man From Down Under, The (1943) $85.60 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Mokey (1942) $22.90 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Pepe (1960) $221.60 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Picture of Dorian Gray, The (1945) $205.40 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Ransom! (1956) $92.70 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) $224.10 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- They Were Expendable (1945) $305.40 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Thousands Cheer (1943) $472.20 million in adjusted worldwide box office
- Trouble Along the Way (1953) $129.30 million in adjusted worldwide box office
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For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
In what movie did Donna Reed dance with Fred Astaire?
HI STEVE: Thanks for the reply and the link. It is nice to see the stars enjoying companionship and fun instead of quarelling with each other about billing [which Peter Lorre said both annoyed and bored him and which he castigated as “childish” – Old Cantankerous and Steve McQueen take note!]
Beyond Mombassa was one of those programmers that were just routine but nevertheless enjoyable to the young 15 year old Bob who wasn’t too hard to please in those days.
I vividly rembember going to see it because in 1956 the cinema showing it was not on a convenient bus route so I had to walk for a hour to get to the theatre and of course for an hour back home; trips that I thought were worthwile as I liked Cornel Wilde at the time – and I’d already see Beyond Mombassa on its Belfast Cetral run!!
Just like it maybe is with you today I must have liked virtually every action hero around in the 1950s – with the exception of possibly Errol Flynn who was a bit too flamboyant and tongue in cheek for my taste as I took my screen heroes as deadly-seriously as WH today seems to take Hirsch’s pontifications.
You will hear from the latter in my next post to you – so be warned!
Hi Bob, thanks for the anecdotes, I wish I had your memory.
Remember even if I don’t have time to reply to your posts. I use the thumbs up sign to let you know they have have been read and enjoyed. Cheers.
HI STEVE
Yes – I have been aware for some time now of your “thumps up” acknowledgments of my posts to you which do not always necessitate a reply from you.
You have WITHOUT fail over the years always responded to my initial comments on your videos and given that you do not have as much time at your disposal as I that’s an excellent record for you to achieve.
As you say my memory is quite good [for things that I am interested in!] and I can remember all the ones addressed to him that WH didn’t acknowledge and as the saying goes “I know where he lives!” -somewhere in Virginia !!!!
Hi Bob, thanks for re-reviewing my Donna Reed video, the generous rating (ooee), info, trivia and quotes are very much appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
My ratings have been updated a bunch of times since that video was published, but the top 3 should remain the same – They Were Expendable, From Here to Eternity and It’s a Wonderful Life. They each received 10 out of 10 from my sources,
There are two scoring 9 – The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Human Comedy. And two scoring 8 – Scandal Sheet and Shadow of the Thin Man.
It’s a Wonderful Life is tops at IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Bruce’s chart.
I thought you might like this still of Donna Reed playfully tugging at Christopher Lee’s beard, they both appeared in the film Beyond Mombasa, with Leo Genn.
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/181956london-england-actress-donna-reed-playfully-tweaks-the-beard-picture-id514703374
TOP 10 POSTER SETS
1/The Getaway
2/foreign language AND raunchy one for The Whole Truth
3/Eyes in the Night
4/Foreign language one for Gun Fury
5/first one for Chicago Deadline – Vintage Ladd!
6/Hangman’s Knot-Randy in full cry!
7/The Caddy-the heyday of Martin & Lewis – that one takes me back
8/The Last Time I saw Manchester
9/Beyond Glory – Ladd again!
10/-tied: foreign language ones for From Here to Eternity/Green Dolphin Street
STILLS/LOBBY CARDS: Just 8 were included I think and I’ve listed them all as most were fascinating to me.
1/Beyond Glory
2/Dorian Gray – truly luscious!
3/Backlash – iconic 1950s Widmark stuff
4/The Far Horizons – Chuck on the way up the star ladder
5/The Duke and Donna in They were Expendable
6/Monty and Donna
7/my Jimmy & Donna
8/closing solo showing how lovely Donna was in her heyday. Sorry Sly & Sorry Arnie: generally NOTHING beats youth for physical qualities; not even so called “aged charmers” like Al Leach
An interesting revelation that your ‘re-issue’ brings out is that in my earlier ‘review’ I awarded the overall video a much lower [though still excellent] figure than if I recall correctly I have given any of your recent ones. That suggests that either (1) your selections and/or presentation of same have improved over the years or/and (2) I personally have now developed a greater appreciation of posters/stills artwork.
Indeed encouraged by your videos I do find myself these days paying more attention to the finer details of posters generally than I used to and possibly I may have developed a keener eye for merits; so it may be that I owe you a debt of gratitude for my gaining a learning curve in the matter.
Anyway these were my conclusions when I first watched you Reed video: “You and Bruce agree on ALL of the Top 5, albeit in a different order, and I thought overall the video was worth a 94% rating.” That was written in June 2017 when there was no virus about and all you and I had to get steamed up about was Brexit -remember IT! Some things never change though because here is part of what you said to me in your response: “Oh look there’s the chief… no wait, false alarm. I think Bruce’s interest in the site is waning Bob, sad sad sad, I wonder if he even reads our comments anymore”.
It would seem therefore that The Work Horse has been mounting a personal challenge to one of my own favorite literary quotes ie “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there” from L P Hartley’s 1953 classic novel.