Top Grossing Movies Of 1952

The Greatest Show On Earth was easily the biggest box office hit of 1952

This movie page looks at The Top Grossing Movies of 1952.  In 1952, 463 movies were released in theaters.  Average weekly movie attendance was 51 million.  That translates to $2.65 billion (25th best year in movie history) movie tickets sold which generated revenue of $1.24 billion.  So with all of this money flying around you would think somebody would have kept track of how each movie was performing.  Sadly that was the case!

Currently when you type in the search words….”Top Grossing Movies of 1952″ you do not get much information.  Wikipedia provides 10 movies.  The Numbers.com provides 10 movies.  Stats-a-mania offers up 7 movies.  You have to go to the 26th search result to find the next place that lists box office results….UMR’s (that’s us) Marilyn Monroe page which offers up 5 movies.  So in an effort to get more information out there…we have decided to unlock our 1952 movie database vault and share the information we have collected over the years.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1952 (as listed on IMDB.com).  Obviously many movies made in 1951 earned box office dollars in 1952.  On the other side many movies made in 1952 made money in 1953 and later.  This page will looks at 162 Top Grossing Movies of 1952.  The movies are listed in a massive table that shows who starred in the movie, had much the movie grossed when it was released and how that gross means in today’s money.

Drivel part of the page:  Currently our movie database is down for a massive update which includes a new box office formula and a new formula for our movie ranking equation. So we do not have access to all of our information.  For some reason….Wife of Cogerson thinks her full time job takes precendent over this non-revenue generating hobby. Sometimes I just do not understand her….lol.  So without the ability to do a page on a actor or actress…I had to pick a year as our the latest movie page.

My favorite 1952 movie is The Quiet Man
My favorite 1952 movie is The Quiet Man

Our UMR Top 50 of 1952

Top Grossing Movies of 1952 Can Be Sorted 3 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Top Grossing Movies of 1952 by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort Top Grossing Movies of 1952 by domestic actual box office grosses (in millions)
  • Sort Top Grossing Movies of 1952 by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)

Singin' In The Rain, considered the greatest musical ever, was released in 1952
Singin’ In The Rain, considered the greatest musical ever, was released in 1952

1952 Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

How the Box Office Numbers were Calculated 

Sadly in 1952….BoxOfficeMojo was not around to keep track of box office earnings. Back then earnings seem to be a secret and a secret that needed to be safely locked up.  When studios did report box office stats they used “box office rentals”.  Box office rentals were the amount of money the studio got back from the theaters.  It is NOT the box office gross.  According to Film Daily Yearbook the film rentals as percentage of box office grosses was 36% in 1952. That means that box office gross was 2.75 times greater than box office rentals.  It is not an exact calculation….but for 1952 the multiplier we used was 2.75.

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118 thoughts on “Top Grossing Movies Of 1952”

  2. Only 33 films seen out of 148, doesn’t look like 1952 is one of my favorite years.

    Btw the adjusted gross chart has The Merry Widow as no.1 movie instead of Greatest Show on Earth and the actual gross has Come Back Little Sheba at no.1. I think it needs some more tweaking to get the real biggest grossers at the top.

    My favorite movie of 1952? I would pick Singin’ in the Rain. Other favorites – High Noon, The Quiet Man, Ivanhoe, The Prisoner of Zenda, Monkey Business and The Crimson Pirate.

    Not a big fan of DeMille’s circus film but I do have it on DVD. I much prefer his next film, which features Charlton Heston yelling “Let my people go!” 🙂

    An interesting look at the biggest hits of 1952. Good work Bruce. 1953 next? 1953 was a better year. So was 1959. Voted Up!

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….thanks for stopping by. I am 22 in the tally count…so you get second as Flora easily beat us again. Thanks for the heads up…..I thought it looked good with “millions” being in the column….but I forgot that messing up the sort button….about to fix that. I have seen and liked all of your favorite…..with the exception on The Crimson Pirate. The Greatest Show On Earth is considered by many to be one of the worst Best Picture Oscar winners….but it was very very popular. Heston was on a roll back then…..he ruled the 1950s. This was a random year….I opened up one of my movie books….and the first year I saw was 1952. Eventually I plan on getting every year done…..though they are a pain to do. Lots of work….but I always like them when they are done. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the 1952 movies.

      Reply

      1. Well it has got people commenting, more than some of your recent actors I would say, so it was worth the effort even though there are so many films. Maybe you should limit it to the top 100 of each year? The box office chart is working fine now, Greatest Show is at the top. I’ve started doing a yearly thing too, with my poster blog, starting with 1920. Not the greatest movie year I have to admit. 🙂

        Reply

        1. Hey Steve….the response here has been very very surprising….normally my yearly pages…start off very slow…and then gain momentum…for example…my 1939 and 1946 pages….3 years after writing them have been trending in my Top 20 daily pages for the last few months. Since this one has started off so fast….it will probably end up with no traffic at all in 6 months.
          It will be interesting to see where the page gets ranked once Google processes it….hopefully 148 will trump The Numbers.com 10 movies….so far it has not shown up…but I would say the effort was worth it.
          I will have to check out your poster blog…gotta a link? Thanks for the return visit.

          Reply

        2. It would be a shame to be limited to the first 100, because some goods movies are under this number. Like, for this year, Rancho Notorious, Lavender hill mob, Limelight, Sound barrier or Angel face, for exemple.

          Reply

          1. Hey Laurent….the table is huge….but I think the more movies the better…..even as big as this table is….it represents about 35% of the movies made in 1952. This is without a doubt the best and biggest look at 1952 box office grosses….so the Ultimate in the Ultimate Movie Rankings title is warranted with this page….thanks for all the comments and thoughts on this page.

  3. Thanks for the link on Facebook. Funny start to your page I enjoyed that too. I did not notice that when I clicked on the Wayne link that his page does not match this page. And the numbers are pretty far off. Am I missing something?

    Reply

    1. Hey Timothy B. thanks for following the link here. As for the difference in this page and the Wayne page…..recently I changed somethings on the website. First of all I updated the average ticket cost for 2015 and changed how I calculated adjusted box office…I have yet to update all of my old pages….about to start doing that real soon. As my John Wayne page is one of my most popular pages. The two Wayne movies here so the correct box office number. Thanks for the comment.

      Reply

    1. Thank you Gina. Yep Ivanhoe was a monster hit. One of the biggest hits of the entire 1950s. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

  5. Lost a comment by pressing the wrong button. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

    Love your drivel comment. Funny.

    I wondered if you would do any new page until your database was completed.

    I have seen 49 of these movies, most of them in the very top and then a big space before the next group.

    Don’t know if you meant to leave it blank but you have no artist after the title Something to Live For.

    I still have several titles recorded not yet seen, some are on this list.

    Otherwise I won’t add anything else since I already lost my long comment

    Flora

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora. Sorry you lost your comment. That is very very frustrating. Glad you like my drivel comment. The wife has actually been very helpful in helping out during the week….as I was not thinking she would even look at the database until Friday or Saturday got here. I thought this was going to be an easy one to do….turned out to be pretty difficult…and looking at Steve’s comment…I have some more work to do. So you are at 49….Steve is at 33….and I am at…counting…22….but hey combined Steve got you…lol. That was something wrong with the Fontaine link…it has been fixed….though I just saw there something wrong with the O’Hara links….will be fixed soon. Sorry again about you losing your long comment. I figure when I start updating all the pages…I will start with one of your favorites…Widmark or Peck. As always thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

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