Want to know the best Walter Wanger movies? How about the worst Walter Wanger movies? Curious about Walter Wanger box office grosses or which Walter Wanger movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Walter Wanger 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.
Walter Wanger (1894-1968) was an Oscar® nominated film producer. Wanger developed a reputation as an intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas. His IMDb page shows 70 producing credits from 1929-1963. This page ranks 61 Walter Wanger movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, documentaries and shorts were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: Walter Wanger? Who is Walter Wanger? That was my question when I saw that Stein requested a page on Walter Wanger. I am sure many people reading this page are asking the same exact question….Who is Walter Wanger? After spending about a week researching his movie career I would say the best ways to describe him would be he was “like” David O.Selznick’s younger and less successful movie producing brother (not actually related). Or as the Forrest Gump of movie making…as it seemed no matter which way he turned he stumbled into movie history….from 1921’s The Sheik to 1963’s Cleopatra. I found the book: Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent by Matthew Bernstein very helpful when answering the question Who is Walter Wanger?
Walter Wanger 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 Walter Wanger movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Walter Wanger movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Walter Wanger movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort Walter Wanger movies by Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Walter Wagner movie received.
- Sort Walter Wanger movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
- Sort Walter Wanger 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.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Walter Wanger Table
- Eighteen Walter Wanger movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 29.50% of his movies listed. Cleopatra (1963) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Walter Wanger movie grosses $87.80 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 36 Walter Wanger movies are rated as good movies…or 58.8% of his movies. Scarlet Street (1945) is his highest rated movie while A Night In Paradise (1946) is his lowest rated movie.
- Fourteen Walter Wanger movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 22.95% of his movies.
- Three Walter Wanger movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 4.91% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR )Score is 40.00. 31 Walter Wanger movies scored higher that average….or 50.81% of his movies. Stagecoach (1939) got the the highest UMR Score while Navy Wife (1956) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Walter Wanger
1. Walter Feuchtwanger was born in San Francisco, California in 1894. Wanger would later attend Dartmouth College…where he became friends with Stein’s (the person that requested this page) grandfather.
2. After college, Walter Wanger served in the air force on the Italian front during World War I. He joined the staff of President Woodrow Wilson as an attaché after the armistice, attending the peace conference in Paris.
3. After the war, Walter Wanger turned his attention to movie making. One of his first successes was buying the rights to 1921’s The Sheik, which made a star out of Rudolph Valentino.
4. After years of working at Paramount and Columbia….Wanger branched out and became one of the most successful independent movie producers working in Hollywood. At the peak of his career, his salary was exceeded only by that of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer.
5. Walter Wanger was twice elected as president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and, at the height of his influence, he was able to successfully lobby the Academy to introduce Best Foreign Film and Best Documentary as categories to the Oscars®.
6. Walter Wanger received two Honorary Oscars®.
7. Walter Wanger was married two times. He had two children. Both of his marriages were to actresses: Silent star Justine Johnstone and Joan Bennett.
8. In 1951 Walter Wanger was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of talent agent Jennings Lang. Lang was the agent of Joan Bennett, then Wanger’s wife, and Wanger discovered the two of them were having an affair. He caught them in the act, and wound up shooting Lang. Wanger served a four-month sentence. Despite that conviction he quickly returned to his career to make a series of successful films. His experiences there resulted in his producing the seminal prison film classic 1954’s Riot in Cell Block 11.
9. Billy Wilder came up with the idea for 1960’s The Apartment after reading all the details of Wanger’s personal life that were revealed in the scandal in interesting fact #8. Some of the details revealed included how executives were using people’s apartments as “meeting places”. So the next time you see Fred MacMurray in The Apartment….think of Walter Wanger.
10. Check out Walter Wanger ‘s career compared to other UMR movie subjects. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
BRUCE
1 Thanks for your courtesy, as always, in telling me about your computer backup systems.
2 I used to get crashes regularly but my daughter who like wife of C is the family computer guru tells me that the machine that she has now given me has an automatic backup system.
3 Anyway in case some future computer disaster does occur in one way or another I keep a hard copy of everything I transcribe from Cogerson to my database.
4 That shows a subconscious desire to live forever according to a pal of mine who is a University professor. I am afraid I’m not deep enough to know if he’s right.
Thanks again BOB
Hey Bob….I think WoC is more fearful than me about losing data….probably because I have such faith in her abilities…..but I saw her backing up everything this morning…..so right now only my Steven Seagal stuff could be loss…..and that is because I just wrote the page tonight.
Good to know you have a back up…I will remember that in case we run into some horrible tragic event and we lose everything.
Hey…I think we all want to leave something good …between kids and grandkids….I have it covered….lol.
By the way, I have seen the Apartment hundreds of times. I cannot wait to see it again.
Hey Flora….I bet the next time you watch it…you will think of Walter Wanger at least once.
Thank you Cogerson for doing my request. I was so glad to see Walter Wanger’s name at the top of the page. And even more thrilled that the page has so many comments already. I was afraid nobody would have anything to say about him.
It was actually my great grandfather that went to school with Mr. Wanger. But I heard stories from my granddad that his father shared. Sadly both men are no longer with us, but in my mind this keeps them alive in a nice way.
I loved reading the interesting facts about him. I did not know that Mr. Wanger is the one that got the Oscars to include Best Documentary and Best Foreign Film. Once again I thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing this page.
I love that Bruce did this page. It goes to show you that this website is really is devoted to the movie industry at large, both the stars and the people who are not known anymore by the general public.
How many of his films have you seen, Stein?
Currently I have the silver in the Viewing Olympics for Canada with 16.
LawrenceA Has Gold for USA at 21.
Can you bump me down to bronze?
Hey Flora…sounds like you are trying to get rid of that silver medal…lol.
No I am NOT, Bruce.
I love my “medals” –
🙂
That is a tough question. Looking at the list I have seen 15 for sure. There about 20 more that I have either seen parts of or watched so long ago I do not remember if I even liked them or not. My granddad loved Cleopatra as he was in love with Elizabeth Taylor.
Who was not in love with Taylor.
Well, then, your total is 15.
I still have my silver medial then. Yes!
Hey Flora…yep you get to get your silver medal. 🙂
Hey Stein….Well that would be good enough to get you a medal…in our competition….sadly once again…I am medal less. Elizabeth Taylor was very lovely….and her peak was probably her days as Cleopatra.
Stein gets bronze?
Yes, Bruce does not get a medal….
Hey Stein….glad you like your requested page….I have to admit….I found his life pretty fascinating….so much stuff happened to him….it almost felt like a movie versus someone’s real life.
Sorry that I said…he was your grandfather….and not your great-grandfather….I will fix that.
I found the fact that he got Documentary and Foreign Film added to the Oscar show…very interesting as well. Seems in that case he used his clout in the right way.
Your kind words are greatly appreciated.
I think I said that it was Stein’s father when I shared this page on Facebook.
Still very happy about this page. Plus I got two mentions in the page. I feel like a star.
I know. I could not believe it when I read Bruce’s Gregory Peck page and realized that he named the Possibly Interesting Facts after me.
Hey Flora….well….those were your words on the Peck page…it would not be fair of me to take credit for it. Glad you enjoyed and enjoy your Peck by-line.
Hey Stein….glad my page makes you feel that way…..so far the page is off to a good start….it usually takes about a year before I know how successful a page was…when looking at things like views and such. Glad you like the page.