Ray Milland Movies

Want to know the best Ray Milland movies?  How about the worst Ray Milland movies?  Curious about Ray Milland box office grosses or which Ray Milland movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Ray Milland movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Ray Milland (1905-1986) was a Welsh Oscar® winning actor and director.   Milland’s movie career spanned over 7 decades. His IMDB page shows 176 credits from 1928-1985. This page will rank 96 Ray Milland movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  His television appearances, cameos, uncredited and movies not released in North America were not included in the rankings.

Drivel part of the page:  This Ray Milland page comes from a request by Chris.  It is safe to say it was a pain in the ass to put together.  We blame his very long and very productive career and the fact that he made so many movies at Paramount for the amount of effort it took to get this page published.  For the record….Milland has 96 movies listed on this page, 46 television roles, 9 uncredited roles, and 13 movies not released in North America.  That is a grand total of 164…which means there are still 12 movies that we were unable to find box office grosses on.  As it stands now….Milland’s 96 movies is the biggest page by an individual performer in our database.  Ok…we are done complaining…on to the massive table.

Ray Milland in 1945’s The Lost Weekend

Ray Milland 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 Ray Milland movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Ray Milland movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Ray Milland movies by domestic yearly box office rank
  • Sort Ray Milland 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 Ray Milland movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Ray Milland movie won.
  • Sort Ray Milland movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (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 Ray Milland Table

  1. Twenty-six Ray Milland movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 27.08% of his movies listed. Love Story (1970) is his biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Ray Milland movie grosses $85.10 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Ray Milland’s career adjusted domestic gross is $8.16 billion.
  4. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  57 Ray Milland movies are rated as good movies…or 59.37% of his movies.  Beau Geste (1939) is his highest rated movie while The Thing With Two Heads (1972) is lowest rated movie.
  5. Seventeen Ray Milland movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 17.70% of his movies.
  6. Three Ray Milland movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 3.2% of his movies.
  7. An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00.  44 Ray Milland movies scored higher that average….or 45.83% of his movies.  The Lost Weekend (1945) got the the highest UMR Score while The Thing With Two Heads (1972) got the lowest UMR Score.
Grace Kelly and Ray Milland in 1954’s Dial M For Murder

Possibly Interesting Facts About Ray Milland

1. Alfred Reginald Jones was born in Neath, Wales in 1907.

2. Got his stage name of Milland from the Mill lands area of his Welsh home town of Neath

3.  When working on 1941’s I Wanted Wings, Ray Milland went up with a pilot to test a plane for filming. While up in the air, Milland decided to do a parachute jump (being an avid amateur parachutist) but, just before he could disembark, the plane began to sputter and the pilot said not to jump as they were running low on gas and he needed to land. Well, once on the ground and in the hangar, Ray began to tell his story of how he had wanted to do a jump. As he told the story, the color ran out of the costume man’s face. When asked why, he told Ray that the parachute he had worn up in the plane was “just a prop”. There had been no parachute.

4.  Ray Milland was only nominated for one Oscar®….but he made it count…as he won the Best Actor Oscar® for 1945’s The Lost Weekend.

5.  Ray Milland’s Oscar® acceptance speech was only 10 words long…. “Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I’m greatly honored.” ..obviously one of the shortest speeches ever.

6. Ray Milland tried to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, but was rejected due to an “impaired left hand”.

7. Ray Milland was married one time and had 2 children.  He was married to Muriel Frances Weber from 1932 to his death in 1986.

8. Ray Milland’s biggest box office hit was 1970’s Love Story.  When looking at all-time adjusted domestic box office totals….. Love Story sits in 37th place.

Check out Ray Milland’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. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

(Visited 6,968 times)

27 thoughts on “Ray Milland Movies”

  2. I have just read your article on Ray Milland. He was one of the great stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era. I do not understand why some have diminished his importance.
    He had a very long career going back to the early 1930s and starred in every type of genre. He excelled in comedy and drama; and worked with many great directors: Billy Wilder, Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and many others. His great films include Beau Geste, Reap the High Wind, The Big Clock, The Lost Weekend, Dial M for Murder, Ministry of Fear, The Major and the Minor, and others.
    In the mid-1950s, his career declined, because of age, his move to television, and his directorial assignments. At the very end, however, it was sad to see him in a series of mediocre films that were way below his talent. But the reality, old age and the need for income compelled him to go on with acting. Thank you, Ray Milland for entertaining several generations with your considerable talent in film, television, and theater.

    Reply

    1. Hey Frank. Glad you enjoyed our statistical breakdown on Ray Milland. Earlier this year we wrote a book called Top 50 Stars of All-Time…..Statistically Speaking….Milland almost made that Top 50. Pretty sure he got a honorable mention. I enjoyed reading your comment….and I agree with you 100%. I had actually not connected the fact that he had worked with so many great directors. I can only imagine the stories he had to tell about his movie career. Good comment….and great stuff. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.

      Reply

    1. Hey Carole…..mmmm…interesting question….a quick check on IMDb does not show a movie called Neal Deal in his massive filmography…..my best guess would be 1941’s Skylark….he plays an advertising executive having to weigh the importance of a deal and the importance of his wife played by Claudette Colbert. Maybe one of more educated readers has a better guess.

      Reply

    2. Hello Carole,
      are you sure you don’t mean Alias Nick Beal (1949)? Never heard of Neal Deal, but when I read your question, Nick Beal immediately popped into my mind.

      Reply

  4. 1 Congratulations on producing the GWTW of pages – some effort ! I do think that the adjusted domestic gross of over $8 billion that the 96 movies generates flatters Ray a bit though as statistically it puts Ray in the same bracket as the likes of the Wayne and Tracy whereas despite being billed above for example the Duke in the early-days Reap the Wild Wind overall Ray fell short of that status.

    2 Nevertheless at one time he was reportedly Paramount’s highest paid star and the career security that he enjoyed in his heyday is told with humour by one of Ray’s biographers who mentions that in those days he would sometimes pal around with a group of supporting actors including Cameron Mitchell. On vacation once those actors and Ray were lounging about and the lesser lights were complaining about lack of good parts when Mitchell said “It’s OK for Milland here as ever since Lost Weekend all he has had to do he has to do is put on his toupee and walk into ANY studio to be offered a plumb role!”

    3 After Dial M for Murder though his career seemed to steadily decline and he was either in lower prestige movies and/or supporting roles. He appeared in a couple of early 1970s Columbo TV episodes and brought to them his usual classy performances. On the big screen he was for me at his most delicious in The Premature Burial in 1962. This expansive page is a fine tribute to an important classic ere star with a highly entertaining persona and therefore well worth the effort that went into it.

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob
      1. Thanks for checking out this massive page….96 movies….is the most….but here comes Samuel L. Jackson to top that total.
      2. I agree his massive amount of movies…makes his career box office totals reach some of the best ever…but if you look at his average per movie he barely cracks the Top 200 when looking at al of the UMR subjects.
      3. Funny story about Milland and the toupee…and plumb roles….funny but so true…at least until the late 1950s.
      4. I career Dial M For Murder seems to have been the last time he was on top of the mountain.
      5. I liked Premature Burial as well. I think I picked it up on dual DVD that also featured the Man With X-Ray Eyes.
      6. I appreciate the feedback on our Milland page. 🙂

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.