1928 Movies

This movie page looks at 1928 Movies.  Finding box office information for movies made in the 1920s and 1930s is extremely difficult.   For somebody looking for box office information on 1928 it is very very frustrating.  Over the years, we have researched and collected information on over 36,000 movies.  So we figured we would show all the 1928 movies in our database.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1928.  Obviously many movies made in 1927 earned box office dollars in 1928.  On the other side many movies made in 1928 made money in 1929 and later.  This page looks at over 80 1928 Top Box Office Movies.  The movies are listed in a massive table that lets you rank the movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  We will  update this page on a regular basis.

Our UMR Top 50 of 1928

1928 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 1928 Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort 1928  Movies by domestic actual box office grosses
  • Sort 1928  Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
  • Sort 1928  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 1928  Movies received.
  • Sort 1928  Movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking Score (UMR).  Our UMR score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Top earners in 1928 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

Want to see our 1928 Worldwide Box Office Grosses? Then follow this link.

1928 Box Office Grosses

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16 thoughts on “1928 Movies”

  1. Hello Bruce and friends,

    So many names of stars forgotten, so many names of directors forgotten except for the movies fans, 1928 it is so far, two years before the talking and the new stars like Dietrich Gable Colbert
    Tracy etc…. I remark that Crawford had a better box office than Garbo but she was not the star of stars at MGM, it was Garbo and Shearer.
    Anyway to day stay Paramount, MGM, Universal etc means HOLLYWOOD stay HOLLYWOOD and Marylin the only classic actress with young fans, it is difficult for the others but sometimes we remind…
    I read that a portrait of her by Warhol was sold with a big amount.
    It is not easy for me to write a comment because most of the time i never heard about the actors or the actress but i know classic films and stars that why 1928, it is for me!!!!

    I hope everybody is fine
    Pierre

    Reply

  2. Hi! Doing some fact-checking on Wikipedia, and ran across Lilac Time 1928 with a box office rental number of $1.675 million but a reference pointing to a Variety list from 1990 where it is definitely not listed. Being a Warner release, thinking that the Schaefer ledger is the only logical source… but is the number correct? Is that one of the numbers you were able to obtain from the Schaefer ledger, and if so, does it match?
    Thanks!

    Reply

  3. Does Tempest have a place in either 1927 or 1928?
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019451/?ref_=tt_mv_close
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Academy_Awards
    First film nominated and won an Oscar for Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies)
    Note that The Dove was part of this Oscar win for WCM
    The Oscar’s were combined in 27/28
    but you might be missing both films.
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017822/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_5

    Yes I know Box Office data was limited for these years but leaving out the first Oscar winner for a category doesn’t feel right to me.

    Reply

    1. Hey Sidney. I have found box office grosses on both Tempest and The Dove…..currently running an update on the website. After it is done running that update…both movies will be in the yearly pages..plus John Barrymore has a new movie his page as well. Thanks for alerting me to these two movies. Hope all is going well.

      Reply

  4. Hey Bruce,

    84 movies ! Wow it’s impressive ! I know a lot of them, but I’ve seen only 3 movies of this list. “Circus” and the two Buster Keaton’s pictures.
    Chaplin was very very popular in France. “Gold rush” was one of the biggest success of the decade. 250 000 people saw the movie in only one theatre, the Marignan 1500 seats, in 8 weeks. May be the biggest. Circus was a big success too. His films were always big success whent they re-released in the 1940′ and 1950’s.
    I wanted to ask you, I saw that in a comment you talked about Fox Ledgers. They are in the same place as the Warner ledgers in Los Angeles?

    Reply

    1. Hey Laurent….thanks for checking out our 1928 page. Good to hear from you. Thinking I will do a 1927 page….and that will be the last one that looks like the rest. First of all…the Oscars did not exist before that…..the reviews become a very hard to find…..and when you do…..it seems only a few people have actually seen the movies….and box office numbers become even harder to find.

      Good information on Chapin and France. The Marignan pushing a quarter of a million people through in only 8 weeks is an amazing stat! As for the Fox ledgers…..that information can be found in a few excellent Fox books….must are written by Audrey Solomon …one of the links is here. https://books.google.com/books/about/Twentieth_Century_Fox.html?id=w70iAAAAMAAJ

      Great feedback!

      Reply

  5. zero. I whiffed. but thanks to UMR and UMR commenters I have added several to my to be watched list. why do I like Keaton so much more than Chaplin? more box office gold for my delightful myrna Loy, The Bob winces, this time greatly undeserved(how do you spell apoplexy?)
    congrats to cogerson on 58 contiguous years. great job. I love these pages.

    Reply

    1. Hey bob cox…..even though your total is 0….you are not too far behind many of us….even Flora is “only” 8 ahead of you. Yep…the power of Loy….she was a player in the 1920s too……one day he will see the Loy light. Yep 58 and growing….looking forward to doing a 1927 page….and then filling in the gap between 1986 and 2010. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

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