Top Grossing 1945 Movies

This movie page looks at 1945 Top Box Office Movies Finding box office information for movies made in the 1930s and 1940s is extremely difficult.   For somebody looking for box office information on 1945 it is very very frustrating.  Over the years, we have researched and collected information on over 33,000 movies.  So we figured we would show all the 1945 movies in our database.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1945.  Obviously many movies made in 1944 earned box office dollars in 1945.  On the other side many movies made in 1945 made money in 1946 and later.  This page will looks at 127 1945 Top Box Office Movies.  The movies are listed in a massive table that lets you rank the movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.

The following massive table only includes the movies made in 1944 that are in our database.  Since we are constantly adding new movies to our database….this page will quickly become obsolete.  We will try and update this page on a regular basis.

Joan Crawford in 1945’s Mildred Pierce…she won an Oscar for her role in the movie

Our UMR Top 50 of 1945

1945 Top Box Office 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 1945 Top Box Office Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort 1945 Top Box Office Movies by domestic actual box office grosses (in millions)
  • Sort 1945 Top Box Office Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort 1945 Top Box Office 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 1945 Top Box Office Movies received.
  • Sort 1945 Top Box Office Movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking Score (UMR).  Our UMR score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

1945 gave us Bela Lugosi’s Zombies on Broadway…I sure Steve Lensman has seen that one

1945 Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

My Main Sources

Source 1: Eddie Mannix MGM Ledgers

Source 2: C.J. Tevlin RKO Ledgers

Source 3: Variety Magazines –

Source 4: Year In Review Variety Editions

Source 5: Grand Design: Hollywood As A Modern Business Enterprise 1930-1942 by Tino Balio

Source 6: Twentieth Century-Fox A Corporate and Financial History by Aubrey Solomon

Source 7:  Wikipedia

Source 8:  IMDb.com

Source 9:  “Revenue sharing and the coming of sound” by H. Mark Glancy

Source 10: Hollywood Power Stats by Christopher Reynolds

Top earners in 1945 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

80 thoughts on “Top Grossing 1945 Movies

  1. Hello, I have seen 52 films of 1945.

    My favourites are:
    And Then There Were None
    Mildred Pierce
    Anchors Aweigh
    Spellbound (that’s okay, Bruce)
    Leave Her to Heaven
    Scarlett Street
    Detour
    They Were Expendable
    The Picture of Dorian Gray
    The Valley of Decision

    1. Hey Flora….thanks for the comment

      Tally count: Tally count…..Lupino 54, Flora 52, Steve 24, Pierre 20 and Cogerson 18…..so you almost caught Lupino.

      Our your favorites..I have seen 9 of them…..with only The Picture of Dorian Gray escaping me.

      Of those favorites…I really enjoyed And Then There Were None, Mildred Pierce, Detour and Leave Her To Heaven.

      Thanks for the feedback.

  2. Hey Steve….I felt I accomplished something by getting not one but two Lugosi movies on this page. I have never even heard of Zombies on Broadway before doing this page. Good to know that it is not as bad as the title makes it seem.

    The bad news is my MGM ledger stops at 1947 and my RKO ledger only makes it to 1951. Looking at my top view yearly pages….1952 has done well…so maybe lack of ledgers won’t be that big if an issue.

    🙂

  3. hello Bruce,
    i saw not a lot of films of 1945, may be 20 and of course a lot in the first
    but my favorite are.
    first of all Ceasar and Cleopatre and then Dorian Gray after i can speak of Darnell films or
    or the lost week end with Milland.
    I would like to see Astoria because it was a remake of Grand Hotel.
    Dietrich was making a french film with Jean Gabin and it was a good box office in France
    the film is from Lacombe and it is call Martin Roumagnac.
    For the USA market it is called The room upstairs and it was not a succes at all.
    Thank you so much for the box office worldwide because for me it is very interresting.
    Great page as always,
    A bientot
    Pierre

    1. Hey Pierre
      1. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your feedback
      2. Currently you are in third place….trailing Lupino and Steve….but ahead of me. Your 20 has me beat by 2 movies.
      3. I have not seen either of your favorites….I will have to see if I can track them down in the near future.
      4. Thanks for the information on Astoria. As well as Martin Roumagnac/The Room Upstairs.
      5. With the audience of this website expanding….I have been including all the worldwide grosses that I have….so I am glad to see you are enjoying them.
      Hope your Easter was awesome.

      1. hello bruce
        thanks for your kind words
        of course a very good easter for you and your family and all the visitors of your web site;
        have a nice day
        Pierre

      2. i forgot to tell you if you have to see a fim the only one is Desire with Dietrich and Cooper because it is really fun and modern
        bye bye
        Pierre

  4. A really massive table…counted 3 times and came up twice with 54 movies watched (once I counted 57). Favorites? So many for lots of reasons: Wicked Lady starring one of my all time fav brit actresses, Margaret Lockwood, Detour, a highly imaginative low budget movie made on a shoestring, Enchanted Cottage and A tree grows in Brooklyn, 2 of my favorite Dorothy McGuire films, Bette Davis as a spinster schoolteacher in The Corn is Green, 2 Gene Tierney’s, A Bell for Adano and Leave her to Heaven, Fallen Angel, a great noir that was Alice Faye’s last movie for more than 15 years but brought a very sultry Linda Darnell to public attention, And then there were None, a great version of the often filmed Agatha Christie novel featuring June Duprez who really rivaled Linda Darnell in the “Looks” department. Jennifer Jones’ poignant performance as the mentally troubled Singelton in Love Letters, Ray Milland in his greatest performance in Lost Weekend, Roughly Speaking, The Unseen, Scarlett Street…Spellbound has it’s moments, but is a far cry from my fav Hitchcocks. Many boxoffice hits, few “real” classics, but a bunch of enjoyable movies released in 1945! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!

    1. Hey Lupino
      1. It is pretty big….but it only represents a little more than 25% of all the movies made in 1945.
      2. Tally count…..Lupino 54, Steve 24, Pierre 20 and Cogerson 18…..so you have the lead….just keep an eye out for Dan…lol.
      3. Detour is a cult classic….I discovered that movie years when I was reading Danny Perry’s Cult Movie books…..turns out the low budget movie benefited from the blacklist…as Oscar winning writer…Douglas T. wrote it under a fake name.
      4. I think this version of And Then There Were None is one of the best ones on that story….I wish a movie would end it like the book did…..where the Judge gets away with it.
      5. Scarlett Street is a very enjoyable movie….and I agree with you about Spellbound….not one of my favorite Hitch movies either.
      6. I will have to check out Roughly Speaking and The Unseen.
      Thanks for the visit.

  5. The last year of WWII didn’t produce many all time great movies IMO, looking at the critics chart, Scarlet Street is no.1, a film I know very little about and it didn’t even make the top 10 on my Edward G. Robinson video.

    I’ve seen 26 of the 120 films listed. My favorites? There aren’t any… oh wait there’s Anchors Aweigh, Road to Utopia, Caesar and Cleopatra, Spellbound and The Body Snatcher.

    I haven’t seen The Bells of St. Mary’s, Mildred Pierce or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

    Looking at the adjusted worldwide grosses – The Valley of Decision was a huge hit, never seen it. Anchors Aweigh was also massive, other big crowd pleasers around the world were National Velvet, Adventure, San Antonio and Thrill of a Romance.

    There are 46 films from 1945 in my movie collection –

    Abbott and Costello in Hollywood
    Adventure
    Along Came Jones
    Anchors Aweigh
    And Than There Were None
    Back to Bataan
    Bells of St. Mary’s ,The
    Blithe Spirit
    Blood on the Sun
    Body Snatcher ,The
    Brief Encounter
    Caesar and Cleopatra
    Captain Kidd
    Charlie Chan The Jade Mask
    Conflict
    Dead of Night
    Dillinger
    Flame of Barbary Coast
    Hangover Square
    Here Come the Co-eds
    House of Dracula (Legacy Box Set)
    Isle of the Dead
    Leave Her to Heaven
    Lost Weekend ,The
    Mildred Pierce
    Naughty Nineties ,The
    Objective Burma
    Picture of Dorian Gray ,The
    Rhapsody in Blue
    Road to Utopia
    San Antonio
    Saratoga Trunk
    Sherlock Holmes – Pursuit to Algiers
    Sherlock Holmes – The Woman in Green
    Song to Remember ,A
    Spanish Main ,The
    Spellbound (Criterion)
    Story of GI Joe ,The
    Tarzan and the Amazons
    They Were Expendable
    Thin Man Goes Home ,The
    Thousand and One Nights ,A
    Way to the Stars ,The
    Wicked Lady ,The
    Wonder Man
    Yolanda and the Thief

    Another top movie page Bruce. Voted Up!

    1. Hey Steve
      1. Thanks for checking out our latest page….that now gives us a page from 1937 to 1946. I might do 1947, 1948 and 1949…..and then do an entire decade page……that might be over 1400 movies.
      2. Scarlett Street was the companion movie to Woman In The Window….same stars, same director and same behind the scenes crew. Both are pretty famous movies…with Window being the more famous.
      3. 26…..mmmmm…..I am at…..18….so I am pretty close to you…..but already out of the medal count when I look at Pierre’s comment (20 movies) and Lupino’s comment (54 movies).
      4. No comment on Zombies on Broadway? I figured that would be one of your favorites. 🙂
      5. Spellbound is one of my least favorite Hitchcock movies….even with Peck being the star (sorry Flora).
      6. According to my movie book Reel Facts….there were 350 movies made in 1946…with another 27 international movies released here….so my page only represents about 25% of the movies released that year….but I feel pretty confident that I have all of the Top Grossers.
      7. Thanks for the list of movies in your collection.
      As always your visit, your comment, your tally, your feedback….are all greatly appreciated.

      1. Hi Bruce forgot to mention Zombies on Broadway, I watched it again a few weeks ago, not as awful as you might think, it’s a comedy but with some creepy scenes. I wish there was more of Bela Lugosi’s mad scientist though.

        Yes I think you should finish off the remaining years of the 1940s and start on the 1950s, which was a much better movie decade IMO. I liked the 1930s more than the 1940s too.

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