Want to know the best Charlton Heston movies? How about the worst Charlton Heston movies? Curious about Charlton Heston’s box office grosses or which Charlton Heston movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Charlton Heston movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Charlton Heston (October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) is known for his heroic roles in films such as 1961’s El Cid, 1956’s The Ten Commandments, 1968’s Planet of the Apes and 1959’s Ben-Hur, for which he won the Oscar® for Best Actor. At one point, Heston had starred in three of the top eight movies of all-time. Those movies were Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and The Greatest Show on Earth. Heston remained a leading man from 1950 until the early 1980s. After that he started appearing in supporting roles in such movies as True Lies, Any Given Sunday and Tombstone.
His IMDb page shows 131 acting credits from 1941-2010. This page will rank Charlton Heston movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
Charlton Heston Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Charlton Heston 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 Charlton Heston movies by his co-stars
- Sort Charlton Heston movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Charlton Heston movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Charlton Heston 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 Charlton Heston movie received.
- Sort Charlton Heston 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.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Charlton Heston
1. Charlton Heston was born John Charles Carter….Charlton’s name comes from his mom’s maiden name, Charlton, and his stepfather’s last name, Heston.
2. Charlton Heston turned down the role of “Police Chief Brody” in Jaws. Other movies he turned down over the years….John Wayne’s The Alamo, A Man For All Seasons, The Wild Bunch, The Omen, Deliverance and Stalag 17
3. Charlton Heston only received one Oscar® nomination in his acting career but he made it count as won the Oscar® for Ben-Hur…..luckily Burt Lancaster turned down the role.
4. Charlton Heston had two parts in The Ten Commandments……Moses and he provided the voice of God……years later he was hired by the F.B.I during the April 1993 Waco stand-off with cult leader David Koresh, to play the voice of God while communicating with him. However the plan was never used.
5. Charlton Heston played President Andrew Jackson twice in two separate unrelated films: The President’s Lady in 1953 and The Buccaneer in 1958.
6. Charlton Heston was also known for his political activism. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. He was also president of the NRA from 1998 to 2003.
7. Charlton Heston was married to Lydia Clarke from 1944 until his death in 2008…they had two children.
8. In his 1985 autobiography “In The Arena” Charlton Heston wrote that 1972’s The Call of the Wild was easily his worst film, and hoped the public would never have to watch the film.
9. His line “Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” from Planet of the Apes, is ranked by the American Film Institute as the 66th best movie quote of all-time.
10. Two links from SteveLensman are highly recommended. One is all about Ben-Hur and the other about all Charlton Heston movies. Charlton Heston Movies
Steve’s Charlton Heston You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Hey guys call me ignorant but I’m not up on this Quigley thing and how important it is in the grand scheme of things. Chuck ‘damn you all to hell!” Heston was very popular in his time, that started to fade by the mid 70s. I think Earthquake was his last big hit.
In the 70s he went from Mr. Epic to Mr. Disaster Movie. Old Chuck was also a sci-fi icon thanks mostly to his role as Taylor in the hugely popular Planet of the Apes, plus The Omega Man and Soylent Green, both cult classics.
I’m a big fan but there are a bunch of films here I still haven’t seen including Secret of the Incas, which is supposed to have been an inspiration for Indiana Jones, according to some sources. So I’m curious to see that next time it’s on TV.
Hey Bob I’m almost sure I heard Bruce mention he turns the subtitles on every time he watches a Brando movie. [wink] 😉
1 Quigley was an annual poll of the supposedly biggest box office stars in the US. I don’t know how many ranking places there were in the poll but there was at least 25 though normally only the Top 10 used to be published. It was a highly subjective poll as the cinema owners got to pick the stars listed in it and as Bruce says they selected stars on the basis of who they thought was generally popular and did not strictly take account of box office performance in any one year. For example George Clooney was named in the Top 10 about 9 times whereas Willis was was considered Top 10 material only once which is farcical in my view as Bruce’s grosses by far exceeded those of Gorgeous George.
2 ‘Snobbery’ could have kept Willis out of the Top 10 as he was not considered a ‘great actor’ but in my view his box office grosses compensated for that and anyway there was no such excuse in the case of Heston who was an Oscar winner and at least in his heyday was never known to give a bad performance. In his reply to John our own Top 10 Guy summarises well Chuck’s appearances but they were all outside the Top 10 and as John says it is a great mystery why even within its arbitrary criteria Quigley did not give Chuck at least a few Top 10 runs in the light of his acting abilities, the millions his epics were earning, his towering personality and his general popularity.
3 Beside all that Chuck was a great friend of Marlon and to paraphrase WC Fields “A man who likes Brando can’t be all bad!”
Bob, thanks for the info on Quigley, much appreciated. Willis was very popular during the 90s peaking with The Sixth Sense in 1999, his star started to fade during the 2000s with only the Die Hard series propping him up.
George Clooney had a big hit with Ocean’s Eleven, less so with the sequels but he was part of a team of actors which included Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts. His biggest hit recently was Gravity and the star of that movie was Sandra Bullock. So yes Clooney might be the better actor but Willis was a box office draw (with the right film). Both actors have bags of charisma and that’s just as important as box office muscle and acting ability.
🙂
Hey Bob …I could not have written it better myself.
1 I have just posted my personal selection of the 21 Greatest male stars of all time and I meant to say that I feel that Charlton Heston is the most under-appreciated actor on my list. He and Burt Lancaster churned out hit after hit in their heyday but were barely recognised by Quigley and although when ‘experts’ mention Heston in interviews it is clear that they found him awe-inspiring he never appears on anybody’s list of ‘Greats’. Bruce’s ready reckoner above shows Chuck’s movies amassing nearly 8 billion in domestic grosses which puts him among the ‘big boys’ and yet I can not currently find Heston on Bruce’s list of the 100 Greatest Stars.
2 What Burt and Chuck had in common was their unselfish crusade for civil rights. In terms of stardom there is not much in it but I gave Chuck the edge and put him in my Top 21 because from 1956 Ten Commandments until probably Earthquake in 1974 he was the cornerstone of Hollywood’s epics programme which brought in so much money. Anthony Mann who directed Heston in El Cid said it best in explaining how Chuck and epics suited one and other when Mann told a press conference that Heston was “a big man” and therefore had to be surrounded in movies by big things. He went on to say that Sophia Loren had been chosen as Chuck’s El Cid co star because she was tall and any smaller woman would simply have been dwarfed on screen by Heston.
Hey Bob….your comment is making Steve very happy….and John too (read his comment under yours). You make a good point….Heston’s box office success makes the Quigley Top Stars list look wrong…and very wrong at that.
Yep I did not include Heston….half of my list was the AFI list..so I am only responsible for half of my picks…plus if I could not get Willis on the page…no way would I get Steve’s Heston on the page…lol.
I agree with you 100% about Chuck, epics and his long running stand at the top of the Hollywood mountain. Good comment…that I enjoyed reading.
BRUCE/MISCELLANEOUS
1 Am looking forward to your own calculations of Doris Day’s worldwide [WW] grosses based on the Warners ledgers as not only is Doris my fave actress after Deanna but in the first decade of her career she made loads of movies under her Warners contract and as the raw material indicates there are rich WW pickings from those movies. She also made a few flicks for MGM and you can often get us WW stats for MGM movies, and indeed have already done that on the Cagney page for Doris’ Love Me or Leave Me.
2 In the meanwhile please stop criticising Monty and Dino for mumbling in The Young Lions – do you not realise that one of those guys had just been thru an accident and that the other was reportedly drunk half the time so that he regularly slurred his words.
3 I agree with your comments about Quigley especially as it has virtually ignored Bruce Willis – see below – and yet in one of its last publications gave a high placing to Brad Pitt who that year released just one movie which was flop grossing around 35 mil domestically.
3 STEVE. As you know W o C introduced this site to the Curse of 39 for actresses and now her husband has given us the Curse of Willis. Every time I query why an actor/actress is not on one of his lists he stonewalls me with “If Bruce Willis is not on it there’s no way [so and so] is gonna be included.” and you will see from the exchanges above that poor Chuck has now been inflicted with the Curse of Willis. I have no power to influence Our Leader as like Pharaoh in Chuck’s 10 Commandments every time I make representations the Oracle simply ‘hardens his heart and will not be moved’ – look at the shameless way he continues to ignore Supe V ! But YOU do have a remedy in that you could do a Willis video and mark every movie below say 5.
4 Seriously though I HAD already seen John’s excellent post on this site and not only do I wholeheartedly agree with him about Chuck but I think that Willis too has been unfairly neglected by the list compilers over the years and when I look at in particular the monstrous WW grosses of Willis I find his exclusion as big a mystery as Sophia Loren’s inclusion as an AFI Legend. So instead of marches for Hilary for President or Donald for the White House can we not get protests going in support of a Willis/Heston Ticket for Lists?
Hey Bob…..a very funny comment. Doris is done and will be the post for October 14th. The Curse of Willis does not have the statistical backing that The Curse of 39 does. Glad you saw John’s comment. Thinking about Heston makes me wonder how I did not include him. As always thanks for the visit.
Bob
I think Midway in 1976 was also a top ten box office movie, so Heston’s run was from ;1952 to 1976.
“He and Burt Lancaster churned out hit after hit.”
Yes.
“What Burt and Chuck had in common was their unselfish crusade for civil rights.”
Yes. And this is a theory and not a conclusion. Could this be the cause of their not doing well in the Quigley polls? Was there a backlash from Southern theatre owners? Frank Sinatra is another who seems underrated in those Quigley polls. Also Brando. All were vocal supporters of civil rights. There seems to be no doubt that Sinatra’s outspoken advocacy of desegregation and fair treatment of African-American performers was at least a contributing cause to his career decline in the early fifties. I remember Milton Berle commenting that some of the other stars like himself and Jackie Gleason got behind Sinatra in the face of pressure to not book him on their shows.
JOHN/STEVE
1 I had forgotten about Midway and am grateful for the reminder and Chuck’s blockbuster run is now extended to 1976 !- but will our being reminded of that blockbuster be enough to at last get Chuck into the Oracle’s Top 100 Greatest Stars?
2 I too have long made in my own mind the POTENTIAL connection between Chuck and Burt’s negligence by Quigley and the Civil Rights crusades. Indeed a film historian published a book some 25 years ago in which he claimed that in certain States there was what he called a “hidden boycott” of Brando films in the 1960s which further depressed the box office earnings of his admittedly partially below par run of movies in that decade, though I at least am grateful to Bruce for demonstrating that those films overall whilst by no means rip roaring successes were not flops of the magnitude that some journalists have since made out. What appeals to me about the Cogerson site is that it doesn’t take sides and there is no bias against any artist one way or the other, each being judged strictly on his/her career merits
3 Other “unselfish” acts that we might mention in passing were King Gable’s internal crusade for unsegregated washrooms on the MGM lot and Sinatra’s efforts to get work for blacklisted artists***; and it is also worth noting that Bing seems to have had a multi-culture ethos as his widow said in an interview that he was a great devotee and supporter of Louis Armstrong
***One was apparently Abraham Polonsky who directed Garfield’s Force of Evil in 1948 and Redford’s Tell Them Willie Boy is Here in 1969.
4 It is a great coincidence that we have been engaged in exchanges about Chuck because a short time ago my grandson and I just finished watching Ridley Scott’s Exodus Gods and Kings which is a remake of The Ten Commandments – at least three quarters of it because the Scott version ended soon after the crossing of the Red Sea. Ridley had the advantage of great special effects not available to De Mille back in 1956 and Christian Bale was good as Moses, but for me he lacked Heston’s regal Biblical presence. Ridley dedicated the movie to his late brother Tony.
Best wishes BOB
Hey John….I actually saw Midway at the theater…I could not believe when Heston did not make it back. Midway was Heston’s final hurrah as a leading man….after that his big hits he was in a supporting role. Another Good comment. Your last Heston comment got some people motivated to talk about Chuck.
I am going to put on a long-winded post. What my point is might be unclear until the end. I am going to compare top box-office performances of John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. For Wayne & Heston I found the top five finishes, and top ten finishes, and #1 grossers of the year from Cogerson. With Gable, I had to use the Wikipedia year by year top ten lists. — So here is what I come up with:
John Wayne
Number one grosser of the year–#1 (How the West was Won)
1-5 (#5)
6-10 (#9)
Total top ten (#14)
Average gross—129.45 million
had top ten grosser from 1942 to 1971
Clark Gable
Number one grosser of the year–#3 (Mutiny on the Bounty, San Francisco, Gone with the Wind)
1-5 (#9)
6-10 (#8)
total top ten (#17)
average gross–166.40 million
had top ten grosser from 1931 to 1955
Charlton Heston
#1 grosser of the year–#3 (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur)
1-5 (#7)
6-10 (#2)
total top ten (#9)
average gross–127.50 million
had top ten grosser from 1952 to 1976
So my point, or I guess a question. Wayne made the top 10 of the Quigley poll 25 times. Gable 16 times. Wayne was #1 four times. Gable never (but I think probably because in the thirties and forties the theatre owners were concerned with the “moral” image of Hollywood and Gable had been twice divorced).
So to my point. Heston NEVER made the top ten in the Quigley polls, despite having seven top five movies, three top grossers of the year, including the two top grossers of the fifties (The Ten Commandments & Ben Hur). Why? Morality can’t explain it. Heston was married to the same woman his whole life and I can’t recall any scandals. He did become politically controversial but this would have been at the earliest in the sixties. Heston might not match Wayne, but he is competitive, so 25 to 0?
Anyway, any guess as to why the Quigley polls so underrate Heston? And why didn’t he make the top 25 AFI legends? TCM even had a top 50 actors of the classic era book, and Heston didn’t even make that list.
Anyway, a Heston fan just venting. But thanks Cogerson for putting Heston in proper box-office perspective.
Hey John…..great comment.
1. Good stats on John Wayne, Clark Gable and Charlton Heston.
2. More on Quigley in a moment….as for Wayne and Gable….as you point out they pretty much had a box office hit ever year they made movies…so it was easy for Quigley to list them.
3. In the past I have done some games where I tried to get the Quigley list to match actual grosses….I learned a few things (1) Quigley made their lists with some vague and unknown rules (2) Trying to figure out the deadline for when they cut off their voting makes it hard to get a good number. (3) Movie theater owners were the ones that Quigley used to get their Top 10s and Top 25…..their lists were very very subjective. I imagine every year John Wayne’s name went on the list without even thinking about which movies played that year.
4. So in the end….I have treated Quigley as a fun list to look at…..but not a very accurate portrayal of the Top 10 box office stars of the year. I do not even think they do them anymore….or at least I have not seen a new list in 2 or 3 years.
5. Which gets us to Heston. I agree with you 100%. His 3 epic movies of the 1950s: Greatest Show on Earth, Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur…..probably made him a Top 5 star for the entire DECADE. How Quigley did not list him in the Top 10 makes no sense.
6. When looking at the Top 25 Quigley list….Heston does appear. His first appearance was in 1953 when he came in 23rd…..then in 1960 (when Ben-Hur was breaking the box office) he got all the way up 16th. He dropped to 18th in 1961….then got as close to the Top 10 as he would in 1962 when he reached 12th….his final appearance was in 1963 when he fell to 23rd.
I like Heston too….not as much as you and Steve Lensman…..lol. But he was epic when it comes to box office…on my massive table…Heston is ranked 13th of all the actors I have done pages on…..and not thinking anybody is going to pass him as I update the pages.
Nice comment….got me thinking…..I greatly appreciate it.
Charlton Heston appeared with 58 other Oscar winners that I could come up with:
55 Days at Peking (1963) – David Niven, Paul Lukas
Airport 1975 (1974) – George Kennedy
All About People (1967) – Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, George Burns
Any Given Sunday (1999) – Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx
Arrowhead (1953) – Jack Palance, Katy Jurado
Beneath the Planet of The Apes (1970) – Kim Hunter
Ben Hur (1959) – Hugh Griffith
Call from Space (1989) – James Coburn
Cats & Dogs (2001) – Susan Sarandon
Counterpoint (1968) – Maximilian Schell
Crossed Swords (1977) – Ernest Borgnine, George C. Scott, Rex Harrison
Dark City (1950) – Dean Jagger
Earthquake (1974) – George Kennedy, Walter Matthau
El Cid (1961) – Sophia Loren
Gideon (1999) – Shelley Winters, Shirley Jones
Hamlet (1996) – Robin Williams, Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, John Gielgud, Julie Christie, Jack Lemmon, John Mills
Julius Caesar (1970) – Jason Robards, John Gielgud
Khartoum (1966) – Laurence Olivier
Lucy Gallant (1955) – Claire Trevor, Jane Wyman
Major Dundee (1965) – James Coburn, Ben Johnson
Midway (1976) – James Coburn, Cliff Robertson, Henry Fonda
Mother Lode (1982) – Kim Basinger
Planet of the Apes (1968) – Kim Hunter
Ruby Gentry (1952) – Karl Malden, Jennifer Jones
Solar Crisis (1990) – Jack Palance
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) – Rex Harrison
The Big Country (1958) – Gregory Peck, Burl Ives
The Buccaneer (1958) – Yul Brynner
The Far Horizons (1955) – Donna Reed
The Four Musketeers (1974) – Faye Dunaway
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – James Stewart, Edmond O’Brien, Bing Crosby, Gloria Grahame
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – Martin Landau, Shelley Winters, Jose Ferrer, John Wayne, Sidney Poitier, Van Heflin
The Last Hard Men (1976) – James Coburn
The President’s Lady (1953) – Susan Hayward
The Ten Commandments (1956) – Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter
The Three Musketeers (1973) – Faye Dunaway
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) – Gary Cooper
Three Lives (1953) – John Wayne, Jane Wyman
Three Violent People (1956) – Anne Baxter
Town & Country (2001) – Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn
Two Minute Warning (1976) – Martin Balsam
Wayne’s World 2 (1993) – Kim Basinger
Will Penny (1968) – Ben Johnson
Wow…Chuck is the second best total yet….that will make Steve Lensman happy. When Arnold S. finally wins his Oscar his tally will go up to almost 60. Good stuff….I will make sure Steve see this comment….and double make sure he is trailing Sir Michael….lol.
BRUCE:
1 This is the downside for you of building up a ‘faithful following’ !.I Have been glued to your pages for 5 years now, so naturally I am able to pick up things that I probably would not if I was just a new reader.
2 You cover so many stars and different aspects of movies that I find your consistency astonishing in that there are very few errors of even detail. I hope that you won’t mind therefore if I raise a couple of trifling matters:
(1) I notice that at item 40 of your 100 Greatest Westerns page you have listed the stars of
The Far Country as Charlton Heston and James Stewart. Chuck wasn’t in that movie but (as you have duly noted in your Charlton Heston/Fred MacMurray pages) he was in The Far HORIZONS.which I think was released the same year.
(2) When you ever get the time perhaps you could let me know the actual gross on which your Sayonara (1957) inflated gross was based as I find the latter slightly puzzling.
Many thanks
BOB ROY
Hey Robert Roy.
1. Glad to have you along for the ride these last 5 years.
2. I appreciate the headsup on the errors.
3. When I was updating this Heston page I noticed that I had The Far Country in his movies….I deleted it from his section in our database…..but I must have included it when I was doing the Western page….I will fix that as soon as I send this comment.
4. Ok….let’s see what I have for Sayonara….Variety January 7th 1958 lists Sayonara as the 3rd biggest hit of the year with rentals of $10.00 million. Variety May 4th 1983 gives Sayonara credit for $10.50 million….and Variety February 24th also lists Sayonara at $10.50 million and says it is the 21st biggest hit of the 1950s.
5. In our database we have Sayonara listed at Rentals of 10.50 million for an actual domestic gross of $23.14 million…with ticket sells of 41.3 million….which translates to $348.60 million.
6. Are you thinking the gross is too high or too low?
1 As we’ve discussed before there are sometimes considerable variations in grosses among the different sources. Box Office Mojo and the Numbers can often part company to a marked. degree in that respect.
2 So when I see conflicting figures I have got into the habit of checking YOUR grosses (them being the most consistent and reliable that I know of) and where I can applying them pro-rata to the other figures and seeing where that takes me. Box Office Story and The Numbers both accord Sayonara a 26.3m gross (and I have seen that figure quoted elsewhere as well). A pro-rata adjustment of the Cogerson figure on the basis of 26.3 gives Sayonara a total gross of 396.2. However probably the other sources are overstating the gross.
Hey Robert Roy.
1. The way I look at at….Box Office Mojo is the king of great information from 1982 to today. The Numbers is hit and miss….sometimes they have a rental number for one movie…and yet somehow Google gives them a better page ranking than this website. I think for domestic gross before 1980 this is the best website out there….granted I am biased….with Box Office Story being the best source for international box office.
2. We are constantly looking for better information….it seems like at some point we had Sayonara higher in box office… think it was probably somewhere between my lower number and their higher number….either way it was a monster hit for James Garner and Red Buttons…..and that other guy…lol.
3. I recently discovered some good information on 4 Henry Fonda movies from the mid 1930s….and even though I just updated that page a week or so ago…I am about to update it again.
4. Sadly no matter how much research is done….everybody’s box office number is everybody’s educated guess…..you just have to figure out who is the best guesser….lol.
Bruce:
1 For older films The Numbers and Mojo are useless. The Numbers is woefully lacking in comprehensiveness (sometimes listing only for example 4 or so entries for a great classic era star who made 50 or more films) and of course it has no interest in inflation. Mojo concentrates mainly on the post 1979 era.
2 From my perception since you pay equal attention to films of ALL decades your task is much more difficult than Mojo’s for two main reasons:
(1) There is more information available about the grosses of post 1979 films than
there was historically about those of the classic era.
(2) In the past rentals were the key unit of comparison. Variety’s list of ‘Box Office Champs’ used to be the great preoccupation of the film industry.
3 Of course the gross illustrates the value of a star to the film market as a whole, whereas the rental shows just a star’s earning for his studio.
4 A few months ago I did a for fun personal amateur assessment involving about 60 classic era stars that showed what their rentals earned for their studios in today’s dollars. Because as you have pointed out the rental/gross ratio varies from year to year (and often from film to film) and because some stars had their hit films in years when the rental proportion of the gross was at its highest, those stars actually earned more for their studios than did other stars who OVERALL out-grossed them.
5 It surprised me how dramatically the pecking order of stars in some cases changed when rentals were the unit of comparison instead of grosses. However in relation to grosses one would have to defer by a long chalk to you as you seem to have marvellous research and conversion facilities at your finger tips.
Hey Robert Roy
1. I agree with you about Mojo and The Numbers….when I get stuck….and I am desperate for box office information on classic subjects…I will go to the Numbers….NOT once have they been able to help me out….lol.
2. I am not sure it is more difficult….but I think I have a better variety than Mojo….you go there and you might think James Cagney was a supporting actor that appeared in one movie (Ragtime)…and have no idea of his massive movie career.
3. The rental number used to confuse the heck out of me when I was younger….back then I would pull for a movie to reach $4 million so it would show up on the Variety Box Office Champs page at the end of the year. Many times I knew a movie grossed $6 or $7 million….yet was absent on the end of the year list. I remember actually getting mad when From The Hip (Ok…I was a huge Judd Nelson fan) did not make the list.
4. I like your “fun personal amatuer assessment” projects….I do the same thing….come to think about that describes this webpage….lol.
5. It would be interesting to see the results of that project.
My wife is getting her masters degree from William and Mary….she needed a subject that had lots of numbers for a project. I suggested she do something with age and box office success. She ran some numbers and I found them very interesting…actually it was an idea for a page…..that we never did….but we found that 39 was the fall off the cliff age for women….by % only one women….did better after 39….not Hepburn, not Streep, not Roberts, not Dunne, not Loy….only Sandra Bullock did better after turning 39…..but since then her movies Minions (box office smash but horrible reviews) and Our Brand Is Crisis are even pulling her down. Meanwhile we looked at men….and their fall of the cliff age was in the high 50s…..meaning actors get an extra 20 years for being a movie star compared to actresses. Anyway when you mentioned your 1960 project…I thought of that project.
BRUCE:
You said you were curious about my amateur rentals project. Please see random examples below and note the following caveats:
(1) I wanted to see the stars actual rentals related to today’s estimated purchasing power; so the inflation calculator of the Bureau Of Labour Statistics was used.
(2) I limited the number of movies for each star to up to the highest earning 30 or so. Therefore only about one third of the Duke’s films were included whereas Brando’s 30 is almost all that there is for him of note.
(3) As a rule of thumb ticket inflation calculations heavily favour the classic era stars. Ty Power’s figure would broadly double if ticket inflation calculations were applied to his rentals.
STAR NO OF FILMS $ BN
Tom Cruise 30 2.45
Clint Eastwood 30 2.20
Marlon Brando 30 1.83
John Wayne 30 1.68
Gregory Peck 30 1.49
Barbara Streisand 19 1.37
Elizabeth Taylor 32 1.33
Jane Fonda 32 1.33
Cary Grant 30 1.20
Steve McQueen 25 1.16
Judy Garland 31 1.05
Bob Hope 32 1.00
Deborah Kerr 28 1.00
Tyrone Power 28 1.00
Lana Turner 28 0.91
Doris Day 27 0.80
Bette Grable 27 0.79
Marilyn Monroe 22 0.60
Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis 16 0.49
Jane Russell 16 0.40
James Dean 3 0.20
Hey Robert Roy…..Very cool….thanks for sharing your research. My observations.
1. Tom Cruise is a beast! Seems nobody will glad to be a Cruise fan….yet year after year….decade after decade…..the man continues to make box office hit after box office hit.
2. Marlon Brando’s numbers are even more impressive…since his movies count his many flops of the 1960s…while Wayne’s numbers only have 30 successful movies.
3. Not surprised Streisand is so high….in doing these pages…..5 people have surprised me with their box office success……Babs, Dean Martin, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor and Judy Garland.
4. Wow…I have a page on everybody here except for Jane Russell.
5. Surprised Doris Day is not higher….all those high Quigley ratings do not seem to have helped here.
6. Interesting numbers…..biggest surprise barely making the Top 10.
7. Where was Gable and Ford?…..currently they are both in our Top 5 All-Time Box Office Leaders
Fun stats….greatly appreciate you sharing the information.
BRUCE:
1 Truly sorry if I misled you but the list I sent you wasn’t definitive. I extracted examples from various levels of my overall list to give you the broadest flavour. For example Stewart, Tracy and Cooper all came in around the one billion mark and Chuck was neck and neck with Brando.
2 Even then, remember I restricted every survey to around 30 movies and each of the first 4 actors in the above paragraph made many more than that. So at best my overall list of nearly 70 stars is a stars box office pecking order in relation to just inflation adjusted rentals for 30 or so of their highest earning movies.
3 Gone with the Wind [ GWTW ] has had so many re-releases that I personally have never been able to get comprehensive information about the film’s earnings. Yet it is obviously a big part of the Gable equation. Do you have any GWTW rentals that you can pass on? I’d love to do a 30 item Gable page using the Inflation Calculator for the Consumer Price Index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics [which I call the CPI method.]
4 I like Harrison and he has had a great run of stand-alone successes; but the early Star Wars movies are an important part of the his box office equation and in my view they are not really full ‘Harrison Ford’ movies but rather are more ensemble/George Lucas movies He deserves credit for his contribution to them, but I consider it a misnomer to put him quite up there with the Duke and the King .
5 Marlon’s situation is swings and roundabouts. His 50s film earnings are badly hit
because they were in years of relatively modest rentals and limiting purchasing power calculations under CPI; his 60s films were largely flops; though you have accorded some of them quite reasonable grosses in my opinion; and his 70s blockbusters were in years of high rentals and strong purchasing power. The example below illustrates the contrasts.
6 All Babs’ hits were in years of high rentals and/or strong CPI purchasing power. That’s why she gets those awesome averages upon which you previously complimented her.
7 Doris retired from films rather prematurely in 1968 so that most of her films were in years of relatively modest rentals and reduced CPI impact. The savaging of Sayonara’s rental in the example below shows how CPI affects the inflation adjusted earnings of stars like Doris and Ty.
8 Conversely look at how well the Duke, Liz and Greg do under CPI despite being limited to just 30 of their films and the larger part of their box office careers being pre-1968.
9 Anyway it’s all great fun as well as being highly educational. I hope Mrs C enjoyed her project as much as I enjoyed mine.
EXAMPLE
SAYONARA (1957) 10.5 actual rental used by both Bruce and Bob
2016 Ticket Inflation adjustment of rental: 159.3m
2016 CPI adjustment of rental: 89.4m
1970s BRANDO HITS
(a) = Actual Domestic Rental (b) = Actual CPI adjusted Rental
1972 GODPOP [as Variety called it at the time] (a) 86.7 (b) 498.29
1978 SUPERMAN (a) 82.8 (b) 305.8
1979 APOCALYPSE NOW (a) 37.98 (b) 125.68
1973 LAST TANGO IN PARIS (a) 17.80 (b) 96.31
Grand total of CPI adjusted domestic rentals 1.025 $Billion
The worldwide overall CPI adjusted rentals figure for just these 4 movies is 1.945 $Billion Most big hits from about 1968 onward will probably have enjoyed similar scales of rental returns: “We out-grossed Old Hollywood.” – George Lucas.
SOURCES:
International Movie Database (IMDB) for all 4 domestic rentals
IMDB and Newsweek (US) for the worldwide rentals.
Hey Robert Roy.
1. Got it….thanks for the additional stats.
2. 70 is a pretty impressive number for a movie study.
3. If you look down at the bottom of this Olivia de Havilland page….you will find a break down of all the Gone With The Wind releases….seems I have that table somewhere else on the website….but I can not remember where….anyway….Olivia was the 3rd or 4th page written on this website….page looks old and in the need of facelift…but the information is there. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/olivia-de-havilland-movies/
4. I give Harrison more credit for Star Wars than you do…..Han Solo made the movie for me.
5. Interesting about Marlon…..I figured with all that success he had in the 1950s…that was the reason he rated so high….but I understand your logic.
6. Babs has some serious fans….one of her fan sites posted my UMR Streisand page there….and boy did they tear my rankings to pieces.
7. Doris’ number makes more sense now…thank you.
8. Yep by the time those 3 got to 1968…..their peak box office days were well behind them.
9. Playing with numbers and movie stuff…is a great way to spend some time….in at least my mind. Wife Of Cogerson thought it was fun….though not as much fun as I did….she did the presentation…and then shared our internet address…..I got some serious traffic that night.
Thanks for the Brando breakdown….interesting stuff…without a doubt. Your comments have been motivating me to hurry up and update all of my pages…..closing in on 50% there….a long ways to go…..but Newman is done…..Dietrich and McQueen are ready to be updated…and A&C are next in that line….all the while still generating a new page every 2 or 3 days.
BRUCE
1 I’ve been thinking about Mrs C’s project and it struck me that whilst we have always known about gender discrimination in the movie business, your wife’s research is the first that I’ve seen that brings such precision to the ‘sell-by’ dates. Pass on to her my thanks for illuminating the matter. Of course I’m sure that she appreciates that she had a great ‘power behind the throne.’ ! !
2 One or two stars have still done great work when their heyday had gone. I think of Kathie Hepburn and Hank in On Golden Pond and the Duke in The Shootist.
3. Conversely Brando was given 1 million dollars [1.3 today] in 2001 for a virtual walk on appearance in Scary Movie 2. He fell ill, did not even appear in the film, and was replaced by James Woods. However according to IMDB he was still allowed to keep the money. Nonetheless that kind of nonsense in effect proves Mrs C’s point. What seriously-obese over- the- hill 77 year old woman would ever receive such favourable treatment from Hollywood.
4. Some actors are though capable of treating with a sense of humour their vanished stardom. I like an interview that was conducted with Kirk Douglas when Michael was at the peak of his own star years. Kirk told the interviewer that when Mike was growing up it irritated him to always be referred to as ‘Kirk Douglas’s son’. Kirk the added with a chuckle, “I now at last appreciate how he felt. These days I’m known as Michael Douglas’s father!”
5 You said that Mitch and Deb Kerr did “3 or 4” films together. In a sense BOTH figures are probably right. I think that there were three Mitchum/Kerr cinema releases: Heaven Knows Mr Allison (1957) The Sundowners (1960) and The Grass is Greener (also 1960 – with Cary Grant and Jean Simmons).
6 However there was also a quarter of a century later a TV ,movie called Reunion at Fairborough (1985). It is interesting to note that’ whilst in their 3 earlier films Deb was always billed first in the 1985 pairing ‘Bon’ got first billing. Of course by then he had become the screen legend that was known as ‘Robert Mitchum’
Best wishes BOB