Joel McCrea Movies

mccrea-1111Want to know the best Joel McCrea movies?  How about the worst Joel McCrea movies?  Curious about Joel McCrea box office grosses or which Joel McCrea movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Joel McCrea 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 McCrea (1905-1990) was an American actor whose career spanned 50 years. His IMDb page shows 95 acting credits from 1927-1976. This page ranks 65 Joel McCrea movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  His television performances, his uncredited roles, his cameos and some of his late 1920s and early 1930s movies (lack of box office information) were not included in the rankings.

Drivel Part:  So later today we are headed to Las Vegas and Hollywood.  In Las Vegas, WoC is a featured speaker at a conference.  In Hollywood….I have an appointment at the USC (University of Southern California) to view the William Schaefer Warner Brother’s Ledgers.  So before we leave for a week….we wanted to get a new page published.  Recently it has come to our attention…that Joel McCrea was being unfairly discriminated against at UMR.com (as he did not have a UMR page).  Well since we strongly believe that everybody should be treated equally and fairly…we have finally written a page on Mr. McCrea.  So Lyle, Flora and Bob you request has been completed. 

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Joel McCrea in 1941’s Sullivan’s Travels

Joel McCrea Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Joel McCrea 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 McCrea movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Joel McCrea movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Joel McCrea movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Joel McCrea 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 Joel McCrea movie received.
  • Sort Joel McCrea 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 McCrea Table

  1. Fifteen Joel McCrea movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 23.05% of his movies listed. Union Pacific (1939) was his biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Joel McCrea movie grossed $68.50 million in adjusted domestic box office gross.
  3. That translates to a career adjusted box office of $4.45 billion.
  4. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  41 Joel McCrea movies are rated as good movies…or 63.07% of his movies. Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is his highest rated movie while Cry Blood, Apache (1970) is his lowest rated movie.
  5. Eleven Joel McCrea movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 16.92% of his movies.
  6. Two Joel McCrea movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 3.07% of his movies.
  7. An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 32 Joel McCrea movies scored higher that average….or 49.23% of his movies.  The More the Merrier (1943) got the the highest UMR Score while Cry Blood, Apache (1970) got the lowest UMR Score.
Fay Wray and Joel McCrea in 1932's The Most Dangerous Game
Fay Wray and Joel McCrea in 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game

Possibly Interesting Facts About Joel McCrea

1. Joel Albert McCrea was born in in South Pasadena, California in 1905.

2. Joel McCrea was good around horses.  Even as a high school student, he was working as a stunt double and held horses for cowboy stars William S. Hart and Tom Mix.

3. Joel McCrea met the real Wyatt Earp in Hollywood in 1928 and ended up playing the iconic lawman in 1955’s Wichita.

4. Joel McCrea’s nickname was McFee.

5.  Joel McCrea was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1969.

6.  Joel McCrea was married 1 time.  He married actress Frances Dee in 1933…..he passed away on their 57th anniversary….they had three children.

7.  We found worldwide box office on 13 of Joel McCrea’s movies:

  • The More The Merrier (1943) $211.50 million in adjusted gross
  • Foreign Correspondent (1940) $ 188.90 million in adjusted gross
  • The Outriders (1950) $ 109.30 million in adjusted gross
  • Stars In My Crown (1950) $107.50 million in adjusted gross
  • Primrose Path (1940) $103.20 million in adjusted gross
  • Our Little Girl (1935) $99.50 million in adjusted gross
  • The Lost Squadron (1932) $97.70 million in adjusted gross
  • Three Blind Mice (1938) $86.80 million in adjusted gross
  • The Common Law (1931) $85.10 million in adjusted gross
  • The Silver Cord (1933) $83.50 million in adjusted gross
  • Private Worlds (1935) $82.40 million in adjusted gross
  • Bird of Paradise (1932) $82.10 million in adjusted gross
  • The Most Dangerous Game (1932) $47.80 million in adjusted gross

8.  Joel McCrea was infamously modest about his own acting abilities, often bordering on a soft-spoken contempt.  The Top 2 actresses on the AFI Screen Legends list, Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, however spoke very highly of McCrea’s acting skills.

9. Joel McCrea was awarded 2 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 1719 Vine Street and for Radio at 6241 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.

10. Check out Joel McCrea ‘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.

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32 thoughts on “Joel McCrea Movies”

  1. 1 STEVE Where an a star has made many films am always interested in what films you actually select for your video and as McCrea in his later years was known mainly for his westerns I was wondering what your split would be between the westerns and the non-westerns. It was pretty even actually and I think you have included most of his best films in each of the two categories. My only personal disappointment was that both you and Bruce ranked Ramrod a bit lower than I would have as I have always considered it as one of Joel’s finest westerns. IMDB though leans a bit more in my direction with an almost 70% rating

    2 I especially liked the posters for Frenchie [very suggestive!] The Great Man’ Lady and the final racy one for Sullivan’s Travels. Great stills of Stanywck, McCrea and Robert Preston from Union Pacific, McCrea and Maureen O’Hara from Buffalo Bill, Joel’s solo one, and an absolutely marvellous one of McCrea and Randy Scott standing back to back with six guns in hand and smiling.

    3 Bruce and you are agreed on 3 of the Top 5. Overall a fine presentation worth 9.2/10 and which I think is an excellent companion piece for Bruce’s fine profile of Joel before Christmas. Hopefully therefore your McCrea video will please the Maestro too and John should be pleased about the amicable billing arrangement between Randy Scott and Joel for Ride the High Country [aka Guns in the Afternoon – my own title preference]. As I think I’ve mentioned before the two legends dined together at a Brown Derby restaurant and in front of excited fellow diners tossed a coin to decide matters and as your posters demonstrate Randy won the toss.

    4 As I indicated yesterday your posters often chart a star’s rise up the prestige ladder. In relation to the McCrea/Stanwyck pairings your poster for the 1934 Gambling Lady shows Babs billed massively above title and Joel in small letters below the title; your one for Interns Can’t Take Money in 1937 puts Babs and Joel both above the title but with him still in smaller letters; and your later ones show them with equal billing though Babs still 1st. Their final one was Trooper Hook in 1957 (not in your selections)and at last Joel got 1st billing as IMDB illustrates though Barbara of course had the last word as she was included as an AFI legends whilst Joel was not.

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, trivia and biiling info. Glad you liked the posters and stills. Ramrod’s only high rating was from IMDB the rest were in the middle.

      Ironically Joel McCrea’s top 2 highest rated weren’t westerns. Ride the High Country is his highest rated western, no.3 on my chart and 7th on Bruces. Looking at the box office for that film it wasn’t a big hit, other less well known westerns were more popular.

      McCrea’s four most successful movies in the US were westerns with The Virginian topping them all. Top rated Sullivan’s Travels not as popular as The More the Merrier or The Palm Beach Story.

      Reply

    2. Actually Steve Ride the High Country in my book was OK but it was not one of my fave Scott or McCrea westerns as I tend not to like movies where they travel about a lot and I prefer the atmosphere of town/saloon based horse operas such as Scott’s A Lawless Street, McCrea’s Witchita and Audie Murphy’s No Name on the Bullet. The exception was James Stewart/Robert Ryan’s The Naked Spur where there was so much tension between those two that the suspense could easily have been likened unto Hitchcock out west. I should add that I don’t like either what are usually called the “road” films [not in the Crosby/Hope sense]. I suppose basically I’m just a settled type of person. .

      Reply

      2. Hey Bob…. I love the ending of Ride The High Country…but I agree with you about other parts of that movie. I have not seen the other movies you mentioned. 🙂

        Reply

    3. Hey Bob….I enjoyed reading your comments on the McCrea billings in the posters….I have noticed like Steve…I have been paying more attention to the billings while watching Steve’s videos….I wonder why?

      As for Ramrod…it did make the Top 25…..and it does fall in the “good” category of the ratings. Good information.

      Reply

  2. Cogerson

    Joel McCrea appeared in 21 color movies. He started slow. His first color appearance was in Buffalo Bill in 1944. He also appeared in The Virginian in 1946 & South of St Louis in 1949. His total of 3 up through the forties is fairly low. He came alive in the fifties with 15 color films during his B western phase. His one appearance in the 1960’s was in Ride the High Country, his best color film. He had two more appearances in color in the 1970’s. Cry Blood, Apache–apparently as a favor to his son Jody who was the star, & Mustang Country in 1976, nothing like Ride the High Country but a respectable final film. I wouldn’t be surprised if after he saw Cry Blood, Apache, or learned from others how rotten it was, he agreed to do Mustang Country just to have something besides Cry Blood, Apache as his swan song.

    Reply

  3. MORNIN BRUCE

    1 Decision at Sundown (1957) was another one of the few later western movies in which Randy partially deserted his holier than thou persona. In that movie his character like Thomas Dunson in Red River is so revenge-obsessed that behavioural defects emerge and if I recall correctly the films ends with Scott becoming so disgusted with himself that he gets drunk. Decision at Sundown is the only one of the 7 Scott/Boettcher films not included in your existing Scott table. Can you remember Joel EVER playing the less than true-blue hero at least in a western ?

    2 With the McCrea entry you have squared the circle and I think there is now a Cogerson page on every major star strongly associated with the western genre the others immediately springing to mind being Cooper, Widmark, Stewart Glenn Ford, Laddie and of course the would-be Cowboy of the Century Bob Taylor

    3 In Cafe Society there is as I have said a cascade of name dropping in the opening sequences of the film and I’m sure that the only star eventually mentioned who is now minus a Cogerson page is Paul Muni, though possibly not too many of your readers would be interested in him today as I don’t think he was major box office and tended to be regarded as what was known as a ‘prestige’ star in his heyday.

    4 Anyway I’ve always enjoyed westerns so it was fun having the McCrea/Scott exchanges with you. Hope you’re well settling in again. Best wishes BOB

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. I see the error with Buffalo Bill….it has been fixed…though I know even though this page is almost brand new….after my USC trip….I need to fix a few of these movies….but there should be more worldwide box office.
      2. Maybe when I update the Scott page I will have found some information on Decision At Sundown….I noticed that both Scott and McCrea’s movies in the mid to late 1950s…it became harder and harder to find box office information….as the sun was setting on their careers…I feel the box office returns were diminishing pretty rapidly.
      3. Good to know….that I have the westerns covered….though I imagine there are some Will Rogers, Tom Mix and other fans….that strongly disagree with your thought….lol.
      4. Paul Muni? I think he would make a good choice….sadly for someone who was thought so highly off in the 1930s and 1940s is almost a forgotten star.
      Thanks for the suggestion to finally do a McCrea page.

      Reply

  4. Hi Bruce,

    One lazy Sunday afternoon my father and I watched a movie called Fort Massacre. It was the first time I watched a movie with my old man. It was tough and it was gritty. I took notice of the Sergeant; strong, heroic, flawed…..tragic.

    Joel McRae was not, arguably, in the top 50 greatest stars of the classic era however popular he became in the late thirties and forties. This led to the best scripts always landing on Wayne’s, Stewart’s or Fonda’s desks effectively leaving little material for guys like Randolph Scott, McRae and Richard Boone, amoung others, to bite into. When a good script did filter through they were keen enough to recognize it and, with the right production company, were able to make great pictures due mostly to their strong presence and solid performances which always seemed to lift the remaining cast members to greater heights. Ride the High Country, Rio Conchos and 7 Men From Now are excellent examples.

    I am forced to agree with Bob; the straightest shooter of the bunch has to be McRae. He, along with Wayne, Stewart and Scott, stood tall helping to shape generations of movie goers who looked for strength, honesty and all the virtues that men of valour lived by. He remains for me the indominitable Sergeant.

    Great era, great actor, great page.

    Marcel

    Reply

    1. Hey Marcel…thanks for sharing your story on your dad, you and Fort Massacre….I love hearing about stuff like that….a great memory to have. I agree with you about him not being a Top 50 great star. I think he is in the same group as Glenn Ford, Bruce Willis and Randolph Scott…..great movie personalities …but just a little short of all-time greatness.

      Well the good news for Scott and McRae….during the 1950s….there were plenty of western stories out there for them both to be able to easily share. I am sure Bob will be happy to know he has somebody willing to agree with him…lol. Actually he is very “movie” smart with lots of stories to make his points. Thanks for the visit and the comment.

      Reply

  5. 1 IMDB regards Joel as one of the greatest western stars of all time and personally I think that the greatest affinity with the genre was shared by him, the Duke and Randolph Scott. Not only were they among the most prolific of western makers but they seemed to me to be the chief representatives of the “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” school which went hand in hand with an on-screen strict moral Code of Ethics. Even in Ride the High Country/aka Guns in the Afternoon where Randy abnormally played a flawed character he reverted to The Code at the end

    2 Of course they practised that Code in different ways with Duke being the most extrovert one, Randy often being the tight-lipped icily determined hero and Joel at times the more initially hesitant, gentlemanly and avuncular of the trio. And what a success story with Duke thought of as THE AMERICAN in the eyes of many people and the other two becoming a duo of Hollywood’s richest stars!

    3 What McCrea and Scott also had in common was that in their westerns in a perfectly honourable way of course they tended to date and marry women half their age whose fathers were roughly the same age as our two heroes but insisted in addressing them as “Young Man.”

    4 Joel was very relaxing to watch and if someone was to challenge me to name an actor who can be highly upright on the screen without being boring I would say “OK – Joel McCrea.”

    5 As Steve has suggested in his post Cogerson is probably unique in comprehensively covering the domestic commercial aspects of Joel’s career with a selection of worldwide grosses thrown in for good measure; and if I go to see Woody Allen’s Cafe Society again I will be tempted to stand up and say to others in the audience “Do you realise that the greats stars just mentioned ALL have a page in Cogerson ?” !

    MB: Joel’s Colorado Territory (1949) is a western remake of the Bogart crime classic High Sierra.

    Best wishes BOB

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. Good point about Scott (I keep thinking I need to do his update), Wayne and McCrea. Another good point about Scott in Ride The High Country. Originally McCrea was going to play the Scott part…but backed out because he did not want to play the “almost bad guy”. Scott agreed to switch…because he did not mind playing “bad guys”.
      2. Wayne and Scott were both very smart with their money..especially Scott….good breakdown of the trilogy.
      3. I think the fact that Scott and McCrea were so familiar is one of the reasons why their Ride The High Country is now considered a classic movie…even though it was ignored when it first came out.
      4. Good to know….that the UMR lists are now back in order…with us adding Joel M. to the show…..lol.
      5. Colorado Territory is one of the Warner Brothers ledger numbers I got so it will be seeing some numbers change in the near future.
      As always….thanks for your contribution to the page.

      Reply

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