1946 Top Box Office Movies

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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

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94 thoughts on “1946 Top Box Office Movies”

  1. I’m curious to know where you obtained your box office figures from. I have the relevant page from Variety for 1946 and nothing matches your numbers.

    For examples, “Best Years of Our Lives” is quoted at $11,500M, and “Duel in the Sun” at $10,750M. The figures YOU show appear to be lifetime gross figures from Box Office Mojo. But by doing that, you’re muddying the waters and giving the impression that these films did MUCH better during 1945 – 1947 than they actually did.

    Two more examples are “Deception,” which Variety states made $2.3M and “Humoresque,” which Variety states made $2.6M. These numbers tally more or less with WB’s own ledgers, which can be found at USC (the figures above are for domestic). Even if overseas rentals were added, your numbers still do not match.

    Reply

    1. Hey Tom
      1. Thanks for stopping by and commenting…it is greatly appreciated.
      2. The numbers reported in Variety and the ledgers at USC are box office rentals. Rentals are the amount the studios got back for a movie….not the box office grosses.
      3. My numbers shown above are the box office grosses…which is why they are not matching.
      4. So how do I get my box office grosses? My computer database…has identified over 1,600 movies where the box office rentals and the box office grosses were known. The average difference between rentals and grosses is 2.19535. For simple math my program has rounded up the multiplier to 2.20.
      5. For Deception it’s $2.30 million rental times 2.20 (the multiplier) = $5.06 million in box office grosses.
      6. For Humoresque….Variety lists the rental number at $2.60….but the Warner Brothers list the rentals at $2.28 million….I went with the WB ledger number….and $2.28 million times 2.20 (the multiplier) = $5.01 million in box office grosses. My program rounded both Deception and Humoresque to the same $5.06 million box office grosses.
      7. I have learned that Variety box office yearly top rentals is an estimation…I give the ledgers more credit…unless I find the Variety number years later like in Feb 24,1992 issue or the May 4th 1983 issue….that is for movies over 3 and 4 million in rentals.
      8. Sadly the real box office grosses will never ever be known…..box office mojo does a great job on movies made after 1980…..they are very weak when it comes to movies made before 1980.
      9. I have almost 60 years of Variety, Warner Brothers Ledgers, RKO, MGM, 20th Century Fox ledgers in my collection…when it comes to any movie made before 1980…I never use anything Box Office Mojo has listed…as it is normally wrong
      10. Hope that explains my thought process….my numbers might not be 100% perfect but I feel they are pretty close to what happened oh so many years ago

      Reply

  2. Hi

    I just come back today realising that this was the first page I had come to when I found this site. 46 was an incredible year, almost everybody had a hit. You can understand why so many actors and directors started their own independent companies, expecting everything to go on forever. And yet within a couple of years, there was a rapid decline in box office figures.
    And yet the writing was on the wall, the studios were no longer allowed to own cinema chains and block book their movies. I think by the late 40s, the quality of movies did drop so there wouldn’t have been such a longing for people to go to the cinema to see mediocre movies. And of course television played its part.
    In the UK, television didn’t take hold quite as quickly, it wasn’t until the late 50s that most people had TV’s, so attendances were still high in Britain, which is why so many Hollywood stars came to make movies in Britain. I’m sure today’s top brass would love another year like 1946.

    Reply

    1. Hey Chris……thanks for the revisit to this page. I remember picking 1946 because it was one the greatest years ever for weekly movie attendance. You are 100% correct that the studio heads would kill to have 90 million people a week going to theaters. Television hurt them for awhile…..but eventually they realized that television could be a revenue generator for them. I wonder what the studio heads would think of the current system of video on demand, BluRay, Net Flix, premium channels like HBO, network tv, and then regular cable channels. As always thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

  3. I have not seen most of these movies.I am bookmarking this for future reference.Thanks for another great, informative page.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the bookmark Alladream….and thanks for the comment and the compliments. I have not seen many of these movies myself…but I wanted to get the information out there.

      Reply

  4. Hey Cogerson, that was funny about me not being able to watch The Jolson movies, I got a good laugh. I am supposed to be going out Saturday morning with Donna to see a church member who has lamas – not sure if I have spelled that right…should be interesting. YOU ARE ALWAYS WELCOME THAT I READ YOUR MOVIE PAGES – I FIND OUT SUCH INTERESTING FACTS…THANK YOU.

    Reply

    1. Hey BERN1960…I will hook you up the next time I am over your house….especially with such a sad story that you have not been able to watch The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again….tears are in my eyes as I type this….lol….just kidding with you mother. Maybe Samantha can spend the night with you on Friday and I will take care of it when I drop her off. Thanks for returning to my 1946 page.

      Reply

  5. Great year for films. The Golden age of Hollywood, in any given year was bound to have one or two classics among the batch. The Big Sleep, the Best Years of Our Lives and My Darling Clementine are great classics. (Bogie and Fonda–two of the legends of Hollywood) The Road to Utopia is a personal favorite of mine because I love Bing and Bob, especially together. And speaking of Bing, the Bells of St. Mary was another great one (Ingrid Bergmen was another legend.)

    Excellent page about a great year in film.

    Rob

    Reply

    1. Hey Rob..thanks for checking out my 1946 hub. You are 100% correct that any year in the Golden Age of Hollywood is going to produce many classics. I think 1946 is so special is that it was the biggest year ever for movies when looking at admissions…..60% of the population would head out to the movies every single week….and the end result were all of these very successful movies…the movie producers had to live the high life because television was right around the corner.

      Bing and Bob Hope were in the middle of their greatest success during this timeframe as well. I think I like Road to Utopia the best of all the Road movies I have seen…granted I have yet to see two of them so far….as always your well thought out comments are greatly appreciated.

      Reply

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