Vincente Minnelli Movies

vincente minnelliWant to know the best Vincente Minnelli movies?  How about the worst Vincente Minnelli movies?  Curious about Vincente Minnelli box office grosses or which Vincente Minnelli movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Vincente Minnelli movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Vincente Minnelli (1903-1986) was an Oscar® winning American film director.  He gained famed for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris.   His IMDb page shows 38 directing credits from 1925 to 1957. This page will only be taking a look at 38 of his movies.   Movies will be ranked from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.

Drivel part of the page:  (1) This UMR movie page comes from a request from Flora.  (2) Recently Steve Lensman did a You Tube on Vincente Minnelli’s Top 20 Movies…lots of great movie posters there.  (3)  We only had to research 4 of the 38 movies….because we already had 34 of his movies in our database.  (4) Collateral Damage:  Only one of those 34 movies needed to have a box office adjustment….1949’s Madame Bovary…which saw that movie drop from the ranks of being a $100 million box office hit.

Vincente Minnelli, Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly on set of An American In Paris (1951)
Vincente Minnelli, Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly on set of An American In Paris (1951)

Vincente Minnelli Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Vincente Minnelli Movies Can Be Ranked 7 Ways In This Table

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

  • Sort Vincente Minnelli movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Vincente Minnelli movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Vincente Minnelli movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions) *** not all worldwide box office grosses were found
  • Sort Vincente Minnelli movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Vincente Minnelli 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 Vincente Minnelli movie received.
  • Sort Vincente Minnelli 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.
Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland on the set off 1944's Meet Me In St. Louis
Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland on the set off 1944’s Meet Me In St. Louis

 Possibly Interesting Facts About Vincente Minnelli

  1. Lester Anthony Minnelli was born in Chicago, Illniois in 1903.  His father Vincent was a musical conductor of the Minnelli Brothers’ Tent Theater.  So he got his love for theater and his first name from his father.

2. Vincente Minnelli was allowed to apprentice for a year on the MGM lot. By the time he started directing, he knew every department at the studio.

3. Vincente Minnelli insisted on using a shade of yellow in the design of his sets that had to be specially mixed. MGM painters began calling it “Minnelli Yellow.”

4. Vincente Minnelli invented the crab dolly, a camera dolly on wheels that can move the camera in any direction.

5. Vincente Minnelli was nominated for two Best Director Oscars®:  1951’s An American in Paris and 1958’s Gigi.  He won for Gigi.

6. Vincente Minnelli is listed as the uncredited director on 1957’s The Seventh Sin, 1944’s The Heavenly Body and 194’s Panama Hattie.  We have included all three of those movies in the above table.

7. Vincente Minnelli directed seven different actors in Oscar®-nominated performances: Spencer Tracy, Gloria Grahame, Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Arthur Kennedy, Shirley MacLaine and Martha Hyer. Grahame and Quinn won Oscars for their performances.

8.  Vincente Minnelli was married four times. He had two daughters. His most famous marriage was to his frequent leading lady, Judy Garland.  They were the parents of Oscar® winning actress, Liza Minnelli.  His daughter, Christiane Nina Minnelli was from his second marriage.

9. Vincente Minnelli named his daughter Liza Minnelli after the Gershwin song Liza.

10.  Check out Vincente Minnelli‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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

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55 thoughts on “Vincente Minnelli Movies”

  1. So glad to find this dialogue! We are experiencing a cultural drought right now and our heritage of great visionaries is sadly ignored. Minnelli was a great artist and his work is endlessly fascinating. Hopefully he will be rediscovered…I can remember when “The Bad and the Beautiful” was included in top-ten lists and young people would flock to theaters to see revivals of such incredible art. Thanks for this excellent site!

    Reply

    1. Hey Lou….and we are glad you found out website. If you explore our website you will find 100s of these classic movie conversations going on. I hope you are right in thinking that VM will be rediscovered. Good memory share of how influential Bad and the Beautiful was back then. Good comment.

      Reply

  2. Just counted and I’ve seen exactly 25 movies directed by Liza’s Daddy. Apart from the blockbuster Musicals (minus Gigi) it seems that my faves are the ones that did only mediocre business at the box office. So let me lament about Madame Bovary, Lust for Life, The Heavenly Body (allright, pretty stupid story, but Lamarr and Powell!) and the visually and vocally (minus Montand) stunning Barbra Streisand Extravaganza On a clear Day. I also love The Bad and the Beautiful, not just for Lana, but for everybody involved, including the best of the B-Babes Gloria Grahame. Always wondered what went wrong for her after Oklahoma, but according to her own evaluation her behaviour after her success in that movie estranged her from important people…

    Reply

    1. Hey Lupino….very cool….I had to dig a little…but I found the last tally count….this one is truly an international competition…your 25 was good enough for the Bronze….but not enough to bump either Canuck

      Current Tally Count…
      Flora from Canada……33 movies watched
      Bern1960 from Canada……26 movies watched
      Lupino from Germany…..25 movies watched
      Larry from USA ……..17 movies watched
      Steve from England…..15 movies watched
      Cogerson from USA…..12 movies watched
      Laurent from France…..3 movies watched.

      Thanks for the mini review on The Heavenly Body…The Bad and The Beautiful is a classic…that gets better with each new viewing. As for Grahame…she had a great run…her personal life might have slowed her career before it should have….but she left behind some great performances. As for On A Clear Day You Can See Forever….I always thought that was a very uneven movie….and Jack actually tilted even more when he was on screen…the Jack and Babs chemistry was not too apparent…at least to me. Thanks for the comment and visit.

      Reply

  3. Hi Bruce,

    Great page!

    Vincent Minnelli, like so many other directors of this era, needed to be versatile within the studio system. Daves, Mankeiwicz, Flemming and Milestone, to name a few, were all required to succesfully turn out different genres. Hell even Howard Hawks made a musical.

    My personal favorites however aren’t his musicals at all; Some Came Running, Home From the Hill and The Bad and the Beautiful are powerfull films dealing with so much of what truly embodied the human condition, bad or good. The adult themes he dealt with in a time of conformity attests to his genius and his craftsmanship.

    How can you pass up the final scene in Some Came Running….gorgeous.

    Marcel

    Reply

    1. Hey Marcel….thanks for the comment on Vincente Minnnelli. I agree directors had to be able to make all kinds of movies…..and the really great ones made it look easy…..and Minnelli was in that group of great ones.

      Some Came Running is very high on my list of movies to watch. I love Bad and the Beautiful …..so many great scenes in that one. I have seen bits and pieces of Home From The Hill…..so I need to track that one down.

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Mr. Minnelli.

      Reply

  4. Hi
    A lot of people have made the point that he wasn’t just a musical director, which of course is true. But its musicals he will always be remembered for. Anybody who’s into musicals will make a point of seeing films like Meet Me In St. Louis, An American in Paris, The Bandwagon, Gigi, Brigadoon, The Pirates, The Cabin In The Sky. All well known MGM films which he is forever linked.
    I think Minnelli is to musicals what Ford was to Westerns. I must admit I’m surprised you haven’t seen Meet Me In St. Louis. But then the more I thought of it, I realised you couldn’t possible see every movie because I definitely haven’t. There are only 24 hours in the day. I was wondering when you prepare a page for your site, how many movies do you try and watch for that person as you obviously wouldn’t have time to watch them all? Let’s be honest, even the greatest stars made some dire movies.
    You mentioned about the request page, many people I would be interested in are already mentioned. but I don’t see Rosalind Russell or Alice Faye there. And what about Laurel and Hardy. But I realise most of their great work were in 15 minute shorts, rather than feature movies. But they were much part of my childhood.
    The truth is it’s a site you’ll never run out of subject matter. Thanks.

    Reply

    1. HELLO CHRIS

      1 It’s true that Vincente is mostly remembered for his musicals and indeed it is among his musicals that most of his classics are to be found.

      2 However The Bad and the Beautiful and Father of the Bride are also regarded as classics
      and the fact that someone whose stock and trade was musicals could contrastingly also successfully make highly dramatic films such as The Bad and the Beautiful, Lust for Life, Undercurrent , Some Came Running, Home from the Hill and Two Weeks in Another Town shows a remarkable versatility and not to recognise that would be to do him an injustice. Indeed it is BECAUSE Minnelli is so associated with musicals that it needs to be emphasised that he deserves credit for other work as well.

      3 The same goes for John Ford who as you say is mainly associated with westerns many of which are classics. But Ford also made a string of great films that were not westerns such as Mr Roberts, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, The Informer , and most especially one of the greatest social commentary films of the Classic Era The Grapes of Wrath.

      4. Mentioning their other work does not detract from Minnelli’s mastery of the musical or Ford’s reputation as a maker of great westerns: it augments those reputations. Certainly if I were Minnelli or Ford I would be exceedingly proud of The Bad and the Beautiful and The Grapes of Wrath and I would want people to be reminded that I could do more than make musicals/westerns. .

      Best wishes BOB

      Reply

      1. Hey Bob….wow…I just about said the same thing as your comment number 3…in my return comment to Chris….great minds thinking alike. Basically…though Ford is known as a western guy….all 4 of his Oscar wins came in movies that were not westerns.

        Reply

    2. Hey Chris…good point about Minnelli being to musicals what Ford was to westerns. My favorite Ford movies are not westerns….I know I need to turn in my John Wayne fan card……but I love The Quiet Man……not to mention How Green Was My Valley. Ford won 4 Best Director Oscars….yet not any of them were westerns. As he got Oscars for my two favorites and The Grapes of Wrath and The Informer….the Oscar nomination Ford got for a western was for Stagecoach.

      At this point in the process of doing a new page…whatever the number I had seen before doing the page is the same number I have after writing the page….when I first started doing these classic actors …the research was much more lengthy….I think James Cagney took 2 months…during that time frame it seemed I would watch more of his movies….actually that is when I first watched White Heat…while researching that page. Now for actors I love…I am willing to share the movies I love….on my Michael Caine and Cary Grant pages…you get my personal Top 10. The rest….I pretty much offer up the stats….versus saying these are the best movies….normally the stats do not lie…as the cream rises to the top normally. I think the Mel Gibson page might be the worst one…when looking at my UMR rankings….as the rankings look horrible. I am hoping when I update that page…those rankings will look better.

      The really cool thing is….with each new page….I get comments talking about the movies the commentor really likes…..and one or two movies hit my radar….and get on my “Movies to watch” list. For this page…it is Meet Me In St. Louis (as I seem to be the only person on planet Earth not to have seen the movie yet)and The Clock (great reviews)

      Yes even the great ones make bad movies….no matter who the star I write about is….there is always a movie at the bottom of the rankings..lol….in this case…it belongs to A Matter Of Time….which was one of Ingrid Bergman’s last movies. I will add Rosalind Russell and Alice Faye. I have looked at Laurel Hardy many times….they have enough full length movies to include on a page…..but I have only found one of their movie’s grosses…..and I have been searching and searching. Yes I will never run out of subjects…but now that we are in the 400s…it seems some of the new subjects we write about do not have a huge fan base.

      As always….great talking movies with you.

      Reply

  5. 1 So close has been Vincente Minnelli been identified in audiences’ minds with the Great musical entertainer Judy Garland in particular and musical movies in general that it can be overlooked that he gave us a fine body of work in non musicals as well. Even Wikipedia in its opening mention of his classics cites only the musicals.

    2 The beauty of the 38 entries in the table above is that they comprise EVERYTHING and films like The Bad and the Beautiful, Undercurrent, and Lust for Life show how strong was the meat that Minnelli could offer that was a far cry from feel-good sequences like The Trolley Song.

    3 M own favourite Minnelli musical was Meet Me in St Louis and my best-liked non-musical Minnelli pictures were The Bad and the Beautiful and Two Weeks in Another Town despite the latter’s lower ranking but because it teamed Kirk Douglas with the wonderful Edward G Robinson. I have noted with interest the exchanges between Laurent and Bruce about these pictures.

    4. Here is both a great irony and a great coincidence. In Belfast where I have lived I saw Minnelli’s Lust for Life [56] on the same double bill as The 7th Sin [57] but until I read this page I never realised that Minnelli had an input to 7th Sin because as is explained above he was uncredited for that film

    5 I am therefore grateful for Bruce’s attention to detail in dragging it out of the shadows despite its poor box office record as Eleanor Parker the star of the film, Doris Day and Rhonda Fleming were my three favourite 50s actresses D Durbin having quit films by then.

    6 The worldwide grosses are once more a welcome bonus and they confirm the pattern of
    earlier worldwide grosses provided in Cogerson in that they again illustrate that in the Classic Era a film’s domestic grosses normally tended to exceed its foreign earnings often considerably

    7 So from my viewpoint another informative new page that comprehensively covers the commercial and artistic aspects of the career of a great filmmaker.

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. I agree when I watched the Minnelli video Steve put together….the musicals were near the top…but the rest of movies were far from musicals.
      2. Bad and the Beautiful is one of my favorite behind the scenes of Hollywood movies.
      3. Before doing these pages I had never heard of Two Weeks In Another Town…..now it is on my list of movies to watch.
      4. Yep Minnelli replaced Ronald Neame after Neame got fired on The Seventh Sin….George Cukor was somebody that called up Neame after his firing….and told him not to worry….as he succeeded after Cukor got dumped on Gone With The Wind.
      5. Thankfully the MGM ledgers provided the low box office rental total of only $250,000…though almost did twice the business overseas….$475,000 in rentals.
      6. I think we have a Rhonda Fleming request…and we have a Doris Day page….not thinking we have ever gotten a Eleanor Parker request…I bet she is in the database many times….as I seem to recall typing her name many times in the co-star list.
      7. Minnelli working so long for MGM is why must of the worldwide numbers are listed…to bad MGM did not make all the movies from 1920 to 1980….lol.
      Thanks for the visit and the kind words.

      Reply

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