Want to know the best Dan Duryea movies? How about the worst Dan Duryea movies? Curious about Dan Duryea box office grosses or which Dan Duryea movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Dan Duryea movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.
Dan Duryea (1907-1968) was an American actor who career spanned 3 decades. Duryea spent most of his career playing bad guys….but if you look hard enough you can find movies like Chicago Calling that show his sensitive side. His IMDb page shows 113 acting credits from 1934-1968. In the table below, Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks 55 of his movies in 6 different sortable columns. Television roles and a few 1960s movies were not included in the rankings. This page was requested by Brando 90 a very long time ago. Sorry for the delay Brando90.
Dan Duryea 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 Dan Duryea movies by movie titles and trailers
- Sort Dan Duryea movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Dan Duryea movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Dan Duryea movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Dan Duryea 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 Dan Duryea movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Dan Duryea movie won.
- Sort Dan Duryea 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 Dan Duryea Table
- Fourteen Dan Duryea movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 25.45% of his movies listed. The Valley of Decision (1945) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Dan Duryea movie grossed $72.10 million in adjusted domestic box office gross.
- That translates to a career adjusted box office of $3.96 billion.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 37 Dan Duryea movies are rated as good movies…or 67.27% of his movies. Scarlet Street (1945) is his highest rated movie while Platinum High School (1960) is his lowest rated movie.
- Nine Dan Duryea movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 16.36% of his movies.
- Two Dan Duryea movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 3.63% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 24 Dan Duryea movies scored higher that average….or 43.63% of his movies. Pride of the Yankees (1945) got the the highest UMR Score while Platinum High School (1960) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting About Dan Duryea
1. Dan Duryea was born and raised in White Plains, New York.
2. Dan Duryea attended and graduated Cornell University. After graduating he worked in advertising. His career in advertising caused so much stress, that while still in his 20s…he suffered a heart attack.
3. After his heart attack, Dan Duryea decided to leave advertising and began a acting career.
4. Following some summer stock experience, Dan Duryea made his Broadway debut in a bit part in the Depression-era play “Dead End” in 1935. He progressed to the leading role of Gimpy later in the show’s year-long run and never looked back.
5. Dan Duryea’s first credited role was in Bette Davis’ The Little Foxes (1941) .
6. Dan Duryea appeared in two movies that received a Best Picture Oscar® nomination: 1941’s The Little Foxes and 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees.
7. Dan Duryea was married one time and had two children. His marriage to Helen Bryan was from 1932 to her death in 1967.
8. 1951’s Chicago Calling was Dan Duryea’s favorite movie that he appeared in during his career.
9. Dan Duryea appeared in 4 movies with James Stewart, 3 movies with Gary Cooper and was directed by Fritz Lang three times.
10. Check out Dan Duryea’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
You Tube’s Top Ten Charts Dan Duryea You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Added Steve’s Dan Duryea You Tube Video To Our Duryea Page. Out thoughts shared on his channel.
“Nice video. Dan Duryea is one of the great character actors. I have seen 11 of the movies listed in your video. One more when looking at our UMR Duryea page. I have seen 8 of the Top 10 listed here. Favorites would include Ball of Fire, Flight of the Phoenix, The Woman In The Windows (love the twist ending) and Winchester 73. Duryea and Stewart were good on the screen together. Good video. Voted up and shared.”
Hi Bruce, thanks for commenting on my Dan Duryea video, appreciate the vote and share. I remembered you doing a page on Duryea a year ago and here I am with a video 12 months later. Better late than never. I’ve seen 7 of these, your tally 11 and Flora has seen 16.
HI BRUCE Those eagle-eyed viewers who closely watch out for everything that the real-life True Greats who frequent this site opine or say will see that The Master gave 4 stars to Duryea for 4 of the flicks that you and Steve have in your Top 6 best reviewed movies, Scarlet Street, Little Foxes, Ball of Fire and Woman in the Window.
That leaves out, among the Cogerson/Lensman Big Six, Pride of the Yankees and Winchester 73. The former never interested me so I haven’s seen it but giving Dan just 3 stars for his Winchester 73 performance does surprise me as for my money Dan’s Waco Johnny Dean was one of the great villains of the Stewart/Mann cycle of westerns and it made Duryea my No 1 bad-guy idol – before Godpop came along!
On the other hand it does please me that Hirsch has given Dan respectable 3 star credits for a whole clutch of my fave 1950s B westerns such as Silver Lode, Ride Clear of Diablo and Rails into Laramie. Many reviewers tend to dismiss supporting, or indeed ANY, performances in B westerns. [By the way I saw Rails into Laramie back in 1954 on a double bill with Chandler’s Yankee Pasha, which you may remember is the film in which your friend/neighbor identified Jeff as an Indiana Jones type character. Sadly though that performance attracted just 2 stars from The Master]
It also naturally delights me that Joel has given Dan 4 stars for Lady on a Train which top-starred my Deanna though it would seem that he did not think much of the lady herself as he does not recognize her as worthy at all in the 1983 Necronomicon of Terror.
If so, then sadly it may have been that Joel’s own favorite punchbag agreed with him. The former when making 1954’s Desiree [another of Joel’s fave target practice movies] lost his temper with what he thought was the incompetent direction of Henry Koster [director of a number of Durbin films] and shouted at Henry in front of cast and crew with that beautiful turn of phrase that Steve so admires “You can’t direct ***t. Who do you think you ARE directing – ******g Deanna Durbin?” [Maybe the old story of light-entertainers even as big as Grable, Al Leach, Crosby, Doris and Hope often generally not getting Hollywood love that they deserve]
My own bark being worse than my bite I will confess to habitually dipping in and out of The Master’s massive book though it is not for the faint-hearted and I recently again noticed the following soothing words from him in describing his star-rating system-
“We realize that everyone takes his or her favorite movie stars personally and doesn’t want them graded like a side of beef.” That seems to me like just so much politician’s soothing double talk: Hirsch really didn’t give a d*** about hurting my feelings – did he Scarlett?
In line 2 of 5th para of my previous post to you “the former” should of course read “the latter” Unless he was a masochist Joel wouldn’t have wanted to be his own punchbag!
I have mentioned the lobby card for Manhandled twice in the Part 2 STILLS section. One of those references should instead have been to the excellent lobby card for Scarlet Street.
Even the availability of the correction button wouldn’t have caught that error on time, so apologies to you.
“O Correction Button, Correction Button, wherefore art thou Correction Button!”
Al Jennings of Oklahoma live for 98 years from 1863 to 1961.
Winchester 7e is of course Winchester 73.
I warmly welcome your Duryea video with a 97.5% rating because as I have said in my previous posts he was one of the great bad guys of my youth and it always delighted me when he surfaced in westerns in particular, with his mocking villain routine – Ride Clear of Diablo, Rails into Laramie, Silver Lode, Night Passage, Six Black Horses and Winchester 73, the 1st movie in which I ever saw Dan – OR my Jimmy.
The only western in which I’ve seen Dan as the [top-billed] hero is 1951’s Al Jennings of Oklahoma albeit as an initial bad guy turned straight. Jennings was a real life character who lived for almost a century [1983-1961] who was an attorney by profession, earlier robbed trains and later became a silent film star, sadly never loved as such by none of you, WH or The Master!
Best POSTERS in entries 40-21 are I think (1) Terror Street (2) Rails into Laramie (3) River Lady (4) FL for Storm Fear (5) Ride Clear of Diablo (6) 1st one for Johnny Stool Pigeon (7) mildly saucy one for The Burglar (8) Larceny and (9) Six Black Horses. The latter title derives from gunman Dan telling Audie that when the Duryea character dies he wants 6 black horses to pull his hearse. If I recall correctly the film ends with just THAT.
Pick of posters in entries 1-20 (1) 1st one for Battle Hymn (2) Along Came Jones (3) great pair for Thunder Bay (4) FL for Night Passage (5) FL for Sahara (6) FL for Woman in the Window (7) racy FL for Ball of Fire (8) 1st one for Winchester 7e (9) Little Foxes and (10) Silver Lode. I saw that one the day I left primary school for good.
Best STILLS – all entries (1) Dan with Big Jeff in Foxfire (2) him with the 1956 Mrs Moses (3) lobby card for Manhandled (4) Dan with Shelley Winters (5) Flight of the Phoenix (6) Dan with Coop (7) lobby card for Manhandled (8) closing solo of Duryea and (9) very nostalgically for me Waco Johnny Dean getting his comeuppance from hero Lin McAdam in Winchester 73, which heralded in the golden era of great Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart westerns – ah, those were the days!
Full House! You and WH agree, in slightly different order, on ALL of Dan’s Top 6 best reviewed movies. Seldom if ever can I recall THAT before.
Hey Bob….good breakdown on Steve’s video and Duryea’s career. As for Steve and I have pretty close rankings…..it happens every once in awhile……just like us agreeing on something…….”it happens every once in awhile”…..lol. Good feedback as always.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and comparison, always appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Sorry I left out one of your favorites – Lady on a Train, which is also one of Joel’s favorites, not sure what happened there. But the poster should be on the Deanna Durbin video.
Poor Dan, in the opening quote on the video, had mostly resigned to a life of playing villains in movies but he did play a hero a few times. Actors who play mainly villains like to brag that a good villain is just as important as the films hero, which is true, but I’m sure deep down they wished they occasionally survived the final reel.
One film scored 10 out of 10 from Dan’s filmography – The Pride of the Yankees, six more scored 9 out of 10, they are – The Little Foxes, Ball of Fire, Winchester 73, Scarlet Street, Woman in the Window and Flight of the Phoenix.
The Little Foxes topped IMDBs Dan Duryea chart, his debut movie a role he played on stage, Winchester 73 was no.1 on Rotten Tomatoes.
“I suppose a lot of Broadway people will want to kill me for saying it, but I wanted to use Broadway so I could make more money in the movies. Some actors act for art’s sake and starve. That;s not for me. I can’t afford it. My reputation as an actor is a good one, but I’ve no illusions about it being the world’s greatest. A Broadway success would have given it a boost.”
HI STEVE: Thanks for your usual detailed attention to my comments about your videos. I HAD noticed that you omitted my Deanna’s Lady on a Train. Bad boy! – but don’t apologise for leaving out one of Joel’s faves. Do you not think that his loves get enough fawning over on this site?
Until I saw your video I had always concentrated on Dan’s career as the great supporting bad guy of my youth and hadn’t picked up that he was actually the top-billed lead in quite a few films, albeit seemingly B movies and largely non-westerns.
Another great Lensman revelation! which illustrates that as well as being great entertainment your videos are worth watching for additional info alone – and it now therefore strikes me that despite what he says in your quotes from him, possibly at one time [from say Black Angel and White Tie and Tails both in 1946 until World for Ransom in 1954] he may well albeit briefly have entertained hopes of Top stardom-
“Just like that region of grassy hills outspread
A realm of our thoughts knows days and nights
And summers and winters. And has fed
Ineffectual herds of vanished delights.”
Anyway as I have said many times the only one that I can recall being quoted as implying that actors shouldn’t want to make money as a primary priority in an openly proclaimed capitalist economy is The Master [I wonder did HE wear a hair shirt!]. Take care and have a good upcoming weekend.