Want to know the best Humphrey Bogart movies? How about the worst Humphrey Bogart movies? Curious about Humphrey Bogart ’s box office grosses or which Humphrey Bogart movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Humphrey Bogart 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.
Did you know that the American Film Institute ranked Humphrey Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema? Bogart however did not find an easy road to the title of greatest male star ever. After trying numerous jobs including playing chess for money he turned to acting in 1921. He found regular work on Broadway through the rest of the 1920s. When the Great Depression reduced the demand for plays, he turned his attention to movies. His first full length film was 1930’s Up the River which was directed by a very young John Ford and co-starred Spencer Tracy (also his first film). His first movie contract with Fox Films was terminated when they concluded he was not star material. Shortly there after he signed with Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers gave Bogart plenty of work from 1936 to 1940.
He appeared in twenty movies in that time frame, almost all the movies were low budget B movies. He did manage to get strong notices from two of the movies made during this time….1936’s The Petrified Forest and 1937’s Dead End. So by the end of the 1930s, Bogart either appeared as the one of stars in horrible low budget film, or as the 3rd or 4th lead in a higher budgeted movie. In the higher budgeted movies he would usually get the cowardly bad guy role and many times killed by James Cagney.
Two films in 1941 changed everything for Bogart. High Sierra was a surprise hit, it did very well at the box office and critics loved the movie and proved Bogart could carry a film. Later that year The Maltese Falcon was released to even bigger box office and an Oscar® nomination for Best Picture. After the success of those two films, Bogart found himself in better movies. In 1942 he made his greatest film, Casablanca. Bogart’s role of Rick in Casablanca would cement his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Bogart would appear in 29 more movies from 1943 to 1956, all of which were big budget and he was always the star. Some of his greatest success during this time would include 1944’s To Have and Have Not (his first film with 4th wife Lauren Bacall), 1951’s African Queen (won Oscar® for this movie), 1954’s The Caine Mutiny (his biggest box office hit) and 1956’s The Harder They Fall (his final movie). Humphrey Bogart passed away in early 1957 after a battle with cancer. John Huston’s eulogy says it all… “He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be another like him.”
His IMDb page shows 85 acting credits from 1928-1956. This page will rank Humphrey Bogart movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, shorts, cameos and uncredited movies that were included in the rankings.
Humphrey Bogart Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Humphrey Bogart 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 Humphrey Bogart movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Humphrey Bogart movies by actual domestic box office grosses
- Sort Humphrey Bogart movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Humphrey Bogart 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 Humphrey Bogart movie received.
- Sort Humphrey Bogart 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.
Humphrey Bogart Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses
Let’s take a quick moment to look at two of Bogart’s worst movies. Don’t worry you Bogart fans he thought these two movies were horrible too.
1937’s Swing That Lady: Bogart plays a wrestling promoter who brings his wrestler Joe, to the Ozarks, to wrestle a female hillbilly Amazon named Sadie Hills….naturally Bogart falls in love with Sadie and they all live happily ever after in this musical comedy…..Bogart’s thoughts on this movie….”It’s a stinker”
1938’s The Return of Dr. X: Bogart’s only science fiction movie….he plays a mad evil genius doctor who figures out a way to bring the dead back to life. For some reason Bogart refused to talk about this movie later in his life.
Check out Humprey Bogart‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
AFI’s Top 25 Screen Legend Actors….with links to our movie pages on the Screen Legend
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address request.
1 Your response to my Part 2 Bogie post is still apparently in the rough. Tiger Woods may help us locate it and I will continue to live in hope because as I have said before I find your feedbacks valuable in understanding how your selection and rating systems work. Meanwhile my Yankee cousin is on her way over to Bruce’s house to kick his door!
2 It should be remembered occasionally that massive legend though Bogie ultimately was he was a supporting actor up until 1941 and his career as a fully-fledged star was relatively short, from 1941 until 1956, not even a full CALENDAR decade.
3 Indeed the 36 movies that he made in those top star years 1941-56 grossed only $5.6 billion in adjusted domestic earnings which whilst commendable in itself was according to Bruce’s stats far short of the figures that Bogie’s fellow Greats likes of Grant, Gable, Cooper and The Duke chalked up in their years as leading actors, none of them serving the apprenticeship as an also ran that Bogie did.
4 Also I will return briefly to an ongoing theme. Even if we take account of Bogie’s movies as a supporting actor his grand total for all his 75 films comes to just over $8 billion in adjusted domestic grosses. That means that if we accept Bruce’s contentions about Myrna Loy she with a total adjusted domestic gross of $8.3 billion was a bigger star overall albeit slightly than Bogie and considerably so if her entire $8.3 billion is set against his total of $5.6 billion as a leading actor. Do YOU believe that she was anywhere near the ticket seller that Bogie was whatever set of figures is used?
1 Your response to my Part 2 Bogie post is still apparently in the rough. Tiger Woods may help us locate it and I will continue to live in hope because as I have said before I find your feedback comments valuable in understanding how your selection and rating systems work. Meanwhile my Yankee cousin is on her way over to Bruce’s house to kick his door!
2 It should be remembered occasionally that massive legend though Bogie ultimately was he was a supporting actor up until 1941 and his career as a fully-fledged star was relatively short, from 1941 until 1956, not even a full CALENDAR decade.
3 Indeed the 36 movies that he made in those top star years 1941-56 grossed only $5.6 billion in adjusted domestic earnings which whilst commendable in itself was according to Bruce’s stats far short of the figures that Bogie’s fellow Greats likes of Grant, Gable, Cooper and The Duke chalked up in their years as leading actors, none of them serving the long apprenticeship as an also ran that Bogie did.
4 Also I will return briefly to an ongoing theme. Even if we take account of Bogie’s movies as a supporting actor his grand total for all his 75 films comes to just fractionally over $8 billion in adjusted domestic grosses. That means that if we accept Bruce’s contentions about Myrna Loy she with a total adjusted domestic gross of $8.3 billion was a bigger star overall albeit slightly than Bogie and considerably so if her entire $8.3 billion is set against just his total of $5.6 billion as a leading actor. Do YOU believe that she was anywhere near the ticket seller that Bogie was whatever set of figures is used?
Bob, I posted a reply to the second part of your Bogart review. Looks like it’s ended up in the spam folder. Maybe it was too long? It should turn up eventually.
1 PART TWO I concluded Part One with a “Who cares” Question. In the past the serious and highly respected broadcaster [Letter from America] and journalist Alistair Cooke certainly did because in his book 6 [or was it 8?] Great Americans Bogie was cited as one of the 6/8. Humph was also of course more recently declared by the AFI as the greatest screen actor of all time.
2 POSTERS 1-25 Frankly almost every one was so classy and [to me] original that it was beyond my skills to fine tune a selection so here goes at just random – They Drive by Night, Barefoot Contessa, Kid Galahad, Sahara, The Enforcer, High Sierra [with Ida Lupino – the last film in which Bogart would EVER be billed other than first in a non-cameo role] The Desperate Hours, In a Lonely Place, To Have and Have Not and Treasure of the Sierra Madre [Fred C Dobbs don’t lie.”]
3 STILLS As the saying goes either a feast or a famine. After the drought in Part One there were so many great stills in the top 25 that I almost couldn’t find the posters! These stills I especially loved (1) with Raft and I think Ann Sheridan (2) with Bette in Dark Victory (3) The Caine Mutiny (4) The Petrified Forest with Davis and Bogie’s mentor Leslie Howard after whom Humph’s daughter Leslie was named] (5) High Sierra with the wonderful Arthur Kennedy in an early supporting role (6) with Audrey & Golden (7) Angels with Dirty Faces (8) The Big Sleep (9) Key Largo and (10) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
4 Overall 99% rating in my book as some film historians contend that Bogie was in more classics than any other actor and you seem to have got them all – and beautifully so. You and Bruce agree on 4 of the Top 6 best reviewed. You have Treasure of Sierra Madre no 2 and he has it as low as 10 albeit with still a good marking of 86%. Many historians would agree with you but I think that there are so many great movies in the top dozen or so Bogie films that it would be difficult to come dogmatically down on one side or the other.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating (whoa!), trivia, info and comparison, much appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the pictorial content.
So many good films and interesting posters I decided a top 55 might be better. And a generous helping of stills for good measure, well it is Bogart. Hollywood Icon.
Casablanca had to be no.1 and it was but I’m sure there are many Bogart fans who would have preferred The Maltese Falcon at the top, so it was a bit of a gamble placing John Huston’s noir masterpiece at no.3, another Huston masterpiece is at no.2 so it’s not too bad.
Rick Blaine, Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe? All iconic characters thanks to Bogey but I like Rick the best, in the most quotable movie ever made – “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” “Here’s looking at you kid” “We’ll always have Paris” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and the most misquoted line of all – “Play it again, Sam” which was never said in the film.
110 posters and stills for 55 movies in 15mins.
10 movies scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, not 11 as previously reported, still very impressive. How many actors can boast that? We’ll see in the coming weeks. They are in chart order –
Casablanca
Treasure of the Sierra Madre ,The
Maltese Falcon ,The
Big Sleep ,The
African Queen ,The
Angels With Dirty Faces
To Have and Have Not
Sabrina
In a Lonely Place
Caine Mutiny ,The
Casablanca tops all charts, with Sierra Madre at no.2 and Falcon at no.3, except Bruce’s chart which has Maltese Falcon at no.2 and Sierra Madre at no.10.
More top 50s next week, two of them Hitchcock favorites.
Bob Bogart Reply p.1
Bob, it looks like my reply yesterday to your Bogart review didn’t make the journey, looks like UMR commenting is still a mess. Lucky I made a copy of it. Let me try again –
“Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating (whoa!), trivia, info and comparison, much appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the pictorial content.
So many good films and interesting posters I decided a top 55 might be better. And a generous helping of stills for good measure, well it is Bogart. Hollywood Icon. “
Bob Bogart Reply p.2
Rick Blaine, Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe? All iconic characters thanks to Bogey but I like Rick the best, in the most quotable movie ever made – “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” “Here’s looking at you kid” “We’ll always have Paris” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and the most misquoted line of all – “Play it again, Sam” – which was never said in the film.
Video trivia – 110 posters and stills for 55 movies in 15mins.
Bob Bogart Reply p.3
10 movies scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, not 11 as previously reported, still very impressive. How many actors can boast that? We’ll see in the coming weeks. They are in chart order –
Casablanca
Treasure of the Sierra Madre ,The
Maltese Falcon ,The
Big Sleep ,The
African Queen ,The
Angels With Dirty Faces
To Have and Have Not
Sabrina
In a Lonely Place
Caine Mutiny ,The
Bob Bogart Reply p.4
Casablanca tops all charts, with Sierra Madre at no.2 and Falcon at no.3, except Bruce’s chart which has Maltese Falcon at no.2 and Sierra Madre at no.10.
More top 50s next week, two of them Hitchcock favorites.
1 PART ONE. There have always been great Hollywood stars who lead relatively “normal” lives so their careers don’t attract excessive publicity. Conversely people like the Gabors left little mark on the screen but were “famous for being famous”. Then there have been the “franchise boys” such as Harrison Ford, likeable though maybe not the most charismatic act in town who to a certain extent possibly owe stardom to a few successful franchises. Harrison always reminds me of Winston Churchill’s [possibly partisan and unfair] description of, the Labour Party leader Clement Atlee – “He is a modest man with much to be modest about.”
2 Lastly there are those undeniably great stars who have attracted an overdrive of hype that transcended their screen work such as Bardot,Mumbles, Monroe, Liz Taylor Sinatra, and James Dean and of course there is The Duke who is ingrained in wider American culture.
3 When I was growing up in the 1950s although enormously talented and charismatic in his own right Bogie too fell into the excessively hyped-up category. The public domain was awash with books and newspaper articles about him all packed with mundane trivia about his “colorful” lifestyle, his strong opinions, his bullying of other stars like Roy Rogers, Rock Hudson and Golden Holden, his drinking and his women and I greedily gobbled up such books. Nowadays although still an avid admirer of Bogie the actor I would probably say about the other stuff. “Who cares?”
4 POSTERS 55-26. The relatively low markings of some of them do not detract from the stunning quality of these lower ranked movies. Best for me were Isle of Fury, King of the Underworld, Chain Lightning***Sirocco [“It was a stinker but we had to do it for the money.” – Bogie] Knock on Any Door [one of the very first films that I can ever recall seeing as a virtual child] the stunning poster for Black legion, Crime School, Invisible Stripes, The Two Mrs Carrolls, Action in the North Atlantic, All Thru the Night, Dead Reckoning and Oklahoma Kid, with Bogie and Cag looking somewhat ridiculous in big cowboy hats. They were too short to suit those hats and should have left that sort of stuff to The Duke or my Rory! However my father loved that film and often delighted in suddenly repeating parrot-fashion out of the blue in company a grinning-Bogie line in the film “I’m Whip McCord from the Panhandle!”
5 STILLS in Part One. My notes record just the one but it was excellent in quality – Black Legion.
*** For some reason both you and the Work Horse insist upon calling this one ChainED Lightning whereas it doesn’t have that title even as an aka. However he’s stubborn so there’s not much point my trying to talk sense into HIM Indeed the dictionaries that I’ve consulted don’t seem to recognise “chained” lightning as an expression.
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing the first half of my 15 minute Bogart marathon, appreciate the trivia and anecdote too.
‘Chained Lightning’ jeez how long have I been calling it that? Thanks for the heads up, I’m glad Bruce has it spelt that way too, I’m in good company. 😉
One still in the first half? It’s top heavy again. Too many great movies crammed in the second half. I’ve seen Black Legion but can’t remember it much. Not a film that pops up on TV much I guess.
I’ll check out the second part of your review. I hope this post gets thru.
STEVE
1 4 part Bogie response received and enjoyed. I tried to get a further Bogie post through to you this morning comparing American Film Institute’s King Bogie’s box office performance with that of the Cogerson site’s Her Majesty the Queen Myrna.
2 Hope you see it and at least think about its contents. But please remember though “It’s just my funny way of laughing” – see my 4.08am post to you this morning which was written and transmittedlast night but which did belatedly go through today our UK time
Hi Bob, I saw your Myrna post earlier. I always had the impression this matter with Loy really bothers you. I mean how many posts have we wasted on this subject in the past 2 years? 🙂
Btw don’t forget if your posts don’t get thru here you could always comment at my youtube channel, until they pop up again here. When I get a youtube comment I get an email notification so I know straight away someone has posted something. I wish we had something similar here.
Bruce and Flora comment there regularly, and you could always copy and paste your comment here.
If you have a query on one of my videos or notice a mistake there is an alternative way of communicating, Top 10 Charts, youtube.
p.s. I think you have to register with them first before you could post comments.
HI STEVE [Ouch!]
Captain Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
1 You regretfully seem misinformed about my attitude to Miss Loy. I have said on previous occasions on this site that she was (1) an excellent actress (2) a great and admirable crusader for civil rights (3) a good friend [to Joan Crawford for example] (4) very popular but not in my view the “most successful female box office star ever”
2 Others have drawn attention to the similar misnomer of ranking the likes of Walter Brennan above for example Wayne and Cooper simply because Walt was in a lot of “other people’s” films that made money.
3 Bruce actually started off the current “Myrna” round when a few weeks ago he again referred to her as the most successful [“ticket seller” this time] ever. I simply was quite happy to join in the fun and Bruce then continued matters by sending me a post in which he boasted about reducing Myrna’s grosses. You then decided to enter the “debate” by flaunting Myrna’s 4/10 x 10 credentials and in your 7.55am am post yesterday on the Eddie Robinson site you confessed to wanting to “press my buttons”.
4 According if time has been wasted I cannot completely own to “Mea Culpa” and of course there is the old saying that if you cannot stand the heat keep out of the kitchen. Anyway hope you are having a good weekend and I look forward to your next epic 50 – how about one on Myrna to show none of us has any hard feelings? Bruce could maybe do a statistical forward to it.