1946 Top Box Office Movies

1946 22222
James Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

This page looks at the 1946 Top Box Office Movies. World War II ended in 1945 and as the soldiers returned home…they did two things….one they made lots of babies and two they went to lots of movies. 1946 was the peak of people going to movies. In 1946 an average of 90 million admissions were sold on a weekly basis. That 90 million represented almost 60% of the population of the United States. As a comparison, we can look at our current movie going habits…weekly admissions are now roughly 27 million and represent 10% of the population.

This page will look at the biggest box office hits during the biggest box office year ever.I thought when I came up with this idea of doing the biggest box office hits of 1946 that it would be an easy movie page to write. I already had the January 8th 1947 Variety magazine that listed the Top 60 hits of the year so I figured I could knock out the movie page in a few hours….boy was I wrong. The first thing I noticed was that many of top box office hits of 1946 were actually made in 1945.

The second thing I noticed was many of the top box office hits of 1947 were really made in 1946. The third thing I noticed was many of the Oscar® nominated and Oscar® winning films did not make the Variety Top Box Office charts. The final thing I noticed was an issue with foreign films…it sometimes took years after a foreign movie was made for it to make it to North America….the best example of this is Henry V…it was made in 1944 yet it took 2 years to reach North America.

Here is how I came up with the 113 movies on the Ultimate Movie Rankings list…..any box office hit on the Variety lists made in 1946 or was released for the first time in 1946 in North America made the list , and any movie that got an Oscar® nomination or Oscar® win for the 1946 year made the list.

Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Our UMR Top 50 of 1946

1946 Top Box Office 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 by the stars of the 1946 Top Box Office Movies.
  • Sort 1946 Top Box Office Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort 1946 Top Box Office Movies by domestic yearly box office rank
  • Sort 1946 Top Box Office 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 1946 Top Box Office Movies received.
  • Sort 1946 Top Box Office Movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Possibly Interesting Facts About 1946 Top Box Office Movies

1. The five films that received Oscar® nominations for Best Picture were: The Best Years of Our Lives, Henry V, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Razor’s Edge and The Yearling….the winner was The Best Years of Our Lives.

2. Disabled veteran Harold Russell actually won two Oscars® for his performance in The Best Years of Our Lives….one for Best Supporting Actor and a Special Award for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.

3. Other Oscar® acting winners in 1946 were Frederic March as Best Actor for Best Years of Our Lives, Olivia de Havilland as Best Actress for To Each His Own, and Anne Baxter as Best Supporting Actress for The Razor’s Edge.

4. The biggest Oscar® snubs in 1946? I vote three movies/performances…..#1 Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious should have either gotten a Best Picture nomination or a Best Director nomination. 2.Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine gave one of his greatest screen performances in that movie…… and finally 3. Myrna Loy in The Best Years of Our Lives. During Loy’s long and successful career she never got an Oscar® nomination…this would have been the perfect movie to right that wrong.

5. According to Variety the Top Box Office Movie Stars of 1946 were: #1 Bing Crosby, #2 Ingrid Bergman. #3 Fred Astaire, #4 Dorothy Lamour and #5 Gregory Peck.

6. Actors/actresses that made their screen debuts in 1946: Burt Lancaster (The Killers #28), Kirk Douglas (The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers #22), Alec Guinness (Great Expectations #36), Dean Martin and Natalie Wood.

7. Two famous entertainers who passed away in 1946….W.C. Fields and H.G. Wells.

8. Currently a successful box office mark to cross is 100 million... in 2011 thirty movies crossed $100 million, in 2012 thirty-one movies crossed that mark, in 2013 thirty-five got there and in 2014 thirty-three did it. In 1946…when looking at adjusted box office numbers…..an incredible 65 movies would have crossed $100 million.

1946 Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

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

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

(Visited 6 times)

94 thoughts on “1946 Top Box Office Movies”

  1. Cogerson, now you know that The Al Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again are favorite movies of mine. As you know I have them on DVD. (next time you are over please help me get started again on how to use the DVD please – thank you.) LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN IS A GOOD LOVE STORY, I have seen it many times. The Razor’s Edge was on TV last weekend and I watched it again. Interesting story line. AS USUAL THIS IS A GREAT HUB. SO MANY INTERESTING MOVIES HAVE BEEN MADE OVER THE YEARS AND SO MANY MANY MORE TO COME. SEE YOU LATER COGERSON. Sorry it took so long for me to respond to this particular PAGE.

    Reply

    1. Hey BERN1960….I was wondering when you would stop by and talk about one of your favorite movies of all-time…The Jolson Story. I will be glad to get your dvd player up and running again…sorry that I did not know that it was not working. You are the second person to mention how good a movie Leave Her To Heaven…I will have to check it out…thanks for the comments….and you are forgiven for taking so long to leave a comment….lol.

      Reply

  2. I have to be honest, scanning through these lists there are not many movies that I have even heard of, but I do like It’s A Wonderful Life and I did enjoy reading your information on movie admissions. I can not beleive that many people used to go to movies every week. Voted up and educational.

    Reply

    1. Hey KellyE….well I am glad you still checked out this hub even if you were not really aware of many movies made in 1946….It’s A Wonderful Life is a classic…and it is getting the time of the year to watch it again…I am glad you liked the movie admission trivia and I am glad that you check out my 1946 movie page.

      Reply

  3. I don’t have 1500 friends, never mind 1500 friends on Facebook…And I went to a school with nearly 1000 students each year.

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora…using my son’s 1500 friends on facebook…really helped me learn how important and useful facebook could be for my traffic…to date I have had about 14000 hits from Facebook…..many from bugging my son into linking my movie pages to his Facebook account…for some reason he does not want to post this particular page…lol.

      Reply

  4. It is really quite impressive how high the percentage is of the population that went to see movies. That they would see Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas for the first time – I wonder if they could guess how prolific these two would come to be.

    I’m guess the biggest reason why the percentage of movie goers has gone down is because of the availability of watching movies at home. What would be the second, third or fourth reason why the percentage has gone down?

    Reply

    1. Hey Phil….I would say that Burt Lancaster would have gotten people more excited than Kirk Douglas…Lancaster benefited from being in a great role in The Killers…while Douglas had to play a character that was weak and the third banana in The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers.

      I think the first thing that started taking away movie admissions was the development of televisions…once televisions became popular….movie admissions started going down…a trend that I do believe has never reversed itself….and now movies come to DVD so fast…why go to the theater drop 50 to 60 bucks…when you can buy the movie for 20 bucks and watch it on …in my case…a great entertainment system….thanks for sopping by and commenting..it is greatly appreciated.

      Reply

  5. 1946 was an awesome year for film. I never realized how many of my film noir faves were made in that era. But my favorite has to be Leave Her to Heaven. It was brilliant. I seriously hope nobody remakes it because Gene Tierney was note perfect in that, more so than in Laura. It’s a Wonderful Life was another that I enjoyed tremendously. Jimmy Stewart is probably one of my favorite actors ever. Great job Cogerson!

    Reply

    1. Hey Alecia….thanks for checking out my latest movie page. I will have to watch Leave Her To Heaven as I have heard about the movie but have never watched it. I love It’s A Wonderful Life…my late grandmother loved two movies The Wizard of Oz and It’s A Wonderful Life. As for James Stewart his hub is about to get a major facelift. Thanks for checking out my page.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.