Want to know the best Johnny Weissmuller movies? How about the worst Johnny Weissmuller movies? Curious about Johnny Weissmuller box office grosses or which Johnny Weissmuller movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Johnny Weissmuller 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.
Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American competition swimmer, water polo player and actor. He was best known for playing Tarzan in many films and for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century. His IMDb page shows 38 acting credits from 1929 to 1976. This page will rank Johnny Weissmuller movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.
FYI – Talk about the differences in sources. My MGM ledgers make me feel very confident in my Tarzan box office estimations. As for my Jungle Jim estimations….and I feel almost no confidence in my estimations. Had to rely on the Harrison Reports and movie books.
Johnny Weissmuller Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews, and awards.
Johnny Weissmuller 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 any way you want.
- Sort Johnny Weissmuller movies by his co-stars
- Sort Johnny Weissmuller movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- SortJohnny Weissmuller movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Johnny Weissmuller 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 Johnny Weissmuller movie received.
- Sort Johnny Weissmuller movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews, and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Check out Johnny Weissmuller‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
I note The Work Horse’s reservations in the matter but I am nevertheless glad to see stats for the Jungle Jim [JJ] pictures as I have seen no other source ever attempting to attach grosses to those films which were a big part of my own earliest boyhood years.
Indeed I don’t think that the box office figures that Bruce has given us will be too far off the mark as they are just about what I would have expected given that the 16 JJ movies were low-budget B efforts whose average length is just under 69 minutes.
The first JJ feature in 1948 had a paltry budget of $3.8 million in today’s money; and Johnny’s fee for it was 810,000 in 2020 dollars though he could lose up to two thirds of that if he put on weight over 190 pounds. “If he can’t take it off by exercise he takes it off by worry” producer Sam Katzman quipped! It strikes me that if the later Brando had had to accept that kind of condition in his contract he would never have gotten round to collecting the huge salaries that so annoyed Joel Hirschhorn!
Sadly towards the end of his life Johnny fell into very ill health and was hospitalised for a time. It is said that such was his mental condition in those days that he disturbed the other inmates at night by constantly in his sleep breaking into his famous Tarzan yell. However when he died in 1984 he was honoured with a 21-gun salute [normally befitting a head-of-state] which was arranged by Senator Ted Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan.
I have a number of Jungle Jim films. I bought 4 put out on Goodtimes video in the 80’s. Back in the 1990’s I think AMC ran all of them (when they were still all movies and no commercials) and I taped them from TV.
Johnny Weissmuller has never been on the Oracle of Bacon Top 1000 list. These are the few people on the 2020 list he appeared with.
68 JOHN CARRADINE Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
76 DEAN STOCKWELL Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
84 BRUCE DERN Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
107 MICKEY ROONEY RODEO DOUGH (1940)
441 TERI GARR Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
501 RALPH BELLAMY Stage Door Canteen (1943)
537 WOODY STRODE Jungle Man-Eaters (1954)
667 PETER LAWFORD Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
780 JOHN DEHNER Captive Girl (1950)
805 CHARLES LANE Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942)
805 KEYE LUKE Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
837 BRODERICK CRAWFORD Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
851 ALDO RAY Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
860 MIKE MAZURKI Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
887 MADELINE KAHN Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
907 WALTER PIDGEON Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
John appeared with 7 Oscar winners.
ART CARNEY Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
BARRY FITZGERALD Tarzan’s Secret Treasure (1941)
BRODERICK CRAWFORD Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
HELEN HAYES Stage Door Canteen (1943)
JANE DARWELL Stage Door Canteen (1943)
KATHARINE HEPBURN Stage Door Canteen (1943)
PAUL MUNI Stage Door Canteen (1943)
Won Ton Ton and Stage Door Canteen help John a lot. Unfortunately another film he appeared in, stacked with cameos did not make any contributions to the 2 lists, The Phynx from 1970.
An interesting new UMR page. hmm I’d say Weissmuller is my favorite Tarzan. I’ve watched the MGM Tarzans of the 30’s and early 40s many times over the years, not so much Johnny’s RKO Tarzan. I have both series in DVD box sets.
I may have seen some of the Jungle Jim movies but I can’t remember for sure.
I’ve seen 12 of the 31 films on the chart. All of them Tarzan. My favorite is Tarzan and His Mate, followed by Tarzan the Ape Man.
Looking at the box office chart – Johnny’s New York Adventure is the top Tarzan, ironic in that it was the last of the MGM series.
Good stuff Bruce. Vote Up!
Hey Steve….thanks for checking out our Johnny Tarzan page. We would have published it a lot earlier if it were not for the Jungle Jim movies…it took forever to come up with a good “educated guess” on it’s grosses. Tally count: 12 is a good total. I have seen 5 for sure….probably more but the Tarzan movies are hard for me to seperate in my mind. All 5 are Tarzan movies….as I had not even heard of his Jungle Jim movies. The rights to Tarzan would make a good movie…lots and lots of fighting over who owns the Tarzan rights. Good stuff as always.
Another Joel subject off the boards….down to the teens now….as we have 19 to go.
Excellent UMR Page
Thank you Mike.