Want to know the best Orson Welles movies? How about the worst Orson Welles movies? Curious about Orson Welles’s box office grosses or which Orson Welles movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Orson Welles 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.
One of our goals here at Ultimate Movie Rankings is do a career movie page on every member of the American Film Institute’s Top 50 Greatest Screen Legends list. Orson Welles (1915-1985) is ranked as the 16th greatest actor on that list. Welles is just behind #15 Gene Kelly and just ahead of #17 Kirk Douglas.
Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theater, radio, and film. In 1937 he gained notoriety for his adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In 1938 he broadcast one of the most famous radio shows ever…The War of the Worlds. In 1941 he released his movie masterpiece Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane is consistently ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. Orson Welles on his early success…”I started at the top and worked down”.
His IMDb page shows 123 acting credits, 54 writing credits and 48 directing credits from 1934-2015. This page will rank 76 Orson Welles movies in two separate tables. The first table ranks 42 Welles movies from Best to Worst in seven different sortable columns of information. Television shows, his many shorts and cameos were not included in the rankings. The second table ranks another 34 Welles movies but does NOT include box office results. To calculate our Ultimate Movie Rankings score box office grosses are required so the movies had to be separated from the movies that box office grosses are known.
Drivel part of the page part 1: When I think about Orson Welles usually my mind will go to one of his all-time classic movies like Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil and The Third Man. Those movies were not known to me as a kid, but Orson Welles was known to me for three reasons: (1) Welles’ “Paul Masson will sell no wine before its time.” commercials. (2) Welles’ role as Lew Lord in The Muppet Movie and (3) Welles’ movie about Nostradamus….The Man Who Saw Tomorrow….. scared the hell out of me when I was younger. So no matter how old I get, my first memories of Orson Welles will always be that “Old guy in The Muppet Movie, that did wine commercials, and made a movie that convinced me the world would end before 2000”.
Drivel part of the page part 2: I have written close to 300 movie pages over the years. This by far was one of the most difficult pages to complete. Usually we are able to find box office numbers on about 70% to 90% of the movies a performer appeared in. This time we were only able to find box office numbers on a little over half of the Welles movies. So not wanting to exclude half of Orson’s movies we included a second table that shows everything but box office grosses. We might not know the actual box office for those movies….but….we do feel confident that the 34 movies listed in the second table made next to nothing when it comes to box office grosses.
Orson Welles Movies Can Be Ranked 7 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Orson Welles movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Orson Welles movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Orson Welles movies by domestic box office rank
- Sort Orson Welles 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 Orson Welles movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Orson Welles movie won.
- Sort Orson Welles 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.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From Our Orson Welles Tables
- Fourteen Orson Welles movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 33.33% of his movies listed. A Man for All Seasons (1966) was his biggest box office ht when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average Orson Welles movie grosses $71.90 million in adjusted box office gross….only the 40 movies that box office grosses are known.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 53 of Orson Welles’s movies are rated as good movies…or 70.66% of his movies. Citizen Kane (1941) is his highest rated movie while Royal Affairs in Versailies (1954) was his lowest rated movie.
- Thirteen Orson Welles movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 17.33% of his movies.
- Four Orson Welles movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 5.33% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 24 Orson Welles movies scored higher than that average….or 57.14% of his movies. A Man for All Seasons (1966) got the the highest UMR Score while Royal Affairs in Versailies (1954) got the lowest UMR Score.
Orson Welles Movies Can Be Ranked 5 Ways In This Table
The big difference in this table is the fact that there are NO BOX OFFICE GROSSES listed. All the movies listed did play in North American theaters….just can not find ANY box office stats on these movies. That being said all of these movies barely made a dent in North American box offices.
- Sort Orson Welles movies by the year they were made.
- Sort Orson Welles movies by his job in the movie
- Sort Orson Welles movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Orson Welles 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 Orson Welles movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Orson Welles movie won.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
| Rank | Movie (Year) | Year | Welles' Job In Movie | Co-Stars | Audience Critic Rating | Oscar Nom / Win |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F For Fake | 1973 | Actor, Writer, Director | Elmyr de Hory | 83.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Tajna Nikole Tesle | 1980 | Actor | Peta Bozovic | 73.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Ro.Go.Pa.G. | 1963 | Actor | Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 71.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Three Cases of Murder | 1955 | Actor, Director | Elizabeth Sellars | 69.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Confidential Report | 1955 | Actor, Writer, Director | Michael Redgrave | 68.3% | 00 / 00 | |
| South Sea Adventure | 1958 | Narrator | Diane Beardmore | 68.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| I'll Never Forget What's 'isname | 1967 | Actor | Oliver Reed | 67.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| The Enchanted Journey | 1984 | Voice Role | Jim Backus | 67.2% | 00 / 00 | |
| Malpertius | 1971 | Actor | Mathieu Carriere | 67.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Someone to Love | 1988 | Actor | Sally Kellerman | 66.3% | 00 / 00 | |
| Twelve Plus One | 1969 | Actor | Sharon Tate | 66.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| The Battle of Sutjeska | 1973 | Actor | Richard Burton | 65.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| The Sailor From Gilbratar | 1967 | Actor | Vanessa Redgrave | 65.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Tepepa | 1969 | Actor | Tomas Milian | 64.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| The New Media Bible: Book of Genesis | 1979 | Narrator | Topol | 64.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Hot Tomorrows | 1977 | Voice Only | Ken Lerner | 63.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| The Battle of Austerlitz | 1960 | Actor | Directed by Abel Gance | 63.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Ten Days Wonder | 1971 | Actor | Anthony Perkins | 62.8% | 00 / 00 | |
| Napoleon | 1955 | Director | Jean-Pierre Aumont | 62.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Lafayette | 1961 | Actor | Jack Hawkins | 61.8% | 00 / 00 | |
| Hot Money | 1983 | Actor | Michael Murphy | 60.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Trouble in the Glen | 1954 | Actor | Victor McLaglen | 59.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Trent's Last Case | 1952 | Actor | Michael Wilding | 58.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| To Build A Fire | 1969 | Narrator | Ian Hogg | 57.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Ten Little Indians | 1974 | Voice Only | Oliver Reed | 53.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| David and Goliath | 1960 | Actor | Ivica Pajer | 52.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| The Last Roman | 1968 | Actor | Laurence Harvey | 47.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Oedipus The King | 1968 | Actor | Christopher Plummer | 44.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| House of Cards | 1968 | Actor | George Peppard | 44.3% | 00 / 00 | |
| Necromancy | 1972 | Actor | Pamela Franklin | 44.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Ferry To Hong Kong | 1959 | Actor | Curd Jürgens | 42.0% | 00 / 00 | |
| Where Is Parsifal? | 1984 | Actor | Tony Curtis | 41.5% | 00 / 00 | |
| Royal Affairs in Versailies | 1954 | Actor | Michel Auclair | 40.0% | 00 / 00 |
Possibly Interesting Facts About Orson Welles
1. George Orson Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Babe Ruth hit his first home run the day Welles was born.
2. Orson Welles was an orphan at the age of 15. His mother passed away when he was 7 and his father passed away when he was 15.
3. Orson Welles had one of the most recognizable deep voices in all of film, radio or television.
4. Orson Welles and John Houseman founded their own repertory company, which they called the Mercury Theater in 1937.
5. The original Mercury Theater company included such actors as Joseph Cotten, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Arlene Francis, Norman Lloyd and Vincent Price..
6. Orson Welles was married three times. His second marriage was to actress, Rita Hayworth from 1943 to 1948. Welles had 4 children.
7. Orson Welles was nominated for three Oscars®. All three of his nominations came for Citizen Kane (1941). He was nominated for Best Director and Best Actor….he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar®. Welles received a Honorary Oscar® in 1971. Welles received one Golden Globe® nomination….Best Supporting Actor in 1982’s Butterfly.
8. Orson Welles is one of only six actors to receive an Oscar® nomination for Best Actor for his first screen appearance. The other five actors are: Paul Muni, Lawrence Tibbett, Alan Arkin, James Dean and Montgomery Clift.
9. Roles Orson Welles almost got: Marlon Brando role in The Godfather, Darth Vadar voice in Star Wars, Mr. Rourke role on television’s Fantasy Island. Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now and either the Friar Tuck or King Richard role in Errol Flynn’s classic The Adventures of Robin Hood.
10. Orson Welles and Yul Brynner died on the same exact day. Longtime friend Joseph Cotten did not attend Welles memorial service…..but he did send the following Shakespeare sonnet….”But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end”.
Check out Orson Welles’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time. A fun Orson Welles website to check out is Steve Lensman’s Orson Welles Movie Posters.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
AFI’s Top 25 Screen Legend Actors….with links to my movie pages on the Screen Legend
Steve Lensman’s Orson Welles You Tube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Orson Welles, is the # 3 most connected actor of the 1950’s, the # 4 most connected of the 1960’s, the # 10 most connected of the 1970’s, and the # 47 most connected of the 1940’s (4 decades!).
WELLES VIDEO 1-22
Best POSTERS Napoleon, 3 for Journey into Fear, foreign language one for The Stranger, Prince of Foxes, Catch 22 [amazing!] Long Hot Summer [a poster that explicit would not have got released over here when that movie came out in 1958] Macbeth, the first one for Waterloo, foreign language one for Lady from Shanghai, and 2 splendid ones for The Trial.
STILLS that I found most appealing. (1) Welles as Cesare Borgia with Ty Power (2) Chimes at Midnight (3) Orson as Macbeth (4) the famous Hall of Mirrors scene in Lady from Shanghai (5) I never tire seeing photos of Chuck when he was in his most photogenic era (6) Orson with protégé Joseph (7) I should add that I liked all of the materials for the 3rd Man and Kane and (8) Welles with one of your Hitchcock idols
My name is Norman Bates; I?m just a normal guy.
My name is Norman Bates-s-s-s-s.
My name is Norman Bates; I?m just a normal guy.
My name is Norman Bates-s-s-s-s.
Mother! Oh my God!
[Sung by LANDSCAPE ]
You and Bruce agree on 4 of Welles Top 6 best reviewed movies – Kane, Ambersons, 3rd Man and Touch of Evil. Overall I felt your Welles video was worth 98% rating. Indeed my only complaint is that neither you nor our own Boy Wonder include in your Ladd profiles credit to Alan for his wonderful cameo as a pipe-smoking reporter in Kane However possibly Orson himself appreciated the Ladd contribution because Alan was almost beautiful looking in those early years and I like to imagine that it was Laddie of whom Welles was thinking when he uttered “Rosebud”!
Hello Bob, thanks for reviewing the second half of my supersized Orson Welles video, appreciate the rating, comment and comparison. Glad you liked the posters and stills.
If I had added Citizen Kane to my Alan Ladd video it would have easily been his no.1 movie which would have confused everyone watching that video, since only me, you and a couple of others know he was in there. Plus you don’t want to see his greatest role as Shane at no.2 do you? Of course not and I suspect that’s your favorite western too.
Six Welles films have scored 10 out of 10 from my sauces, they be –
Citizen Caine
Fourth Man ,The
Magnificent Andersons ,The
Moustache of Evil
Man for Four Seasons ,A
O’hello
Two more scored 9 out of 10 – Compulsion and The Trial.
Citizen Kane tops all the charts, no surprises there. Well except Sight & Sounds recent poll of ‘Greatest Films of all Time’ which has knocked Kane down to the no.2 spot. [cue gasps] Hitchcock’s Vertigo is the new king of cinema, for the time being.
Welles on James Cagney – “No one was more unreal and stylized, yet there is no moment when he was not true.”
Welles on Edward G. Robinson – “An immensely effective actor.”
Welles on Gary Cooper – “You’d see him working on the set and you’d think, “My God, they’re going to have to retake that one!”. He almost didn’t seem to BE there. And then you’d see the rushes, and he’d fill the screen.”
Welles on Heston – “All you have to do is point and Chuck can go in any direction. He’s spent a lot of years being a movie star.”
Welles on Kubrick – “Among the young generation, Kubrick strikes me as a giant.”
“A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong.”
“Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.”
“You know, I always loved Hollywood. It was just never reciprocated.”
HI STEVE Thanks for the feedback on my Welles Part 2 post and for the new information that you have provided. The fine set of interesting quotes from Orson is also appreciated.
We invariably see “Cogerson About” flagged up but a question now on “Lensman About.” As you know many movies can have one or more aka titles. Several guys and gals in my film buffs group often read my posts on this site. Indeed I don’t think I am being immodest in saying that some of them live for my posts, though they seem to regard Bruce as “just another guy around here” [Lee J Cobb’s Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront] and nobody ever seems to enquire about what Joel has been saying lately.
Most of the group will at times know a movie by just its UK title and therefore in my posts I always try to mention a UK aka where there is one so that my pals will be sure about the movie that I’m referring to.
You as well often quote an aka but I’ve noticed that where a movie has both a US and UK title and you quote just one it’s always the American one. For example you used Glenn Ford’s The Last Challenge instead of its UK aka The Pistolero of Red River. Surely you an Englishman are not like those Westminster politicians of all parties who ceaselessly gravitate toward American power whoever is in the White House ?
By the way when my group meets in each other’s houses our chats are usually informal such as you might have in a pub or a coffee bar. However occasionally we will discuss a subject seriously, and at length, and last week I was asked by some members to quote this site’s grosses for a number of old films .
Of course I did that with alacrity, because a lot of them I had in my head, and during my discourse I let it slip that there was an otherwise movies-literate expert who frequented this site and disdained movie stats. There was a gasp of disbelief such as you might experience if you told a gathering of American rednecks that you didn’t believe in Donald Trump.
By the way it’s rather ironic that you bring up trainspotting because I have a London-based cousin who goes in for it [and bus-spotting] and I asked an aunt of ours what on earth he saw in such a hobby and she replied “Oh, it’s an English eccentricity that he picked up when he went over there.” She has though never forgiven me for pulling that London cousin’s leg once that myu aunt’s next door neighbour was a bus driver who left his bus outside his front door when he was off duty and my cousin asked her if he could come and stay with her for a while!
Anyway as the saying goes “one man’s meat’s another man’s poison.” I’ve nearly finished my “review” of your lovely Anita so I’ll catch up with you again over the weekend.
great share Steve.
Thanks Anonymous!
bob, your shares are always appreciated. I need to web search landscape.
HI STEVE
Thanks for feedback on my Welles Part One post and for confirming my spotting Rita and Errol. It sure beats trainspotting! I long ago gave up trying to ID the woman whom Errol was with on any particular occasion. He moved on a lot!
I am very interested in costs of movies as well as the grosses but the production costs are often hard to come by though you will note that Gordon was able to quote you the costs of Chuck’s epics adjusted for inflation.
However today it is not enough to know just the production costs to try to work out a movie’s profitability as often on top of shooting costs massive sums are spent on distribution, promotion and hype. Something has to be set aside for all those posters that you like to ogle over !!
As mentioned Welles described Joe Cotten as the greatest US actor of all time and Orson’s contemporaries in turn nicknamed Welles “the Boy Wonder”. Bruce Willis fans may well disagree with Joseph being called the greatest ever American actor but certainly in my book 3 Cotten/Wells collaborations are among the most atmospheric movies I’ve ever seen – Magnificent Ambersons, 3rd Man and Kane.
Welles’ utterance of the word Rosebud at the end of Kane has passed into entertainment legend and mystique. In a 1998 episode of TV’s Columbo [How to Dial a Murder] Nicol Williamson plays a villainous academic who is also a great film buff and who not only collects movie memorabilia including some f rom Citizen Kane but trains his dogs to commit murder on Nicol’s behalf at the sound of the attack command “Rosebud!” It is actually the Kane memorabilia in Nicol’s home that ultimately leads Columbo to correctly guess that Rosebud is the attack command
VIDEO PART ONE 45-23 Best POSTERS Treasure Island, Trent’s Last Case, Black Magic, Transformers, the 1st stunning one for Roots of Heaven, Man in the Shadow [aka Pay the Devil with my 50s idol Jeff Chandler – I couldn’t sleep last night for trying to remember how much money that one grossed! Thank goodness The Work Horse had the answer so I’ll get some rest tonight!] 3 Cases of Murder, two absolutely sumptuous ones for The Black Rose with Tyrone Power [breathtaking!] and 2 for Ferry to Hong Kong.
The latter awful film in which Welles gave one of the most unbelievably hammy performances that I have ever witnessed on the screen was the result, though I really should say consequence, of Brit studio head J Arthur Rank’s decision to sack all his British contract stars and import leading Hollywood performers for his movies. Long-standing Brit stalwarts such as John Gregson and Donald Sinden were two of the victims of the cull. Certainly in Ferry to Hong Kong the Welles who was the flamboyant Charles Foster Kane and the suave and charismatic Harry Lime was long gone and indeed Curd Jurgens had the lead.
I have noted just 3 stills in Part One , two of which are a bit of a mystery to me (1) in the opening one is that Flynn and Rita with Orson? On my first viewing I thought the “Rita” female was MM (2) what looked to me like a magnified lobby card for Casino Royale. Whatever it was it was brilliant (3) solo Orson in Confidential Report To be continued…….
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing the first half of my Orson Welles extended play video, it is appreciated. Enjoyed the trivia and I’m glad you liked the picture gallery.
On the video page I have written down who the people are in the opening still, the info is just under the video screen before you click and play it. I sometimes add some extra information in the box under the video.
This is what I wrote on the video page –
Revised and Expanded. 45 Orson Welles films ranked and rated 1941-1986.
Celebrated Actor and Director. The first still features Errol Flynn with his 2nd wife Nora Eddington. and Orson Welles and his 2nd wife Rita Hayworth.
There was no date for the photo but I’m assuming some time in the mid 40s?
Yep that was a magnified lobby card for Casino Royale, looks more impressive with the thick white borders cut out. And luckily the picture quality was very good.
Looking forward to Rosebud p.2