24 thoughts on “Actors or Actresses With Most Good Movies”

1. Lots and lots of good points from Steve and Bob….I will try and answer to all of them in this one…probably massive comment.

   1. Yes….Steve….you are correct…..a little bit of false advertising on my part. Originally…Mr. Heston was not part of this page….but…..he is now at the bottom of the massive table. His 9 movies of over 90.00….just barely missed the cutoff.
   2. Actually….when I add the picture of Heston, Stewart and Holden….my concern was that Holden might not have enough 90 + movies….I was almost sure Chuck had more than 10.
   3. Ultimately….this is just one “hopefully” fun way to look at certain aspects of these people’s careers. When looking at all of Chuck’s movies (especially his Top 25…he is strong enough to make our Top 50 Movie Stars….Statistically Speaking book….so obviously I think the man was a a great actor.
   4. Speaking of books….starting working on a second book…this one is going to concentrate on newer actors….maybe actors that have been popular since the 1980s until now. Many people have asked for a book that had less legends than our first book.
   5. Hey Bob…I agree with your thoughts on “Starred” and “Appeared”…..if I was making a list that used lots of subjective elements…then yes….Donald Crisp would be thrown out…..this is a list of “the stats”. They can be read in many ways. Since, I only want to do one list….as I do not think this page has much of a shelf life (very few views)….I want to present the stats in the data base.
   6. So this list does not care if you were a supporting or a leading actor….it is just the stats.
   7. I have also included Joan Crawford at the end of the table. I think her few 90 plus movies is one of the reasons she does not seem to be remembered as much as Bette Davis. Other than Mildred Pierce….which of her movies is thought of as an “all-time” classic.
   8. Bill Hader is the man. Funny, talented and a true movie fan…..give him some support…lol.
   9. Good breakdown on Dean Martin…no matter what you think about Martin and Lewis….they along with Brando were box office gold in the 1950s. Then Dean has his Rat Pack days and his solo movie days….in the end…I think his 13 on this list does a good job of representing his quarter of a century of box office magic.
   10. And finally….yes…there have been times that I did not agree with a comment…..but…I can only think of a few times, that I had to censor a comment. Your opinion might differ from mine…but I will never get mad if we do not see things the same….variety is the spice of life.
   I have one more school day with kids and one more school day of cleaning up….and by Friday at 2 PM…Summer will be here.
   Going to bed…sorry I did not get to all of the comments.

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   1. 1/My first thoughts were “My goodness what a lengthy Cogerson post! This guy’s normally so busy overall that we have come to expect just short replies from him on most occasions, especially as he has now so many followers to answer. That excellent wife of his, on top of doing her professional job(s) and co-running this site, must be doing all the cooking and housework as well so that ole Work Horse has nothing to do around the house these days.”

      2/Like apparently you I do not regard disagreements about the quality of movies as “confrontational” [but fun!] as opinions on the matter are largely subjective and not an exact science whereas box office stats – certainly under your methods – strike me as reasonably factual and in relation to older films are very consistent with my own impressions of the movie market place during the years when I was growing up.

      3/In the latter connection I agree that M & L were box office gold in the 1950s but my point was that so was Chuck. I have quickly totted up your figures for the 16 M & L movies [1949-1956] and arrive at an adjusted $2.8 billion approx. overall [average approx. $180 million per movie]. Chuck’s top 4 box office hits [all made in the 1950s]in your Heston table alone come to around $3 billion [average an amazing $750 million].

      4/ In fact your 1956 annual review chart when combined with the 1959 one suggest that the adjusted overall worldwide grosses of 10 Cmts and Ben Hur is around $5 billion [would that be right?]. As a rule of thumb routine 1950s movies attracted a worldwide gross of 1.5 times the domestic one so that the entire 16 M & L films would have been par for the course in worldwide grosses if they had take in when adjusted for inflation $4.2 billion globally as against $5 billion for only the 2 Chuck movies. Wow! However you have spiked my guns on those kinds of points by including Chuck [and Queen Joan!. As the old saying goes “Your face I may forget but your kindness – never!”].

      5/Initially I was terrified when I saw out of the corner of my eye reference to “another book” as my first thoughts were “WH has come across an Omen 2 written by his idol and maybe dealing with the theatre this time and telling anyone who would listen what a c****y stage actor The Great Mumbler was.”

      6/However whilst I mostly prefer older films [provided they haven’t dated too badly!] to modern ones I nevertheless have a great general academic and statistical interest in the modern cinema and for me a 2nd book from you geared mainly to the latter would be a fine companion-piece to your first book, so I can only await notification of purchasing procedures in due course. Anyway for now take care.

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      1. In para 3 the average for the 16 Martin and Lewis films is $175 million and not the $180 million that I quoted – apologies.

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2. 4/By contrast in 12 of the 15 films on the “Chucket” list the Big Guy is unequivocally the central character [Major Dundee, Will Penny, Ben-Hur, Moses, El Cid etc.] and they have a combined adjusted US Cogerson gross of a whopping $3.3 billion approx, converting to an average US gross per movie of some $270 million. Wow! Also Chuck was the main character in droves of other movies. They had varying grosses but some of them were big money earners- in adjusted dollars domestically $377 for Earthquake and $367 for Airport 75 for example.

   4/In summary then certainly as a solo artist there is in my view no way that Dino made the magnitude of personal contribution to his most important movies [or to nearly as many movies overall] that Heston did to HIS.

   5/Accordingly it is possible that the kind of apparent anomaly that you are concerned about arises from the practice of giving an artist total credit for every movie he made. I personally think it is a presentational misnomer to say that for example Donald Crisp “STARRED in 20 movies with 90 or higher UMR scores” and that instead the more correct way, technically, to express that equation would be “Donald Crisp APPEARED in 20 movies with 90 or higher UMR scores.” “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” – Mark 12:14, The bible English Standard Version.

   6/In my exchanges with the Work Horse about Cameron Diaz I indicated that I thought that where there is a “ticking of boxes” as a method of assessing the screen careers of artists it isn’t always the case that the sum of the parts accurately reflects the overall greatness that the performer has achieved. Hirsch in effect admits that in his 1983 book when he recognized Elvis a “Box Office King” in mid-fifties to mid-sixties despite poor acting ability and low quality films for the most part. [Donald Crisp v Elvis?]

   PS Similar story with Tony In many of Curtis’ greatest box office hits he was 2nd star to established mega legends like Burt, Kirk, Al Leach, Marilyn, Greg, Sinatra and my Jimmy but he did get billed above Dino in Who was That Lady!

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   1. Good stuff Bob, thanks for all the info!

      So, in other words Chuck was a more worthy contender for these charts than either Dino Martini or Bernie Schwartz? And um Bill Hader? [Bruce screams]

      😉

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      1. HI STEVE: I have amended your last post to me as follows:

         “So, in other words Chuck was a more worthy contender for these charts than either Dino Martini or Bernie Schwartz? And um Bill Hader? [Bruce screams] – and Myrna Loy.”

         However-

         ROY HOBBS [Robert Redford] “What I want is to be in the record books and for people to say when I walk down the street ‘There goes Roy Hobbs.’ ”

         IRIS GAINES [Glenn Close] “With or without the record books all of those young boys that you helped as a role model will always remember Roy Hobbs.”

         [The Natural – 1984]

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3. HI STEVE Glad you like the list. People talk about a bucket list so I’ll call that one a “Chucket” list!

   Only WH can demonstrate to you how his “mind works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform”; and you did chastise me that he didn’t like to dwell on disagreements about ratings and rankings but as you have now pressed me on the subject , for what it’s worth here are a few of my own thoughts on the Chuck exclusion/Dino inclusion-

   1/Bruce’s sources clearly didn’t think over-much of the Martin & Lewis movies as their average rating for the 16 movies in the series is merely 61.6% – ie just shading “good”.

   2/Two Matt Helm films aside, in all of Dino’s blockbusters, and even respectable hits in excess of an adjusted domestic $100 million, as a solo artists he in effect played 2nd fiddle to established mega-stars like The Duke, Brando, Sinatra and my Jimmy. In Bells are Ringing the main star was Judy Holliday reprising her Broadway role; in The Young Lions [in a role originally scheduled for supporting actor Tony Randall] Dino was merely the Gabby Hayes type sidekick of Monty Clift whilst Monty dominated doing his tortured victim act; and in Airport 1970 Martin was 2nd billed to Lancaster.

   3/Dino’s 12 top-billed stand-alone lead roles outside the Helm series have a total adjusted US Cogerson gross of around $555 million or an unimpressive average of about $47 million per film. The highest grossing one was Career with an adjusted US gross of about $90 million – ie Dino had no top-billed stand-alone successes that crashed the fabled Cogerson $100 million barrier apart from the Helm ones which were really cashing in on the Bond spy craze, and the Helm series quickly faded. Continued in Part 2

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