Want to know the best Joel Hirschhorn movies? How about the worst Joel Hirschhorn movies? Curious about Joel Hirschhorn box office grosses or which Joel Hirschhorn movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Joel Hirschhorn 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.
Joel Hirschhorn (1937-2005) was a two-time Oscar® winning American singer, composer and writer. Hirschhorn’s songs sold more than 90 million records. Various artists including Elvis Presley, recorded his songs…and Hollywood is still using his work in current movies. His IMDb page shows over 80 credits from 1966-2017. This page will rank Joel Hirschhorn movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.
Drivel Part 1: Why a Joel Hirschhorn UMR page? Well….his book….Rating the Movie Stars…is one of the most influential books on this website. Published in 1983, it is a book I have been referencing for almost 40 years. In that book, Hirschhorn, rated every movie that a movie star appeared in during their career. Sometime in 2010, for the millionth time I was looking at his book when I wondered; had he updated his ratings lately? A quick internet check provided the sad news that Mr. Hirchhorn had passed away in 2005. About a month later, I thought I could update the ratings….tunrs out those were the first baby steps of UMR.
Drivel Part 2: This page is from a request from Bob. Bob has been requesting a Joel Hirschhorn page for almost 2 years now. Constantly filling up our request page…with Hirschhorn requests….day after day. Well Bob….finally your Hirsch page is here….hope it was worth the wait…lol.
Joel Hirschhorn Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Joel Hirschhorn 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 Joel Hirschhorn movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn 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 Joel Hirschhorn movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Joel Hirschhorn movie won.
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn 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.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Joel Hirschhorn Table
- Five Joel Hirschhorn movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 22.72% of his movies listed. The Towering Inferno (1974) was his biggest box office hit when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average Joel Hirschhorn movie grosses $91.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 14 Joel Hirschhorn movies are rated as good movies…or 46.80% of his movies. The Ice Storm (1997) is his highest rated movie while The Fat Spy (1969) was his lowest rated movie.
- Three Joel Hirschhorn movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 13.63% of his movies.
- Two Joel Hirschhorn movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 9.09% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 8 Joel Hirschhorn movies scored higher than that average….or 36.36% of his movies. The Towering Inferno (1974) got the the highest UMR Score while The Fat Spy (1969) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Joel Hirschhorn
1. Joel Hirschhorn was born in Bronx, New York in 1937.
2. After graduating from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts, he became a regular performer on New York’s nightclub circuit, both as a solo singer and as a member of the rock & roll band, The Highlighters.
3. During the mid-1960s, Hirschhorn branched out into writing film soundtracks. The results were horrible. 1969’s The Fat Spy is considered to be one of the worst movies ever made.
4. Joel Hirschhorn’s The Fat Spy (1969) is the 11th worst movie in our UMR 36,000 plus movie database.
5. Joel Hirschhorn worked with songwriting partner Al Kasha from the 1960s until the late 1990s.
6. Joel Hirschhorn (and Al Kasha) were nominated for four Oscars® and four Golden Globes®. They won Oscars® for 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure and 1974’s The Towering Inferno. They received two Oscar® nominations for 1977’s Pete’s Dragon.
7. Joel Hirschhorn and Al Kasha also worked together on Broadway musicals, receiving Tony Award® for Best Original Score nominations for both Copperfield and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
8. Joel Hirschhorn the book author. Besides his book RatingThe Movie Stars, Hirschhorn also wrote 2001’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Songwriting.
9. *Joel Hirschhorn’s Bette Davis story: “Star quality is difficult to define, but my personal definition was formed after a lunch with Bette Davis. At the time (1972), Davis was to appear in the musical “Copperfield,” which I had co-written with Al Kasha. Al and I went to the Bel Air Hotel to play the score for her. She was a petite, almost delicated woman, but there was nothing timid about her direct gaze, and authoritative speaking voice. We need a piano and the empty dining room didn’t have one, so she told a work-man, “We must have a piano immediately.” She wasn’t rude, but her firmness brooked no argument. The piano materialized in seconds. She applauded after we performed the songs, and I modestly ventured that “We had a lot of help from Dickens.” She responded, “Yes, but look what you did with him!” Her conviction made me feel we were on par with Dickens, that he was lucky to have us as collaborators! She had wit, intelligence, force, charm, vulerability – but most of all, a highly charge belief in herself, in her ability to dominate. The performer who has this belief and this assured, takeover quality can make film vehicles timeless.”
10. Check out Joel Hirschhorn’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.
*Bette Davis story comes from Hirschhorn’s Rating The Movie Stars book.
Joel shows up at about 45 seconds.
ADDED QUOTES to further substantiate the final paragraph of M-s Kael observations reproduced in Part One of this post:
“He gave us our freedom. Anyone who does not recognise Brando as America’s greatest ever actor knows nothing about acting.” Jack Nicholson.
“The Don Quixote of actors [always tilting at windmills]. He dared so that we might see what could work.” Louis Jourdan
“In school plays, Frasier, they said I was a great actor with the charm of Danny Kaye, the range of Laurence Olivier and the magnetism of Marlon Brando.” Niles Crane in an episode about acting in the TV sitcom Frasier. [“Ham Radio” aired 22 April 1997]
INTERVIEWER:
“Who in your opinion is America’s greatest-ever actor?”
HENRY FONDA
“Marlon – when he WANTS to be!”
“HE is the marker. There is before Brando and there is after Brando. -That’s IT!” – Martin Scorsese who along with Steven Spielberg spent a few years and some of his own money restoring 1961’s One Eyed Jacks which starred Marlon and was the only movie he ever directed.
ADDED CONTEMPORARY MATERIAL: RANKING THE MOVIE STARS by Joel Hirschhorn
This book was published in 1983 at the height of the further “ feeding frenzy” referred to in M-s Kael’s article and at the bottom of this post are some quotes from page 57 of the Hirschhorn book which is mostly a good reference source and therefore fair value for money but seems to have gone a bit over-the-top in some of its negative analysis of Brando’s career, and certainly is unnecessarily sarcastic at times, as if the author was bearing in mind that the Hollywood Overlords had again declared the kind of “open season” on Brando that M-s Kael mentions and expected the “faithful” in the film community to play their part in the demonisation of Marlon; or as if Brando had done something bad to Mr Hirschhorn personally.
Within that context it is indeed instructive that the decade that Mr Hirschhorn mentions in the quotes below was the one that started with Brando’s ‘sins’ at the 1973 Oscars ceremony and that Brando’s earnings are again singled out for derision as was the case in previous decades, as if the numerous other rich movie stars of his time were not also getting paid massive sums. Steve McQueen for example reportedly instructed his agents to be sure to get him financial deals at least equivalent to what Brando was being paid.
In slighting Brando’s money-earning capacity as he does Mr Hirschhorn does not qualify his put-down by mentioning that Brando made 6 movies in the decade concerned and that 4 of them were blockbusters which according to Wikipedia had a combined inflation-adjusted worldwide gross of $4.480-$4.755 billion against an overall budget of $420 million- an average some of what the author says on page 57 does not give the full picture and therefore lacks balance so that Mr Hirschhorns readers would probably find it difficult to make fair and reasonable judgements for themselves.
_____________________________________________
‘Nobody cared about Desiree or Brando’s portrayal of Napoleon and he was a liability to the over-produced Guys and Dolls – Frank Sinatra was justified in referring to him derisively as “mumbles”.
Marlon Brando seems to have retired after enduring a barrage of criticism in the last decade. Either the Great Method Actor has run out of method, or he’s made enough money.’
________________________________________________________________
ADDED CONTEMPORARY MATERIAL: RANKING THE MOVIE STARS by Joel Hirschhorn
This book was published in 1983 at the height of the further “ feeding frenzy” referred to in M-s Kael’s article and at the bottom of this post are some quotes from page 57 of the Hirschhorn book which is mostly a good reference source and therefore fair value for money but seems to have gone a bit over-the-top in some of its negative analysis of Brando’s career, and certainly is unnecessarily sarcastic at times, as if the author was bearing in mind that the Hollywood Overlords had again declared the kind of “open season” on Brando that M-s Kael mentions and expected the “faithful” in the film community to play their part in the demonisation of Marlon; or as if Brando had done something bad to Mr Hirschhorn personally.
Within that context it is indeed instructive that the decade that Mr Hirschhorn mentions in the quotes below was the one that started with Brando’s ‘sins’ at financial deals at least equivalent to what Brando was being paid.1973 Oscars ceremony and that Brando’s earnings are again singled out for derision as if the numerous other rich movie stars of his time were not also getting paid massive sums. Steve McQueen for example instructed his agents to be sure to get him financial deals at least equivalent to what Brando was being paid
In slighting Brando’s money-earning capacity as he does Mr Hirschhorn does not qualify his put-down by mentioning that Brando made 6 movies in the decade concerned and that 4 of them were blockbusters which according to Wikipedia had an combined inflation-adjusted worldwide gross of $4.480-$4.755 billion against an overall budget of $420 million- an average per movie of at least $1.12 billion against a budget of $105 million per movie. Accordingly much of what the author says does not give the full picture and therefore lacks balance so that mr Hirschhorns readers would probab ly find it difficult to make fair and reasonable judgement for themselves.
_____________________________________________
‘Nobody cared about Desiree or Brando’s portrayal of Napoleon and he was a liability to the over-produced Guys and Dolls – Frank Sinatra was justified in referring to him derisively as “mumbles”.
Marlon Brando seems to have retired after enduring a barrage of criticism in the last decade. Either the Great Method Actor has run out of method, or he’s made enough money.’
________________________________________________________________
MARLON BRANDO: AN AMERICAN HERO by Pauline Kael
Pauline [1919-2001] was the revered New Yorker film critic from 1968 – 1991 and this is an extract from her much longer article under the above heading first written in 1966 and later updated.
_____________________________________________________________
It is one of the uglier traditions of movie business that frequently when a star gets big enough to want big money and artistic selection or control of his productions, the studios launch large-scale campaigns designed to cut him down to an easier-to-deal-with size or to supplant him with younger, cheaper talent.
The gossip columnists serve as the shock troops with all those little items about how so-and-so is getting a big head, how he isn’t taking the advice of the studio executives who know best, and so forth; and the professional critics in the pay of -or wishing to ingratiate themselves with – the status quo look for every opportunity to savage his work.
It happened to Lilliam Gish and Monroe in one fashion or another. What was unusual in Brando’s case though was the sort of people who joined in the attack when Hollywood declared open season on Marlon. Truman Capote was one of the prime examples.
There were also many lesser mortals who attacked Brando for such mundane things as wanting to actually make money in the much-heralded America: the land of opportunity!; and he was roasted as well when some movies that he made were not classics whereas many other actors were tolerated and even praised in routine fare.
And naturally after his shenanigans at the 1973 Oscar ceremony when he gave the Hollywood establishment the two fingers because of his perception of how unfairly they depicted on screen the cause of the American Indians, the knives were out again for a couple of decades and the “usual suspects” of critics, journalists and other hangers-on who wanted to please their Tinsel Town Masters joined in a feeding-frenzy on what they hoped would ultimately be the professional corpse of the man who had changed American acting forever and therefore most antagonised the Old Guard.
Fortunately whilst most of Brando’s detractors are now has-beens or “never weres”, thanks to the adulation of more modern generations of movie people and other types of entertainers such as Barbra Streisand and Ophra Winfrey Brando’s legacy is now one that is revered and he makes the Top 10 of virtually every ranking list of Great Actors/Stars being published these days.
Further to my comments in Part 2 about the box office success of Guys n Dolls Bruce gives it a high review rating of 77%; and 3 months before Guys n Dolls was released , the musical It’s Always Fair Weather starring song and dance iconic legend Eugene Kelly premiered and overall in the States earned just 46% of the gross figure that Guys n Dolls ended up with and the Kelly flick actually penalised MGM with a net loss equivalent to 18 million in 2022 dollars.
Therefore despite Joel’s barbs it is not obvious to me how Brando’s presence could have harmed Guys n Dolls much and indeed the revered film historian David Shipman wrote “Somehow Brando manages to overshadow Sinatra [a professional singing icon] in Guys n Dolls”
In his apparent effort to ‘demonise’ Brando Hirsch piled on more insult by continuing on page 57 of the 1983 book with the castigation that ‘Sinatra was justified in referring to [Marlon] as “Mumbles” ’ There it would seem Joel was sadly lowering himself to spreading malicious gossip as it is unlikely that the 17-year-old Hirsch would have been on the set of Guys n Dolls back in 1955 to hear WHAT Sinatra said
Or indeed it’s doubtful if Joel would ever have been privy to ANY of Sinatra’s private discussions and some other gossip telling us what Frankie said is not the same as it coming straight from the horse’s mouth; and in fact even it coming from The Work Horse’s mouth would not suffice either!
Actually the only DIRECT quote that I personally have seen from Frank about Brando was when Frankie was asked in an interview how he as a singer coped when he had to switch to a dramatic part, and he replied “I try my best to come to terms with the character; but if I get really stuck I always tend to take a leaf out of Marlon Brando’s book.” High praise indeed and as it is a direct quote I’ll go with that.
It has disappointed me that I have so-far been the only viewer on this site to call out guys like Hirsch -and there are many of them: they seem to be everywhere – for the hyperbolic and sweeping statements they make at times, particularly ones that could damage a performer’s reputation. So I thought that Joel’s page on Cogerson should be updated in the light of my comments about how critics bad-mouthed Ladd’s Saigon as a “flop” which bears at least a mild comparison with some of Joel’s OTT rants about Marlon and in particular Desiree and Guys n Dolls
Anyway Hirsch may not have liked Brando’s singing but Barbra Streisand has said that she always wanted to sing with Brando on screen and she made her own wish come true: please google Barbra Streisand and Marlon Brando sing ‘I Know’ from Guys and Dolls.