Want to know the best Esther Williams movies? How about the worst Esther Williams movies? Curious about Esther Williams box office grosses or which Esther Williams movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Esther Williams movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Esther Williams (1921-2013) was an American competitive swimmer who become one of the most popular actresses working in the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1942 and 1953 she appeared in an incredible 17 $100 million (adjusted gross) box office hits. Esther Williams’ IMDb page shows 31 acting credits from 1942-1963. This page will rank 24 Esther Williams movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her television appearances and short films were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: Dan should be a happy camper….not only is this Esther Williams page one of his requests….but the next two current UMR pages will also be Dan requests. So Dan hits the trifecta….make sure you save that ticket. Since Esther Williams spent most of her career at MGM we were able to find not only her domestic box office grosses but her worldwide box office grosses. Gotta admit before putting this page together my basic knowledge of Esther Williams (I have only seen one of her movies) was….”she was the swimming lady”. After putting this page together and seeing her phenomenal box office numbers…now my thought is “goodness gracious movie audiences back in the 1940s and 1950s loved musical swimming movies”.
Esther Williams Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Esther Williams 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 Esther Williams movies by co-stars of her movies and by by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Sort Esther Williams movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Esther Williams movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Esther Williams movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Esther Williams 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 Esther Williams movie received.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Esther Williams Table
- Seventeen Esther Williams movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 70.83% of her movies listed.
- An average Esther Williams movie grossed $146.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 12 of Esther Williams’s movies are rated as good movies…or 50.00% of her movies. Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) is her highest rated movie while Magic Fountain (1963) is her lowest rated movie.
- Four Esther Williams movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 16.66% of her movies.
- One Esther Williams movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 4.16% of her movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 20 Esther Williams movie scored higher that average….or 83.33% of her movies. Bathing Beauty (1944) got the the highest UMR Score while Magic Fountain (1963) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Esther Williams
1. Esther Jane Williams was born in Inglewood, California, on August 8, 1921.
2. After breaking many swimming records Esther Williams was a strong contender for an Olympic Gold Medal in the 1940 Summer Olympics. When the outbreak of World War II ended that dream….she joined Billy Rose’s Aquacade. While performing at the Aquacade she was spotted by MGM scouts and signed to a MGM contract.
3. One of the clauses in Esther Williams’ MGM contract was it would be 9 months before she appeared on camera…. to allow for acting, singing, dancing, and diction lessons. Her thoughts on this: “If it took nine months for a baby to be born, I figured my ‘birth’ from Esther Williams the swimmer to Esther Williams the movie actress would not be much different.”
4. Esther Williams was not nominated for any Oscars® or Golden Globes®. She did receive the Golden Globe® for World’s Favorite Actress in 1952.
5. Esther Williams’ movie career played a major role in the promotion of competitive and synchronized swimming. It became an Olympic sport at the 1984 Olympics.
6. One tough lady. (1) Esther Williams broke her neck filming a 50 foot dive off a tower during a climactic musical number for 1952’s Million Dollar Mermaid and was in a body cast for seven months. Other swimming issues: (2) Her plaid flannel swimsuit in 1945’sThrill of a Romance was so heavy that she was dragged to the bottom of the pool, and had to unzip the suit, swimming naked to the edge of the pool to avoid drowning. (3) In another movie she nearly drowned after not being able to find the trap door in the ceiling of a tank. The walls and ceiling were painted black and the trap door blended in. Williams was pulled out only because a member of the crew realized the door was not opening. (4) Her many hours spent submerged in a studio tank resulted in ruptured eardrums numerous times.
7. Esther Williams nickname was America’s Mermaid. Her MGM nickname was Million Dollar Mermaid…probably due to the massive success her movies achieved.
8. Esther Williams was married four times….and had 3 children.
9. Esther Williams’ cumulative box office totals: Adjusted domestic box office: $3.41 billion. Adjusted worldwide box office: $5.38 billion.
10. Check out Esther Williams‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
10A. For Laurent. Some France box office information: 1944’s Bathing Beauty was one of the most popular movies of 1946 in France with admissions of 5,438,665.
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For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
I love her scene with Tom and Jerry in Dangerous When Wet. It blended a live action Esther Williams and animated Tom and Jerry. This along with Anchors Aweigh easily pre-date Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Forgot to mention that Gene Kelly dances with Jerry in Anchors Aweigh. Just in case you were wondering.
Hey Faye….glad to see you back on the pages…it took Esther Williams to bring you back? Yep Anchors Aweigh and Dangerous When Wet were doing what Roger Rabbit got credit for doing….50 plus years before Roger and Bob H. hung out together. Thanks for the comment and the visit…it is greatly appreciated. It looks Jerry had some good dance partners back then….Gene Kelly and Esther Williams.
Her movies don’t get much exposure outside of TCM, and most of the disks, not being familiar favorites, are exiled to the Archive. (And of those, Instant Archive only had “Jupiter’s Darling”, which is distinctly in the middle.)
After the, ahem, previously addressed issue of Williams being the straw-man whipping-girl for happy MGM Technicolor musicals for most of the previous decades, I’ve been trying to search out a few more, but don’t really know which are the “essentials”.
I know Dangerous When Wet has the Tom & Jerry fantasy, and Million Dollar Mermaid has the “one scene everyone remembers” where she comes out of the pool with reversed-footage sparklers, but apart from that, most are pretty well in obscurity.
Hey EricJ….her most famous lead role was in Million Dollar Mermaid…..she broke her neck filming that movie….as she was doing a dive of 50 feet…..I think the best movie she appeared in was A Guy Named Joe…..but she had a supporting role….with Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne and Van Johnson doing the heavy lifting. Her biggest box office hit was Bathing Beauty…..and her best reviewed movie was Take Me Out To The Ballgame…..which is the only Esther Williams movie that I have seen…..but for some reason she gets overshadowed by some little known actors Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra…..lol.
I’ve seen all of 2 of her films.
Hey Hunsecker…..even though you have only seen two of her movies that actually doubles my total. Thanks fr sharing your Esther numbers.
This was very educational. I did not even know she was “the swimming lady”. Box office numbers are indeed impressive. Bathing Beauty almost $600 million in worldwide, that seems impossible. Especially with the war going on. The interesting facts are good but the “she’s tough one” is by far the best. Not thinking I would have stayed in the water after just one of those incidents.
Hey Frederick from Frisco. Glad my page helped shed some light on the career of Esther Williams. It is a pretty impressive career…..a lot more successful than I ever imagined. As for Bathing Beauty I stand by those numbers….it was a big hit in North America and overseas. Just in France it sold over 5 million admissions….so even though the war was going on lots of people were watching movies. Another factor is movies is where the newsreels were found….and World War 2 seems like a good time to know what was going on. Glad you liked the ……she was tough facts…..I liked that one too. Thanks for the visit and the comment.
5 millions admissions is very big in France. A movie is considered like a success with one or two millions admissions. With 3 millions is a big success, and less than 250 films made over 5 millions since 1945.
Hard to believe France fell in love with her that quickly….it was her first starring role….can’t imagine France really noticed her in A Guy Named Joe or her Andy Hardy movie. As always thanks for the viewpoint from France….it is greatly appreciated.
Striking a blow for Canada! I have seen 11 of her movies. I never heard about her breaking her neck. Thanks for another fun page.
Hey Bern1960……thanks for stopping by and checking out our latest page. Her toughness is pretty impressive. After breaking neck she pretty much went right back to work after spending months in a body cast. 11 movies watched….this could be a win for you….as my total is only 1…..and Hunsecker is at 2. Steve Lensman might be the only person in your way for the win.