Want to know the best Claude Rains movies? How about the worst Claude Rains movies? Curious about Claude Rains box office grosses or which Claude Rains movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which Claude Rains 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.
If there was a Mount Rushmore of great movie character actors…joining Walter Brennan, Lionel Barrymore and Christopher Walken would be Claude Rains (1889-1967). Raines was an English 4-time Oscar® nominated actor of stage and screen whose career spanned 46 years. Rains’ IMDb page shows 79 acting credits from 1920 – 1965. This page will take a statistical look at 52 Claude Rains movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His cameo roles, his television appearances and movies not released in North America were not included in the table.
Drivel part: So this weekend we (the family) were supposed to be in Philadelphia. We went to bed Thursday night packed and ready to go first thing Friday morning. All our carefully made plans went right out the window at 3:30 A.M….when our youngest child (Emily) showed up in our room saying she did not feel well and was burning up with fever. Well…..18 hours later she is feeling better and our Philly trip is canceled. So with some unexpected free time, we figured we would finish and publish this Claude Rains page on Friday versus our plan of publishing on Monday.
Claude Rains 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 Claude Rains movies by his co-star in the move
- Sort Claude Rains movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Claude Rains movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Claude Rains 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 Claude Rains movie received and
- Sort by many Oscar® wins each Claude Rains movie won.
- Sort Claude Rains 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.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
- If there is a link in the co-star column….that link takes you to that performers’ UMR movie page
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Claude Rains Table
- Twenty-eight Claude Rains movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 52.83% of his movies listed. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was his biggest box office ht when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average Claude Rains movie grosses $123.50 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 39 of Claude Rains’ movies are rated as good movies…or 75.00% of their movies. Casablanca (1942) is his highest rated movie while Anthony Adverse (1936) was his lowest rated movie.
- Eighteen Claude Rains movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 34.61% of his movies.
- Eight Claude Rains movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 15.38% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 36 Claude Rains movies scored higher than that average….or 69.23% of his movies. Casablanca (1942) got the the highest UMR Score while The Paris Express (1952) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Claude Rains
- William Claude Rains was born in Camberwell, London in 1889.
2. Claude Rains served in the First World War in the London Scottish Regiment. He served alongside fellow actors Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman and Herbert Marshall. At one time, he was involved in a gas attack that left him nearly blind in one eye for the rest of his life.
3. Claude Rains was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before coming to Hollywood, whose students included John Gielgud.
4. Claude Rains appeared in two Best Picture Oscar® winners: 1942’s Casablanca and 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia.
5. Claude Rains was married 7 times in his life. He had one child, actress Jennifer Rains. Rains screen name is Jennifer Rains and has 39 IMDb acting credits.
6. Claude Rains was offered but turned down these roles: Dr. Pretorius in 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, Frollo or Qasimodo in 1939’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Professor Higgins in 1938’s Pygmalion, Mr. Doolittle in 1964’s My Fair Lady, Klaatu in 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still and Henry Potter in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
7. Claude Rains was nominated for 4 Best Supporting Actor Oscars®: 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1942’s Casablanca, 1944’s Mr. Skeffington and 1946’s Notorious.
8. Claude Rains 52 movies listed here grossed $6.42 billion in adjusted domestic box office. Earned 77 Oscar® nominations….winning 23 times.
9. Check out Claude Rains’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
10. There are two movies that did not make the page that we really wanted to: 1934’s The Man Who Reclaimed His Head and 1935’s The Last Outpost. We could not find any box office information on those two movies…so they were not included. Actually we have been looking for years now when it comes to The Last Outpost….maybe one day.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
Figured it might be interesting to see the process of what it takes to put these pages together. How we put together our Alan Ladd page.
Some of my favorite Claude Rains roles are in Mr. Skeffington, Now, Voyager, The Passionate Friends and The Unsuspected.
WoC is awesome….The UMR Top Ten Average Actors and Actresses….Mr. Rains falls just short of the Top10….This is each actor’s Top Ten UMR Movies only…..Bob should be happy as Marlon jumps into the Top 5.
Dustin Hoffman 79.70
Jack Nicholson 79.42
Tom Hanks 79.25
Marlon Brando 78.65
Harrison Ford 77.85
Ingrid Bergman 77.62
James Stewart 77.60
Gary Cooper 77.52
Katharine Hepburn 77.36
Spencer Tracy 76.94
Gregory Peck 76.74
Claude Rains 76.27
Robert Duvall 75.77
Humphrey Bogart 75.77
Gene Hackman 75.10
Clark Gable 74.98
Matt Damon 74.61
Elizabeth Taylor 74.60
Robert Redford 74.41
Paul Newman 74.39
Jack Lemmon 74.17
Al Pacino 74.11
William Holden 74.09
Leonardo DiCaprio 73.66
Morgan Freeman 73.57
Henry Fonda 73.09
Donald Crisp 72.87
Bing Crosby 72.66
STEVE
1 Best for me among the glut of attractive posters were The Unsuspected, Rope of Sand, Phantom of the Opera, They Won’t Forget and Where Danger Lives, the latter being one of my personal B noir favourites. The stills from Caesar & Cleopatra, Mr Skeffington and Notorious were all pleasing and for me the one from The Wolf Man stood out even among that fine selection. It is possible that Claude has gained cinematic immortality with his utterance of the “Usual Suspects” line because the term has fallen into such common usage today that it is applied even outside its original context in Casablanca which related to scapegoating of the powerless rather than law enforcement. My favourite Rains performances were in Casablanca, Notorious, Robin Hood and Lawrence of Arabia.
2 You and WH are agreed on all of Claude’s Top 5 films albeit in a very slightly different order and given the lively exchanges there have been on this site recently on the subject of character actors the other good news is that Bruce above and you via your post dated 12 March 2016 on this page are both agreed that Claude is a character actor! though your posters show that he could occasionaly get sstar billing and leading roles. 9.5/10 – and why this video worked so well for me was that apart from the fine artwork it clearly illustrates the large mixture of co-stars that Rains was associated with over his career ranging from obvious Greats like Bogie, Davis and Grant to horror kings Lugosi and Chaney, the superstar of the French cinema Jean Gabin even the Dead End Kids. Well done
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating and comment always appreciated.
Claude Rains appeared in so many highly rated movies, that’s an amazing top 10. Nine of the top 10 movies on my chart received 10 out of 10 from my sources, how often does that happen? Only Kings Row failed to get top marks.
And it’s one of the rare times Lawrence of Arabia ends up at no.2 instead of no.1, and on Bruce’s chart too.
The biggest difference my chart has with Bruce’s critics chart is Anthony Adverse which was 17th on my chart and right at the bottom of Bruce’s chart in 52nd position, his sources must have hated it. 🙂
HI STEVE
1 Don’t worry about The Work Horse as he often badly gets it wrong by for example hating too the classic Sunset with James Garner and Bruce Willis. Actually although I didn’t pick the POSTER for Anthony Adverse as being among the very top artistically the movie itself holds a special nostalgic appeal for me because I can vividly remember in 1966 coming back from a holiday in the Channel Islands and was so dog-tired I just wanted to sink into a soft chair and watch a movie and that movie was Anthony Adverse so I back you certainly in giving it at least a 17th spot. We can respect WH for being the creator of this site but we don’t have to be his ‘toy boys’!
2 In my earlier post about Rains I meant to say more about your Jean Gabin selection ofMoontide which was a rare find for me at least as I have never before come across Gabin’s name billed alongside – and indeed in this case before – a major US star as Ida Lupino was at that time. Jean is quire possibly France’s most respected actor from the old days but I understand that his Hollywood career was short and commercially unsuccessful [possibly 2 films at most] and he didn’t help matters by being apparently temperamental to work with by for example demanding his then lover Marlene Dietrich be given a co-starring role in one of his scheduled US films and refusing to do the film when RKO rejected his demand and was thus fired by them. However I have already recorded on this site that about 30 years ago a panel of world famous directors came up with their own list of the Greatest Actors of All Time and whilst it was headed by the Usual Suspects – there we go again! – of Chaplin 1st followed by Mumbles and DeNiro Jean was ranked tied with Tracy and Olivier in 6th or 7th place.
Hey Bob…..Rains was the main….he was the lead star in the mid 1930s….but quickly moved to supporting roles. Claude’s Top 5 is truly impressive….so I am not surprised at all that Steve and I agree on that. Good review on Steve’s latest video.
Hey Steve….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=510UYW7XhxM the link to your latest video. You are right Rains upper tier movies are among the best ever. It makes me think…..WoC has a button that looks at the Top25 UMR average…I wonder where Rains would rank if we only looked at the Top 10? Thanks as always for the feedback.
Thanks for the video link Bruce, much appreciated.
I think totting up the top 10 movie scores per actor is where billing becomes somewhat important [Bob grins] it would be a more impressive ‘total’ score if a top 10 only included the actors top billed movies, for instance on my charts Claude Rains top rated ‘lead actor’ movie is The Invisible Man followed by The Wolf Man and They Won’t Forget.
And of course Myrna Loy’s top 10 would include the movies she was ‘lead actress’ in and there are plenty of top rated Myrna Loy movies out there. [Bob fumes]
🙂
Hey Steve…well in my first reply I listed the Top 25 or so Best average Top Ten UMR scores….must would be considered leads with the exception of Rains, Crisp and Duvall.
Bob will be happy to read you mentioning the importance of billing.
Above the title tells me they were the stars….and Loy had lots of those movies.
🙂
Claude Rains has 28 movies on your list that made 100 million. Claude was never on the Oracle of Bacon Center of the Hollywood Universe list. These are the people on the current list who appeared in a film with him.
Angel on My Shoulder (1946) – 912 Arthur Tovey
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) – 848 Roger Moore
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – 503 Peter O’Toole, 681 Anthony Quinn, 736 Omar Shariff, 767 Robert Rietty
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – 20 Max Von Sydow, 65 Robert Loggia, 69 Martin Landau, 247 Charlton Heston, 323 Donald Pleasence, 781 Shelley Winters
Where Danger Lives (1950) – 809 Robert Mitchum
These are the actors who were on the 2000 list who have fallen off over the years who appeared with him. Rank is for 2000.
Angel on My Shoulder (1946) – 783James Flavin
Anthony Adverse (1936) – 222 Bess Flowers, 234 Akim Tamiroff, 962 Olivia De Havilland
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) – 935 Stewart Granger, 973 Jean Simmons
Casablanca (1942) – 177 Marcel Dalio, 606 Alberto Morin
Deception (1946) – 222 Bess Flowers, 918 Bette Davis
Forever and a Day (1943) – 177 Ray Milland, 851 Cedric Hardwicke
Four Mothers (1941) – 76 Eddie Albert, 783 James Flavin, 963 Frank Ferguson
Four Wives (1939) – 76 Eddie Albert
Gold is Where You Find it (1938) – 962 Olivia De Havilland
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) – 147 Lloyd Bridges
Juarez (1939) – 384 Gilbert Roland, 918 Bette Davis
Lady with Red Hair (1940) – 222 Bess Flowers, 824 Frank Wilcox
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – 77 Jose Ferrer, 248 Arthur Kennedy, 392 Alec Guinness, 575 Jack Hawkins, 977 Anthony Quayle
Lisbon (1956) – 187 Ray Milland, 975 Maureen O’Hara
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) – 81 Lionel Stander, 222 Bess Flowers, 379 Ann Doran, 571 Charles Lane
Mr. Skeffington (1944) – 222 Bess Flowers, 273 George Coulouris, 379 Ann Doran, 918 Bette Davis
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – 108 Dub Taylor, 344 James Stewart, 379 Ann Doran, 571 Charles Lane, 571 Charles Lane, 740 George Chandler, 969 Byron Foulger
Notorious (1946) – 222 Bess Flowers, 562 Paul Bryar, 824 Frank Wilcox, 915 Ivan Triesault
Now, Voyager (1942) – 100 Ian Wolfe, 222 Bess Flowers, 918 Bette Davis, 965 Mary Wickes
Passage to Marseille (1944) – 671 Eduardo Cianelli
Phantom of the Opera (1943) – 299 Fritz Feld, 555 Hume Cronyn
Rope of Sand (1949) – 45 Burt Lancaster, 146 Mike Mazurki
Sealed Cargo (1951) – 310 Steve Forrest, 451 Dana Andrews, 592 Whit Bissell
Stolen Holiday (1937) – 222 Bess Flowers
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – 962 Olivia De Havilland
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – 77 Jose Ferrer, 137 Carroll Baker, 149 Telly Savalas, 179 John Wayne, 221 John Crawford, 231 Sidney Poitier, 326 Angela Lansbury, 399 Nehemiah Persoff, 421 Michael Ansara, 503 Richard Conte, 508 Robert Blake, 583 Paul Stewart
The Invisible Man (1933) – 14 John Carradine
The Last Outpsot (1935) – 234 Akim Tamiroff
The Lost World (1960) – Ian Wolfe, 222 Bess Flowers
The Man Who Played God (1932) – 187 Ray Milland, 918 Bette Davis
The Passionate Friends (1949) – 61 Trevor Howard
The Prince and the Pauper (1937) – 100 Ian Wolfe
The Sea Hawk (1940) – 384 Gilbert Roland, 592 Whit Bissell, 824 Frank Wilcox
The Unsuspected (1947) – 222 Bess Flowers
The White Tower (1950) – 132 Glenn Ford, 147 Lloyd Bridges, 692 Alida Valli, 851 Cedric Hardwicke
The Wolf Man (1941) – 507 Ralph Bellamy
They Won’t Forget (1937) – 219 Elisha Cook Jr.
This Earth is Mine (1959) – 589 Rock Hudson, 606 Alberto Morin, 973 Jean Simmons
This Love of Ours (1945) – 100 Ian Wolfe
Twilight of Honor (1963) – 611 Don ‘Red’ Barry
Where Danger Lives (1950) – 682 Ray Teal, 894 Philip Van Zandt, 903 Jack Kruschen
Claude appeared with @27 Oscar winners that I could find.
Angel on My Shoulder (1946) – Anne Baxter, Paul Muni
Anthony Adverse (1936) – Olivia De Havilland, Fredric March
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) – Vivien Leigh
Casablanca (1942) – Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman
Crime Without Passion (1934) – Helen Hayes
Deception (1946) – Bette Davis
Forever and a Day (1943) – Ray Milland, Charles Coburn, Charles Laughton, Edmund Gwenn, Victor Mclaglen
Gold is Where You Find it (1938) – Olivia De Havilland
Juarez (1939) – Bette Davis, Paul Muni
Kings Row (1942) – Charles Coburn
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – Jose Ferrer, Alec Guinness
Lisbon (1956) – Ray Milland
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) – Gary Cooper
Mr. Skeffington (1944) – Bette Davis
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – James Stewart
Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) – Walter Brennan
Notorious (1946) – Ingrid Bergman
Now, Voyager (1942) – Bette Davis
Passage to Marseille (1944) – Humphrey Bogart
Rope of Sand (1949) – Burt Lancaster
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – Olivia De Havilland
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – Martin Landau, Charlton Heston, Shelley Winters, Jose Ferrer, John Wayne, Sidney Poitier, Van Heflin
Claude Rains falls into the same category as many of the other Warner Brothers stars….appearing in many many movies with the same group of people….still….his 2000 list is not too bad….while the latest list is sort of sad…..in some ways it is like seeing the ocean slowly destroy a great looking sandcastle. Mmmm…only 27…..that is lower than I thought it would be. Well behind Caine….choosing to ignore your Arthur T. tally….lol. Thanks for the informative information.
Think Arthur Tovey is a joke. I’m inputting the info on the new entries. One is a Patrick Kearns at 902. He made his first movie in 2014. He’s been in 49 films in that time since, 47 over the last 2 years. He is an extra. I wonder if there are people on the IMDB with lots of phony credits. How much does an extra get? Do they really travel all over the country and even the world sometimes for possibly a 5 second scene. Tovey apparently speaks in a number of his pictures. Wouldn’t you also think the easiest people to connect would have long careers, made international productions and the timeframe would center on the middle of movie history, say the 60’s at this point. Ever check out the Oracle of Baseball run by the same guy. Their top 100 list has Minnie Minoso on top (they have never updated the list). But the ballplayers even thought they have much shorter careers the top 100 list is players is made up of players who predominantly played between the 50’s and 80’s.. According to the Oracle of Bacon Arthur has worked with 9079 different actors. Bess Flowers has worked with 13,663 (and she is not on the list anymore). Patrick Kearns has 3221 already. Eric Roberts the current #1 has 9403. Michael Madsen #2 has 6417. Putting things in perspective, Michael Caine has worked with 5538, John Wayne worked with 3779 and Claude Rains with 2192.
Hey Dan….Arthur Tovery seems more impressive than Patrick Kearns….but I think the fact they they are in the Top 1000 and others are not….probably means they need to tweak their rules to calculate the score. I see that one of Patrick Kearns credit is “park customer” in Jurassic World…if they used 1000 extras…and they all got an uncredited role….then in one movie….they would be already at 33% of John Wayne’s total that took him 184 starring role movies to achieve.
I imagine that if IMDb was around in the 1930s and 1940s….then all of these stars were get much higher rankings….maybe if they excluded “uncredited roles” people like Kearns would fall off the list. Wow…I did not know the same guy did this for baseball too. My love of baseball stats…is the origin of my love of movie stats. Good stuff here…thank you Dan.
Waite Hoyt, Burleigh Grimes, Bullet Joe Bush and the immortal Doc Farrell all share the record of having 36 hall of fame teammates.
Hey Dan…..well that is good trivia….sounds like a great tweet to some of the baseball fans I know on twitter…including a couple of ESPN hosts who follow me on Twitter. Thanks for sharing that information.
So Mr. Smith goes to Washington beats Lawrence of Arabia and Notorious in the Claude Rains rankings. Odd choice.
Hey skimpole…..lots of factors go into my equation. Lawrence is actually ranked 3rd of all of the movies in my database….that is 26,671 movies. But when looking at Rains’ role in Lawrence…he actually lost some points….because (a) he did not get an Oscar nomination and (b)it was a very small role….it still ended up in his Top 5. That is actually the first movie I noticed him…because my dad used to watch Lawrence all the time.
As for Mr. Smith being ahead of Notorious….He got Oscar nomination for both roles…..Notorious has a small edge in box office results…..Mr. Smith has an even smaller edge in critical rating….but the big difference was in Oscar nominations…Mr. Smith got 11 nominations…including a Best Picture nom….while Notorious only got 2 nominations. Personally I watch Notorious more than Mr. Smith….but they are both great films.
My equation is based on a perfect film as a producer. As a producer you want the movie to make a boat load of money, you want critics to love your movie, you want audiences to love your movie, and at the end of the year you want to be holding an Oscar saying you made the best movie of the year. That is why Lawrence is the 3rd highest rated movie in my database. My ranking system might not be perfect but the cream does rise to the top of the rankings….as in this case Lawrence and Notorious had Top 5 spots.