LsDoorMat
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I have to wonder if this list of films is supposed to be representative of the highest grossing film for the 12 month period of the actual year of its release, or, at least, the film's initial release even if it lapsed into the following year.
I was surprised to see 1938 list The Adventures of Robin Hood as its top grossing film. The reason for that is that I always thought Capra's You Can't Take It With You was the film that pulled in more money than any other that year.
Now Robin Hood was reissued on a number of occasions, in 1942, 1948 and probably beyond that once or twice. I wonder if this list is taking the total of all of RH's releases to conclude that it was the top money maker initially released in 1938.
If that is the case with Robin Hood, it may well be similar with some of the other films, as well.
For what it's worth, Wikipedia lists the Capra film as 1938's top grosser:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films
I'm pretty sure, from reading the entire article, that these films represent an all-time box office gross for a film made in a particular year. As for the top grossing film within a particular year, I'm really surprised that the top grossing film of 1938 according to Wikipedia was "You Can't Take it With You". That film just tries too hard. I would have guessed "Adventures of Robin Hood" instead. Also look at 1936. The Wikipedia list has "San Francisco" as the top grossing film of that year. It probably did make the most money IN 1936. However, over the years, it makes sense that "Modern Times" would have held up better and thus earned more money.
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TOP FILMS BY YEAR
(unadjusted domestic gross totals)
This shows the top film made in a particular year given its domestic box office gross going forward.
It is no surprise that Disney, because of all of its rereleases into theaters, has many entries.This list goes back to the dawn of the feature film. I don't know if all of these films survive, especially from the silent era.
I do not know why 1924 is labeled "Nothing substantial". Surprises for me were 1929's "Welcome Danger", just about the worst thing Harold Lloyd ever did, especially when I have repeatedly heard that "Golddiggers of Broadway" was the top grossing film in the US until Gone with the Wind.
Also "Tom Sawyer" from Paramount in 1930 was a surprise. I've never even heard of that version.
"Mom and Dad" is the top grosser from 1945, and is an exploitation film. Seven Star Wars franchise films made the list.The top films of the last few decades are the blockbuster hits of their respective years, not necessarily anything close to the best films of their years.
The information came from filmsite.org.
1913: Traffic in Souls (1913)
1914: The Million Dollar Mystery (1914)
1915: The Birth of a Nation (1915)
1916: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1916)
1917: A Romance of the Redwoods (1917), and Cleopatra (1917) (lost film)
1918: Mickey (1918)
1919: The Miracle Man (1919)1920: Something to Think About (1920)
1921: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
1922: Robin Hood (1922)
1923: The Covered Wagon (1923)
1924: (nothing substantial)
1925: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
1926: Aloma of the South Seas (1926)
1927: Napoleon (1927, Fr.) (with re-release), The Jazz Singer (1927), (Wings 1927, unknown gross)
1928: The Singing Fool (1928)
1929: Welcome Danger (1929)
1930: Tom Sawyer (1930)
1931: Frankenstein (1931)
1932: Shanghai Express (1932)
1933: King Kong (1933)
1934: It Happened One Night (1934)
1935: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
1936: Modern Times (1936)
1937: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
1938: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
1939: Gone With The Wind (1939)
1940: Pinocchio (1940)
1941: Sergeant York (1941)
1942: Bambi (1942)
1943: This Is the Army (1943)
1944: Going My Way (1944)
1945: Mom and Dad (1945)
1946: Song of the South (1946)
1947: Forever Amber (1947)
1948: The Snake Pit (1948)
1949: Samson and Delilah (1949)1950: Cinderella (1950)
1951: Quo Vadis (1951)
1952: The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
1953: Peter Pan (1953)
1954: Rear Window (1954)
1955: Lady and the Tramp (1955)
1956: The Ten Commandments (1956)
1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
1958: South Pacific (1958)
1959: Ben-Hur (1959)
1960: Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
1961: 101 Dalmatians (1961)
1962: How the West Was Won (1962)
1963: Cleopatra (1963)
1964: Mary Poppins (1964)
1965: The Sound of Music (1965)
1966: The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) and Hawaii (1966) (virtual tie)
1967: The Jungle Book (1967)
1968: Funny Girl (1968)
1969: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)1970: Love Story (1970)
1971: Billy Jack (1971)
1972: The Godfather (1972)
1973: The Exorcist (1973)
1974: Blazing Saddles (1974)
1975: Jaws (1975)
1976: Rocky (1976)
1977: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
1978: Grease (1978)
1979: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)1980: Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
1982: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
1983: Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
1984: Ghostbusters (1984)
1985: Back to the Future (1985)
1986: Top Gun (1986)
1987: Three Men and a Baby (1987)
1988: Rain Man (1988)
1989: Batman (1989)1990: Home Alone (1990)
1991: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
1992: Aladdin (1992)
1993: Jurassic Park (1993)
1994: The Lion King (1994)
1995: Toy Story (1995)
1996: Independence Day (1996)
1997: Titanic (1997)
1998: Saving Private Ryan (1998)
1999: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
2000: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
2001: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
2002: Spider-Man (2002)
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
2004: Shrek 2 (2004)
2005: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
2006: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
2007: Spider-Man 3 (2007)
2008: The Dark Knight (2008)
2009: Avatar (2009)
2010: Toy Story 3 (2010)
2011: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011)
2012: Marvel's The Avengers (2012)
2013: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
2014: American Sniper (2014)
2015: Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
2016: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)-
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I still wish so much they could show more Paramount films, especially from the thirties. There is something so dreamlike and misty and exotic about them...
The 1929 to 1949 Paramount library belongs to Universal. Most of these films are in no condition to show in the age of hi def as Universal's MOD program for their old films has not been nearly as aggressive as the Warner Archive was when it started eight years ago. Thus the last time most of them were seen was on American Movie Classics in the VHS era. Maybe you already know this, but I'm just putting it out there since this is not TCM's fault. Warner Brothers now has the distribution rights to the entire Sam Goldwyn catalog, and the post 1949 Paramount library up to a certain date... not sure what that date is. If they get distribution rights to the old Paramount library then you will likely see more of those old Paramount films as they get restored.
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SUTS looks good this year. Absolutely do not miss "Alias Nick Beal" or "Condemned".
The fact that Warner Brothers now distributes Sam Goldwyn's films as well as the fact that TCM pretty much has the pick of the Fox classic library has given TCM more variety. By the way, isn't it a shame when TCM becomes a better Fox Movie Channel than the original Fox Movie Channel ever was?
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Dumb question, but is there any reason it hasn't been shown? I was thinking it was a PD movie.
Not a dumb question. It's a Paramount film, and TCM doesn't show many of those. I think I read a couple of years ago where Warner Bros. - TCM's parent company - got the distribution rights to the post 49 Paramount library, up to a certain date. That would be the classic films Paramount did not sell to Universal - their talking film library from 1929 to 1949. Since "Hot Spell" falls in that category, it could show up on the TCM schedule sometime.
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https://www.youtube.com/embed/dVK2EmEU7ag
A pan and scan version of Hot Spell.
Sorry but I can't get the youtube embed working tonight.
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It looks sort of common today, because we've been through 12 years of "The Sopranos" on HBO pretty much making the "Everyday Mafia family" depiction into a bingeable TV soap-opera craze, and then trying to make its boss sympathetic--
But when Scorsese first tried hitting us with the idea, the last ironic shot, of Hill seeing his dream image of Paul Sorvino as a cool 40's-movie gangster, self-destructed, hit critics like a brick--Hill wasn't naive about the gangs in his neighborhood, but WE were, from all the sanitized Bogart-noir and soft-focus Italian-romanticized Godfathers.
Unlike the series, Scorsese shows us that gangsters are family, but they're still bat-crazy, and they don't exactly fire anyone in their organization who screws up. The scene where Lorraine Bracco is listening to Robert DeNiro tell her, "No, your coat's just down at the end of the block, keep going..." manages to be scary because we're thinking what she's thinking at the same time, and about how just-business DeNiro's treating it.
Goodfellas made The Sopranos possible. They even used quite a few of the castmembers from the film. If Goodfellas looks common, it is because films and TV shows have been copying the basic idea for the past 27 years.
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List was certainly an odd duck, to say the least. I've read that he also
felt his children were straying away from his form of traditional morality.
I believe his daughter was going to be in a school play and he had a
very negative reaction to that. The house burned down less than a
year after the murders and a new brick house was built, which looked
less creepy than the List house. And as coldblooded as they were, I
can't see De Niro or Pesci killing their mothers.
Yes, in "Goodfellas" Pesci's character actually lives with his mom and seems to have a loving relationship with her, as much as a sociopath can. I do remember the part about List saying his daughter was straying. If he thought that heaven would be so much better, it's odd that he didn't take his own life after he killed the entire family isn't it? I think that the person who turned List in during the late 80s was actually his neighbor when he lived out west and for years had thought that he might be John List based on when he turned up there and his age and appearance.
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It's nice that TCM is having a day's tribute to a character actor I always enjoyed. I'm particularly interested in Hat Coat and Glove, which I've never seen.
I think you'll like Hat, Coat, and Glove. Although SPOILER WARNING, in the end, it seems like the simplest thing to do would have been to report the woman's death as a suicide, which it was, rather than Cortez' character's complicated solution. Dorothy Burgess is very good as a very crazy woman.
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Wow! So Ricardo would pretty much turn into Vito Scotti later in life, eh?!
Cortez was a Wall Street broker after he left films, so he lived a very comfortable life in his second career.
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The List murder case was quite notorious at the time. And here was
a guy who was really into those old-time Judeo-Christian values.
Now to set the record straight, List was born and raised in Michigan,
and was just living in Jersey due to a career move. So I don't count
him as a native born Garden Stater.
Getting a bit OT from Goodfellas, but, yes, List was from Michigan, not New Jersey, where the crimes were committed. List had basically bought a mansion when he was just starting his job in Jersey. His purpose at his job was to interface with clients and bring in new business, and he was just not a people person, getting fired not long after starting. But he never told his family. Just faked going into work every day. But then the bills piled up and he was going to have to declare bankruptcy and suffer foreclosure. He decided his entire family would be better off in heaven, so he just systematically killed them - the kids being last as they came home from school. He was an accountant so he knew how to disappear, make fake SSNs, and took odd jobs until enough time passed until he thought the heat was off. The great irony was his mansion's ballroom had a ceiling of authentic Tiffany glass, enough that he could have used it to get out of debt and start over, but nobody knew this until the List home became a crime scene. Another irony - Robert Blake, who was tried and acquitted of killing his own wife, played List in the 1993 TV movie about the crime - "Judgment Day". Well, at least I managed to get this post tied back into film somehow.
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Hard to find any mafia in 60s and 70s Dallas, which is where I grew up. Actually, my deep south parents pretty much believed that all people in New York acted like they did in Goodfellas! They were very opinionated about people from up north. I remember when John List killed his entire family and I mentioned it to them - I was 13 at the time - they looked at me and said something to the effect of "Well he was from New Jersey! What would you expect?". Odd but true.
If the point of Goodfellas was to make a movie about the mafia from the working hood's point of view that makes all other films of its type look third rate, I'd say it succeeded. That would not include the Godfather saga, of course, since those were mafia films from the executive suite point of view.
I've always believed Goodfellas should have won the Best Picture Oscar of 1990.
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If you want to see it that badly there is a DVD available:
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In the 1950's married women did not work. It didn't matter if they had children or not. A man was "shamed" as a bad provider if his wife worked. That was Ricky's objection to Lucy working, not that she was untalented. Her total lack of talent just made it funnier. Until 1953 when Lucille Ball's actual pregnancy with her son got written into the show, her character was a married childless woman living in a small apartment that probably needed minimum labor for housekeeping yet she was expected not to work. She was actually trying to get into one of the few careers in which women were accepted at that time - entertainment, secretarial, nursing, teaching - you know, jobs that either entertained or served men or children in some capacity. Even if Lucy had been playing a single woman there is no way in the 50s that America would accept her carrying a briefcase, putting on a hardhat, and saying well I'm off to another exciting day of civil engineering!
As to Gracie being "part of the act" on George and Gracie's TV show. The act was the show. There was no exciting career in entertainment that George had that Gracie wanted a part of. It was just Gracie's goofy antics and George's biting witty remarks in reaction.
I don't know if Lucille Ball was never seen as a great comedienne prior to TV because of the studio system and it just not seeing her in that role or what. And I'm sure that her creeping up on 40 had something to do with it too. Although she was very well preserved and she had both of her children when she was 40+, back when there was no way medicine could help nature along in the case of women of advanced maternal age.
My parents are both still alive, both part of that "greatest generation" that was in their 20s and 30s in the 1950's and my jaw drops at some of their old fashioned ideas to this day.
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Except that it would be more accurate to say that about half of that nation are outraged by the notion of wiping the Confederate flag off the face of the earth. And about a third of that nation would like to see the Confederacy rise again.
I'm from Texas originally, my dad's relatives are from Mississippi. So I know something of what you speak. I think anybody should be outraged by the notion of wiping any part of history off the face of the earth or else you are doomed to repeat it AND you lose a vital part of understanding how other people feel. I know nobody (normal) who wants the Confederacy to rise again. As a person who has lived in the south, and is currently living in the middle atlantic and is married to a New Yorker, I think if you wanted to boil things down and oversimplify things a bit you could just say that people from the north cherish order more than freedom and people from the south and the mountain west cherish freedom more than order. This has been my observation anyways.
Back to GWTW, to me the goofiest part of the movie is the slaves marching out to fight the Yankees and the slaves sticking around after the Confederacy was eliminated. That and the whole idea that slavery was some kind of charitable institution is ridiculous. But that was how Margaret Mitchell and her contemporaries saw things in their own heads at that time. I'm interested in how people saw things in the past. It is part of the allure of classic film. Otherwise we are just talking to ourselves. It is the reason to watch films with poor Willy Best being made to act the fool and coward in every film from the 30s and 40s that I've seen him in. Do I cringe? Yes. I just cringe and hope he laughed all the way to the bank. It is the reason to watch films from the 50s where women who have gone to elite colleges can expect no more than secretarial jobs when they get out. Am I happy that women were shoehorned into the role of wife and mother whether it fit them or not? Of course not! But it was how things were until about 1970 in the United States.
And as for the fellow who said that Roots' popularity might have been because it was a very cold winter. I think you may have that winter mixed up with 77-78 the following year. We even had several episodes of snow in Dallas the following year where it reached half-way to my knee. That was unprecedented in Big D. At any rate, 76-77 was not a cold winter in Dallas, and everybody was gathered around the TV watching Roots every night and everybody was talking about it for months. It made quite an impression in a place where there was no snow at the time and it was 60 degrees outside.
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You're talking about a nation of people who think the answer to the Dylan Roofs of this world is to wipe the Confederate flag off the face of the earth. Problem solved!
Would the public of the 21st century be willing to take in stride the features of the original novel and movie that are now unanimously regarded as very dated? My answer is a very confident NO.
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i feel dirty and wrong and ashamed to admit this, but my dalliance with the wide world of cable and netflix that began during the barren tundra of Oscar Month on TCM continues...
oh see what ye hath wrought 31 days.....
I've taken to watching CAKE WARS on the Food Network; all the episodes became available this weekend and i was so thrilled at seeing this that i almost vomited immediately on realizing how pathetic it was that I was thrilled about every episode of CAKE WARS being made available.
They have four bakers compete to make ridiculously elaborate cakes based on a theme that i usually know nothing about (video games or new movies) they give them next to no time and then, as often as not, bitchily dismiss their cakes....mind you, this is after they require in the initial challenge that they use an ingredient of their choice, and Bleu Cheese is one of their favorites, they've also done herring and red meat.
sometimes the bakers fail magnificently and you can smell their despair through the screen.
it is the darkness of the soul and i love it.
I have to admit this is one of my guilty pleasures too. It is one of the few reality shows that I will watch. Could it be because we both have black shriveled hearts? Who knows.
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Monday, April 3
The Faye Dunawy night must have been a change from the original schedule as I had noted An American Tragedy was on. I'll have to go with ...
8 p.m. Live from the TCM Festival with Faye Dunaway (2017). It doesn't say who will be interviewing her.
Tuesday, April 4/5
1:45 a.m. Exit Smiling (1926). Silent comedy with Beatrice Lillie
3:30 a.m. Journal of a Crime (1934). This Ruth Chatterton film looks worth a look.
How can a Faye Dunaway interview be live from the festival if it does not start until Thursday, April 6? Is this from last year?
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There is an article in today's Washington Post about Philip Baker Hall who has 175 film and TV acting credits. I can't get the link to work properly.
Born in 1931, and still alive, his first acting credit is in 1970's Zabriskie Point. He is still acting today at age 85.
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Here's a link to films that were top box office draws by year.Notice that 1924 is labeled "Nothing Substantial" and that the only year Harold Lloyd topped at the box office it was for probably the worst film he ever made,"Welcome Danger", in 1929.
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What is the actual source of this information? According to your list Mr. Eastwood has real staying power, making the top of the list in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I had no idea who Jennifer Lawrence was. I had to look that one up. Can you imagine Marie Dressler being a top box office draw today? Don't get me wrong I love her films.
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I may have asked this first one before, so if you answered once upon a time, I apologize. The film is a western in which a female saloon keeper - A Miss Kitty type - is always squaring off with a preacher from outside of town. I can't remember who played either part. In the end I think that the saloonkeeper shoots the preacher - I can't remember if she kills him - and then finds out he is in fact her estranged sister's husband. I would appreciate the title. I don't think I have seen it on TV anywhere in the last 25 years.
The second film is a more modern one. It stars Robert Carradine. He is suffering from some mental illness or social anxiety, and he is on a camping trip that includes a woman who does not have any of these problems. She is building fires, fishing, etc. and acting very confident. Carradine then has a conversation with her at the campsite in the dark basically mentioning all of the things that she CAN do and that not he nor any of the women he knows can do any of these things. Carradine has a long list of TV movies to his name, so it would take lots of time to whittle them down and figure out which one is this film. I do not know if it was made for TV or just on TV.
Thanks ahead of time for any help you can give me.
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Thanks shutoo, the whole thing looks so suspicious - straight to DVD-R with no manufacturer listed.
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There is an alpha release of this film, but there is also one that is more expensive, and claims to clock in at 100 minutes when every entry I've ever seen has said that this film is 67 minutes long.
Here is the Amazon entry for the newer longer and more expensive version:
Does anybody have any idea whether this newer version is restored and might possibly have some lost footage?
Thanks ahead of time for any information.
All time domestic box office hits from 1913 through 2016
in General Discussions
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Echoing Jamesjazzguitar's sentiment on the subject. Also, Nip, if 10 John Wayne films came in at number 2 or 3 but we're only counting number one spots, that would hardly make John Wayne a failure don't you think? Cary Grant and Myrna Loy never won a competitive Oscar, but that does not make them career failures.