Want to know the best Gloria Grahame movies? How about the worst Gloria Grahame movies? Curious about Gloria Grahame box office grosses or which Gloria Grahame movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Gloria Grahame movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information. This page comes from a request from Flora, FilmNoirFan and Mike.
Gloria Grahame (1923-1981) is an Oscar®-winning American actress. Grahame received a Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress nomination for 1947’s Crossfire, and would later win the award for her work in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful. She achieved her highest profile with 1952’s Sudden Fear , 1953’s Human Desire , 1953’s The Big Heat, and 1955’s Oklahoma!. Gloria Graham’s IMDb page shows 64 acting credits from 1944-1981. This page will rank 37 Gloria Grahame movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television roles and movies not released in North America were not included in the rankings.
Gloria Grahame 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 Gloria Grahame movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Gloria Grahame movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Gloria Grahame movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Gloria Grahame 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 Gloria Grahame movie received.
- Sort Gloria Grahame movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Blue link in Co-star column takes you to that star’s UMR movie page
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Gloria Grahame Table
- Eight Gloria Grahame movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 21.62% of her movies listed. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Gloria Grahame movie grosses $82.80 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 20 Gloria Grahame movies are rated as good movies…or 54.05% of her movies. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) is her highest rated movie while The Losers (1972) is her lowest rated movie.
- Eight Gloria Grahame movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 21.62% of her movies.
- Four Gloria Grahame movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 10.81% of her movies.
- An average “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 21 Gloria Grahame movie scored higher that average….or 56.75% of her movies. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) got the the highest UMR Score while The Losers (1972) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Gloria Graham
- Gloria Grahame Hallward was born in Los Angeles, California in 1923.
2. Gloria Grahame was descended from royalty. Her father’s family descended from King Edward III through John of Gaunt; her mother’s, from the Scottish Kings of the Hebrides.
3. Gloria Graham was taught acting by her mother Jean Grahame. Jean Grahame was an English actress. Gloria attended Hollywood High School before dropping out to pursue acting.
4. Louis B. Mayer of MGM spotted Gloria Graham when she was performing on Broadway. He signed her to a movie contract but eventually sold her contract to RKO.
5. Gloria Grahame was unhappy with the tilt of her upper lip, she often stuffed cotton along her gumline to straighten it out. The effect was cosmetically less than flattering and made it difficult for her to speak. A leading man, after kissing her, ended up with a mouth full of cotton.
6. Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner picked Gloria Grahame as one of the toughest film actresses in their book “Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames” (2004).
7. Gloria Grahame was married four times. She had four children.
8. Gloria Grahame’s first marriage was to actor Stanley Clements. Her second marriage was to director Nicolas Ray. Her third marriage was to write Cy Howard. Her final marriage was to Anthony Ray. Anthony was the son of Nicholas. She had one child with Nicolas and two children with Anthony. I imagine those kids had many “Chinatown” moments when introducing their family.
9. Columbia wanted to borrow Marilyn Monroe from 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Debby Marsh in 1953’s The Big Heat, but Fox’s asking price was too high. Gloria Grahame was cast instead.
10. Check out Gloria Grahame‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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So cotton it was! I always felt that her mouth looked strange 😉
I have seen 19 of the films listed above, and I must say that despite the scandals and the poorly done cotton job, I always enjoyed Gloria Grahame as an actress. She was great in Crossfire, The Big Heat, The Bad and the Beautiful, Naked Alibi, Not as a Stranger, Sudden Fear, A Woman’s Secret, Odds Against Tomorrow, In a Lonely Place, The Man Who Never Was and as Ado Annie in her one late shot to “real” Stardom, Oklahoma! She herself said that she thought this movie would be her ticket to much better parts, but at the same time she admitted that she was difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma!, and that reputation put an end to her dreams of an uplift to her career. One remark on Fritz Lang’s Human Desire: This was based on a story by Emile Zola, and it had been filmed before (1938) in France as La bête humaine (The human Beast). It starred Jean Gabin and Simone Simon (most famous in America for her Irina in “Cat People”). I really like the american version, but the french film is a true classic, imho.
Hey Lupino
1. Thanks for checking out our Gloria Grahame page.
2. Your 19 Grahame movies watched tops our tally contest….as you have seen 19, Flora 17, me 10 and Steve 8.
3. I agree she was great in great in Crossfire, The Big Heat, The Bad and the Beautiful, Odds Against Tomorrow and In a Lonely Place.
4. I have not seen Naked Alibi, Not as a Stranger but Sudden Fear…I will see if I can track them down in the near future.
5. Good behind the scenes trivia on Oklahoma….sad that one of her box office peaks did not restart her career.
6. Interesting about Human Desire….I did not know that.
Good feedback as always.
The Naked Alibi got a Best Picture nomination? Don’t think so.
Hey Anonymous….not sure how that happened….but you are right The Naked Alibi was not a Best Picture nominee. That error has been fixed…thanks for the catch.
AND SAVING THE GOOD WINE FOR THE LAST!
COGERSON
November 19, 2017 at 8:59 pm
Gotta agree with Steve on this one. Bases on Bob’s thinking there are only 5 to 10 leading actresses ever….but I have no problem agreeing to disagree with him on this thought.
POSTSCRIPT 6 FEB 2018
Anyone who has not seen Steve’s video on Gloria and is a fan of hers whould check it out.
1. BOB
November 18, 2017 at 6:06 pm
Steve:
EXAMPLES of GLORIA GRAHAME’S BILLING
1 1947. It’s a Wonderful Life. Well down in the cast list and not billed with the stars. Donna Reed leading lady.
2 1947 Crossfire. Not billed above the title with the 3 male stars.
3 1949 Roughshod 4th billed to actors like Robert Sterling who themselves were not major stars.
4 1950 In a Lonely Place. Bogie billed alone above title.
5 1952. Macao. Not billed above the title with the 3 stars. Jane Russell leading lady
6 Greatest Show on Earth. Billed 5th. Hutton and Lamour were the more famous leading ladies.
7 1952. Bad and The Beautiful Not billed with the stars above the title. Lana leading lady.
8 1953 Glass Wall. Billed 2nd to the unimportant Vittorio Gassman
9 1955. The Cobweb. Billed 4th. Bacall leading lady.
10 Back to 1945 and Without Love and Gloria was not mentioned among the main cast and Katie Hep and Lucille Ball were the leading females.
After 1955 Gloria’s big screen faded away.
Reply
1. BOB
November 18, 2017 at 5:58 pm
HI STEVE
1 As always I’ve been looking forward to your feedback on my Gloria Grahame post and have not been disappointed by the contents of your response. In line 2 para 1 of the post “is only” should be “are only” and in line 1 Grahame is spelt wrong. D**n that mischievous Work Horse for not giving us the self-correction facility that he once promised but anyway my apologies to you for my errors. [There is though still alive an American called Gloria Graham who is an artist in visual pursuits such as painting]
2 I’m afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree about Gloria’s status and in response to the specific points that you make I would reply that Shirley Jones too was not a major star and all of Gloria’s acting nominations and her Oscar win were in the supporting actress category. I will send you in a separate post a sample list of Gloria movies from across her career which in addition my other points strongly suggest to me that Gloria was not a star of the 1st rank.
3 However a performer doesn’t have to be the latter to be still reasonably important and useful and Gloria was certainly that at least for a relatively short while
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4 Anyway there is of course no correlation between a star’s status and the quality of the pictorials for his/her movies and as I have already suggested a whole run of those in Gloria’s video were corkers in my opinion
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