Jeanne Crain (1925-2003) was an Oscar®-nominated American actress. Her career spanned over 4 decades. She received an Oscar® nomination for Best Actress in 1949’s Pinky. She was also noted for her ability in ice skating. Her IMDb page shows over 57 acting credits from 1943 to 1972. This page ranks 29 Jeanne Crain movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, bit parts and her movies not released in North America theaters are not included in the rankings.
Jeanne Crain Movies Ranked By Combination of Box Office, Reviews and Awards (UMR Score) *Classic UMR Table (the one with all the stats is the second table)
Jeanne Crain 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 Jeanne Crain movies by co-stars of her movies.
- Sort Jeanne Crain movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Jeanne Crain movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Jeanne Crain 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 Jeanne Crain movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Jeanne Crain movie won.
- Sort Jeanne Crain 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.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Just added Steve’s Jeanne Crain You Tube Video to the page. Our thoughts on his video and her career.
“I see I have a Jeanne Crain page….I do not even remember putting it together. Probably means I am getting old and have written too many pages…lol. Ok…on to Jeanne Crain’s movies. I have only seen 4 of her movies. #14 Pinky….one of her biggest hits….very very dated #4 People Will Talk….not one of my favorite Cay Grant movies. #2 Leave Her To Heaven….Gene Tierney is awesome in the movie. #1 A Letter To Three Wives….nice drama…one of Kirk Douglas’ first hits. On the good side of only seeing 4 of her movies…3 are in your Top 4. Nice video. Voted up and shared at UMR.”
Hi Bruce, happens to me too, plenty of videos here I can’t remember producing, maybe I’m turning into a video-making robot?
I’ve seen 5, you’ve seen 4 and Flora has seen 13.
I haven’t seen her no.1 film but I have seen the no.2, not one of my favorites. I liked the two westerns in the top 10.
Thanks again for the comment, vote and share, always appreciated.
Hey Steve…I think we are getting old…and the sheer volume of pages and videos might even confuse younger people…lol.
These are the best Crain video STILLS for me (1) a very “revealing” opening one! (2) with Laddie, sadly him looking very puffy in the face but even I realised he was on his way out when that movie was made, though his own company Jaguar Productions made it (3) with Holden in Apartment for Peggy, and Crain billed first – the nerve of Jeanne, outbilling the Great Golden! 4) with Sinatra in Joker is Wild (5) closing solo of Jeanne when she was at her physical best (6) lobby card for Leave Her to heaven (7) Big Jeff in Tattered Dress lobby card (8) lobby card of Crain and Charles William Stuart in Fastest Gun Alive and (9) Jeanne & the Great Centurion in Man without a Star.
What nostalgia those last 2 lobby cards and still bring back to me! Strange though your Charley Bill one being in colour as any print I saw of that movie was in bw.
Who knows, who knows
Who knows whichaway the right way goes
The night is dark, the way is far
For a man without a star?
Who knows, who knows
Who knows which way the whirlwind blows
Or where the trail of tomorrow goes
For a man without a star?
Ah yesteryear! I remember a pal and I coming out of the cinema singing those lyrics. For me therefore your video was worth a 98% rating for both its own qualities and for old times sake. You and Joel Hirschhorn the 2nd agree on 5 of Jeanne’s best reviewed movies. You include in your 6 Joker is Wild whereas the Junior Master goes instead for The Model and The Marriage Broker, probably because his “fantasy woman” Thelma Ritter is in it!
HI STEVE Please see below the 4 posts that Bruce and I exchanged about Jeanne between 17 and 25 Aug last year. Those 4 posts probably set the standard for the rest of the year!
Jeanne had unfortunately no acting awards and just 1 nomination, which was an Oscar nom for 1949’s Pinky. However I found her a mature and lovely actress to watch and my favourite Crain movies are Man without a Star with Kirk, Fastest Gun Alive with Charley Bill, The Tattered Dress with Jeff Chandler and her two with Dana Andrews, Duel in the Jungle and Madison Avenue, all covered in your video
None of these are recognised classics but some should be well enough known to movie buffs and I found them all solidly entertaining. Guns of the Timberland wasn’t up to much but as Laddie was in it I liked it well enough when –aged 19! – I first saw it.
POSTERS that impressed me most in your video (1) Queen of the Nile (2) both ones for Gentlemen marry Brunettes (3) boyhood fave of mine City of Badmen, which WH ignores (4) 2 for Take Care of My Little Girl (5) raunchy one for The Fan (6) foreign language one for Tattered Dress (7) raunchy first one for Duel in the Jungle (8) 1st one for Home In Indiana (9) foreign language one for Pinky (10) 2nd one for Cheaper by the Dozen (11) 1st one for Margie (12) 1st one for Leave Her to Heaven and (13) another “revealing” one this time for Dangerous Crossing
I saw Dangerous Crossing when I was 12 back in 1953 on a double bill with Rory Calhoun’s western Powder River and to get two movies on the one matinee programme in those days the local Castle cinema would do its own editing out of some scenes. However movie house equipment was so primitive back then that the points of cuts were immediately identifiable and when one occurred we kids would yell out in unison “CUT !” Apparently Rory’s character was based on Wyatt Earp but was given the macho name of Chino Bull in the movie- cue for a Statham remake?
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia, anecdote, comparison and song lyrics, much appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
You mention Jeanne being billed over Bill Holden well I was surprised at the amount of first billings she was getting in her ‘hey day’, even topping Myrna Loy in Belles on their Toes! [cue gasps]
I’ve managed to squeeze in more movies on the video than Bruce has on his chart, that doesn’t happen often. The two Italian epics that start the video off and City of Bad Men are the missing films from Bruce’s chart.
I could have made it a top 30 and left those two Italian films out but I liked the posters, it would have been a crime to ignore them. 😉
Only one film scores 10 out of 10 from Crain’s filmography – A Letter to Three Wives, there is a 9 scorer – People Will Talk, and 10 films scored 8 out of 10.
A Letter to Three Wives tops IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes’ Jeanne Crain charts.
Jeanne was married for nearly 70 years! She had 7 children, two of them died before she did. She died 2 months after her husband died.
Hey Bob and Steve….good Jeanne Crain comments.
Hey Steve…. I noticed immediately that Steve has more movies on his video than I do on my table…and yes that does not happen too often. 70 years is pretty damn impressive.
Hey Bob…..Good memory about Dangerous Crossing…..not sure how many movies I can recall watching when I was 12 years old……at least without doing some research.
Looks like Steve’s Crain video will easily get more views than our UMR page…..it has taken almost a year to reach 1600 views….while Steve has already crossed the 300 mark after some hours…..good job Steve.
HI BRUCE
You and Steve mentioning that his Crain video had, for once, more films mentioned in it than its corresponding Cogerson page reminds me of a story about my tenor idol John McCormack and his friend the Great Caruso.
Enrico usually sold more records than John but one year the position was reversed and when they met for supper Caruso instructed McCormack “Don’t let that happen again!”
Hey Bob….it happens so “rarely”…that when it does happen….I am glad for my “big brother”….plus he always has the benefit of television movies. Good stuff.
HI STEVE
Thanks for the usual detailed and informative feedback.
As I didn’t watch movies before the 1950s I too was surprised in hindsight at how big Jeanne was in the 1940s and thus was given all those top billed rolls that you mention
Her career quickly took a nosedive in the 1950s though and it will be seen that whilst she outbilled Kirk in 1949’s Letter to 3 Wives by the time 1955’s Man without a Star came round Kirk got top billing.
Jeanne may have got billed above Myrna as you point out but Crain was never made a Cogerson Box office Queen nor did Jeanne ever receive any “Master love”, sadly having been excluded form this site’s 1983 Bible from the pen of The Great One. .