Want to know the best Linda Darnell movies? How about the worst Linda Darnell movies? Curious about Linda Darnell box office grosses or which Linda Darnell movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Linda Darnell movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Linda Darnell (1923-1965) was an American actress. Darnell was one of the most popular actresses of the 1940s. Her movies earned $3 billion (adjusted gross) between 1940 and 1949….with 15 of her movies crossing the $100 milllion (adjusted) mark. Linda Darnell’s IMDb page shows 57 acting credits from 1939-1965. This page will rank 40 Linda Darnell movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her television appearances, uncredited roles, shorts and 1955’s It Happens in Roma (not released in North American theaters) were not included in the rankings.
Drivel Part: This page comes from a request by Pierre. Gotta admit that I did not know much about Linda Darnell before doing this page. Now I know enough to be dangerous….lol. Sorry for the delay, Pierre…..but your requested Linda Darnell page is now complete!
Linda Darnell 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 Linda Darnell movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Linda Darnell movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Linda Darnell movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Linda Darnell movies by 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 Linda Darnell movie received.
- Sort Linda Darnell 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.
- Blue link in Co-star column takes you to that star’s UMR movie page
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Linda Darnell Table
- Sixteen Linda Darnell movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 40.00% of her movies listed. Forever Amber (1947) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Linda Darnell movie grossed $91.30 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 19 Linda Darnell movies are rated as good movies…or 47.50% of her movies. My Darling Clementine (1946) is her highest rated movie while City Without Men (1943) is her lowest rated movie.
- Nine Linda Darnell movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 22.50% of her movies.
- Three Linda Darnell movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 7.50% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 22 Linda Darnell movies scored higher that average….or 55.00% of her movies. My Darling Clementine (1946) got the the highest UMR Score while The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Linda Darnell
1. Monetta Eloyse Darnell was born in Dallas, Texas in 1923.
2. As a teenager, Linda Darnell landed not one but two movie contracts. Her first contract was with RKO before 20th Century Fox decided to offer her movie roles. At 15 she was living by herself in a small apartment in Hollywood. By the time she was 16 she was Tyrone Power’s leading lady in 1939’s Day-Time Wife.
3. Linda Darnell’s nickname was Tweedles.
4. Linda Darnell really wanted to play the Ava Gardner part in 1954’s The Barefoot Contessa. Apparently Joseph L. Mankiwez wrote the part with Darnell in mind.
5. Linda Darnell was never nominated for any major acting awards….nor was she ever included on the Quigley Publication Top Star lists…..the last fact makes no sense. In 1944 she had 3 $100 million hits….that should have gotten a spot in the Top 25 for sure.
6. Linda Darnell was married three times and had one daughter.
7. Linda Darnell’s character in 1946’s Anna and the King of Siam, was executed by being burned at the stake. In real life, Darnell died at age 41 from burns received in a house fire.
8. Check out Linda Darnell‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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Hello Lupino,
A very good comment about one of the most beautiful screen stars from the classic era thank you.
Excellente journée
Pierre
Glad you liked Lupino’s comment and link….both are great reads.
Hi Bruce,
glad you like the article. Now here’s hoping that Pierre will see it 😉
Thank you for the encouragement to keep sharing sites like this. Already done it on Margaret Sullavan’s page…now it would be time for a Sylvia share, but haven’t found anything of particular interest yet…
and everyone interested. Since the spammers seem to get through posting links, I’ll try my luck. This is part of the autobiography of Rick Jason, who starred with Linda in THIS IS MY LOVE in 1954. It was the last time in Darnell’s career that she received top billing, and unfortunately the movie was not a success. Still, it contains some great acting from Darnell, I stumbled across this quote on the net: Author David Quinlan cites this film in his book “The Film Lover’s Companion”: “…..only occasional films, such as ‘My Darling Clementine’ and ‘This Is My Love’, used properly the qualities of willfulness, hard-heartedness and deep-seated sexual smolder that could have made her a tragedienne of the first order.”
Link to article: http://www.scrapbooksofmymind.com/this_is_my_love.htm
Hey Lupino….thanks for the link….glad you got it in…..the link spam blocker is back….so the next time you share it link it will require me to approve it…..which I will happily do. I like this link…good find….hope you will keep sharing information like this….great feedback.
Hello Lupino,
Thank you so much for the article about Linda Darnell, and i find it very interresting but by the way for me it looks already like a swan sing;
I dont understand why everything change for her in one or two years;
Maybe the end of the Fox contract, during the 40 she was with a lot of great succes, and some classics films and one or two masterpieces of movie story;
And then Italian films but i dont see her last films so i cannot speak of them;
I know i am a little late but i hope a very good easter for all the followers of UMR
See you
Pierre
Bon soir Pierre,
glad you found and liked the article on Miss Darnell. I am right with you when you say you don\’t understand why it all went downhill for Linda in the early fifties. I\’ve asked myself the same question. I always believed that it started right at the beginning, with her being a contractual Fox star- they never really seemed to know what to do with her. They cast her as an ingenue paired with a strong male star, namely Ty Power, borrowed her to another studio for a strict B movie (City without Men), assigned her to secondary leading roles supporting Maureen O\’Hara, Irene Dunne, Jeanne Crain or Alice Faye. Her one shot at superstardom came as a REPLACEMENT for another actress that didn\’t prove satisfactory to Fox executives in Forever Amber, and while the box office success of that movie was impressive, it stayed behind the expectation. This \”relative failure\” was unfairly pinned on Darnell, who got some savage reviews for her interpretation of Amber. So back to leading lady parts in Walls of Jericho and Unfaithfully Yours, billed behind her male partner. A Letter to three Wives could have changed all that, finally a Darnell performance the critics did approve of…but her other outing of 1949 was Slattery\’s Hurricane, an actioner that put her in support of Richard Widmark and another fast fading female star, Veronica Lake. Her last big chance came as early as 1950- No Way Out. A really good performance, but only a fair box office success. From then on, it was more miss than hit, her last decent success was Second Chance in 1953. I always felt that when Fox dropped her contract, she had no consistent \”acting reputation/legacy\” to fall back on, and, unlike other \”homeless\” ex contract players, not even a public persona or \”screen image\” to safeguard her through a rapidly changing industry. Maybe her exceptional beauty also wasn\’t helpful- I remember reading a review about Zero Hour in which her participation was described as follows (no exact quote) \”Linda Darnell is so beautiful that you don\’t mind she can\’t act\”. Throw her personal problems (failed, unhappy relationships, alcoholism) into the mix and you might have a possible explanation for the rather quick demise of the star that once was Linda Darnell.
Good stuff.