Want to know the best Janet Gaynor movies? How about the worst Janet Gaynor movies? Curious about Janet Gaynor box office grosses or which Janet Gaynor movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Janet Gaynor movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well, you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Janet Gaynor (1906-1984) was an Oscar® winning American actress. Gaynor was one of the biggest box office draws of the late 1920s and 1930s. In 1929, she was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: 7th Heaven (1927), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), and Street Angel (1928). Her IMDb page shows 67 acting credits from 1924 to 1981. This page will rank Janet Gaynor movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts and some of her early silent movies were not included in the rankings. To do well in our overall rankings a movie has to do well at the box office, get good reviews by critics, be liked by audiences and get some award recognition. This page was requested by UMR Hall of Famer, John, a very long time ago.
Janet Gaynor Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Janet Gaynor 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 Janet Gaynor movies by her co-stars
- Sort Janet Gaynor movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Janet Gaynor movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Janet Gaynor 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 Janet Gaynor movie received.
- Sort Janet Gaynor movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Best IMDb Trivia On Janet Gaynor
1. Laura Augusta Gainor was born in Germantown, Philadelphia in 1906.
2. Janet Gaynor was selected as a WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926. Other WAMPAS (Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers) that year included: Joan Crawford, Mary Astor, Fay Wray and Dolores del Rio.
3. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell made 12 movies together.
4. Janet Gaynor was in three Oscar® Best Picture nominees: 7th Heaven (1927), State Fair (1933) and A Star Is Born (1937), as well as Sunrise (1927) which one the first and only Best Unique and Artistic Production Oscar®.
5. After retiring from acting in 1939, Janet Gaynor became an accomplished oil painter.
Check out Janet Gaynor’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Emmy® and Tony® are registered trademarks.
In Wild Card and Parker I noticed that Jace’s diction was very poor much of the time so that I often had to guess what he was saying. Some time ago Bruce asked for suggestions as to who was the next Brando – the page is till there. Have we now found the next Brando in the most unlikely of places?
Anyway good work regarding Karl’s video! As always you provide many posters that I’ve never seen before, especially among the foreign language ones, and which go some way to attracting high personal satisfaction ratings from me, on this occasion 98%
The often unique vintage stills of course add to my pleasure and I liked all of the 13 STILLS in you’re the video, which are:
1/Take the High Ground-my Richard and Karl were close real-life friends.
2/Sir Maurice – any still involving him will get my approval
3/Parrish
4/from the Halls of Montezuma [“to the shores of Tripoli!”]
5/One Eyed Jacks
6/Cincinnati Kid
7/Baby Doll
8/How the West was Won
9/The Gunfighter
10/Streetcar – was that a behind the scenes photograph?
11/Patton
12/On the Waterfront
13/Karl and Michael Douglas.
I liked the latter pair in Streets of Frisco. That series made Karl a star albeit of the small screen.
Hey Bob….good breakdown on Steve’s Karl Malden page.
I’m not really familiar with this actress. I’ve only seen 2 Janet Gaynor films – A Star is Born and Small Town Girl.
But I am familiar with American singer Gloria ‘I Will Survive’ Gaynor. Were they related?
I’d always wanted to see Sunrise, it’s so high rated by some film buffs but never got round to it.
Nice work Bruce. Vote Up!
Hey Steve…..thanks for the visit and the thoughts on Janet Gaynor. I like you, have seen 2 of her movies. I have seen her top two UMR movies…Sunrise and 7th Heaven. Neither blew me away….though the one about war (hell…I am not sure both did not include war) was the better one. Ok…I had to do a quick IMDb check….ok neither one mentions war…..so. The one with the room and the guy leaving is the one I liked the best. Wow is that vague! Damn it…I guess I need to re-watch both of them…lol. I do not think Janet and Gloria are related. Good stuff as always.
I knew that Janet had made many movies with Charles because a member of my amateur film buffs group once quipped that he was “Mr Janet Gaynor” [now where have I heard that equation before!] but I hadn’t realised that it was 12 films –Wow! the only thing missing from their screen relationship is a little dog.
In the 1950s a trend developed for including the top pop singers of the day in movies. Examples are Ricky Nelson and Fabian who appeared in, for example respectively, Rio Bravo and North to Alaska, both top-starring The Duke; and of course the Great Elvis went on to make the 33 movies that Bruce lists on The King’s Cogerson page.
In 1957’s Bernardine it was singer Pat Boone’s turn to get the big screen treatment. However back in those days there was in some critical circles a rather snobbish and condescending attitude to pop singers; so one presumes that Janet was added to the cast of Bernardine to support Bonne by lending the movie “class”. Certainly her presence didn’t hurt because that year Quigley proclaimed Pat the 3rd most popular star in the US.
Bernardine was the first and only movie in which I ever saw Janet and coincidentally it was HER last big screen appearance. She later did stage work and appeared in a 1981 episode of the TV series The Love Boat [1977-87]. Standing just 5 feet tall Janet was one of the screen’s most diminutive females. [Oh, why couldn’t she have made 12 movies with Laddie!]
As for Charlie he had a limited but for a time prolific television career in the 1950s as Vern Albright from 1952-1955 in 126 episodes of My Little Myrna [sorry Margie] and got his own show The Charles Farrell Show in 1956. He was heavily involved in civic affairs and became Mayor of Palm Springs [1948-53]. He and Janet were real-life lovers as well as co-stars for a time. He had proposed to her back in 1928 but they never married
Hey Bob…..thanks for sharing your thoughts on Janet Gaynor and her movie careers. I like you, did not realize she had made so many movies with Charles Farrell. I need to add them to the Best Duos of All-Time. I saw numerous comments on that page….I am hoping to get that page updated tonight. I have an extra 45 minutes tonight before my night class starts after all day day class is over.
One day I will knock out a Pat Boone (he is a Joel subject…I can hear you groan….lol). Good point about how pop stars all got a chance to make movies in the 1950s and 1960s. Interesting points about Bernardinde. Boone had some clout as the movie did pretty well.
Tally count…all not too impressive. Flora 5, Steve 2, me 2 and you 1….for a grand total of 10 movies. Pretty poor for such big film buffs….I blame Flora for not seeing more of her movies…lol.
Charles Farrell will probably get an UMR page in the future too. As you mentioned Farrell and Gaynor were off screen partners as well. There are numerous books about their place in movie history. Farrell made the Quigley Top Stars list more than a few times. Good comment as always.
HI BRUCE:
Thanks for your feedback on my posts about Karl, Janet Gaynor and the lovely Diane. I appreciate your kind wishes for my holiday too; and as I told you MY TARGET is to get a few well-aimed [albeit good-naturedtongue in cheek] kicks in at you and Steve before I go.
Accordingly, I must leave you now and let you have some more comments that you can take into account if you update your Duo’s page, the stats in which are by my quick reckoning up to maybe 25% out of date.
When reading my comments remember “Many a true word is spoken in jest” because if you get the revamp wrong you could have not just a wimp like me to contend with but a formidable foe such as Flora.
Meanwhile keep safe.
Cogerson
February 14, 2020 at 11:02 pm
Check mark. Another Joel subject off the Rating The Movie Stars book….and check check mark..another Best Actress Winner off that list of people to write about. Only 5 Best Actress Winners left to do.
HI O GREAT ONE! Will you allow an ordinary regular of this site to introduce himself to you?That post above from your greatest Pupil on the site – certainly the only one so far who has “come out of the closet” to sing your praises – reminds me of Jean-paul Sartre’s brilliant satirical classic novel Nausea first published in 1938.
As I think one of this site’s scholars has mentioned before, in the plot of Nausea the central character meets a rather dull being called The Autodidact. Sartre being Sartre was incorporating a number of philosophical points into so naming that character; but apparently one of them was how humans could become so conditioned that they almost resembled automations.
In the Autodidact’s case he had resolved as a young man to educate himself by reading from A to Z in order, EVERY book on the shelves of his local library; and when the central character of the novel first meets him, The Autodidact had reached only D, but was still ploughing on!
Of course there are differences: The Autodidact wasn’t playing to an audience. My big worry would be therefore that your well-meaning Pupil with his compulsive pursuit of YOU could induce tedium that might ultimately drive some of his own regulars away – or worse: cause them to lose interest in your marvelous sayings and prejudices.
Yes, each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold. [Oscar Wilde]
Hi Bob, the more frustrated you get with Joel-mania the more scarily obsessed Bruce becomes. I always get a good laugh reading your Joel-centric posts. Wasn’t there a christmas song? Joel… Joel… oh wait that’s Noel… sorry. [sniggers]
HI STEVE:Thanks for your 10:11 am post yesterday. It’s nice to get some kind words in my role as Hirsch’s Nemesis on this site.
One film historian wrote years ago that the 1950s cinema thrived on matinee idols and that Jeff Chandler, with his gorgeous male looks, was such a female-audience “babe magnet” that if he hadn’t existed “Hollywood would have had to invent him.”
And so it is with Joel. When we state our opinions we can at times sound self-opinionated and pontificating [like Joel for example]; so that I like to inject humor into my posts to hopefully demonstrate that much as I respect all the regulars I don’t take OVER-seriously myself or anyone else on this site with the possible exception of, well, Joel again. So if WH hadn’t thrown me The Master I would have had to invent him -HE is my own private Big Jeff!
Actually when I can block out some of the crazy things Joel says [Mr Mumbles a “liability” indeed in guiding Guys and Dolls to its position as according to Variety “The No 1 money earner” of 1956 – Frankie although on the way up was only on the brink of establishing himself as a consistent box office star and was billed below even Jean Simmons] I do take seriously Joel’s 1983 book because it is one of my main points of reference these days, all thanks to WH! I am never anything if I am not grateful
Hey Steve….I think the thing Bob keeps forgetting…..is that without that book…..it is possible I would have not gone down this road (Hub Pages, Cogerson Movie Score and UMR). Without Joel’s book….I might have gone done a sports rabbit hole versus a movie rabbit hole….as sports is an interest that is pretty close to my movie interest. Add in the fact…I like goals. One goal was to do all the yearly reviews. Now that it is done….I am doing the Major Oscar winners list and Joel’s book subjects…sometimes….like Janet Gaynor….I get to cross one name off two lists. That bodes well for other double connections like Tatum O’Neal, Timothy Hutton, Ruth Gordon, Broderick Crawford and others.
“Janet Gaynor always tended to be overly sentimental but her wholesome charm appealed to the audiences of the 1930s.” – Rating The Movie Stars -1983
4 Star Janet Gaynor Movie Performances According To Joel’s Book
1927’s Seventh Heaven
1927’s Sunrise
1928’s Street Angel
1929’s The River
1931’s Daddy Long Legs
1938’s The Young In Heart
Check mark. Another Joel subject off the Rating The Movie Stars book….and check check mark..another Best Actress Winner off that list of people to write about. Only 5 Best Actress Winners left to do.