Want to know the best Vivien Leigh (1913-1967) movies? How about the worst Vivien Leigh movies? Curious about Vivien Leigh box office grosses or which Vivien Leigh movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Vivien Leigh movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
One of our goals here at Ultimate Movie Rankings is to write a movie page on every member of the American Film Institute’sTop 50 Screen Legends list. So far we have written about 21 of the 25 actors on that list but only 13 of the 25 actresses on that list. Well it is time to add the 14th actress to the list of completed pages. Ranked as the 16th best Screen Legend actress ….Vivien Leigh.
Vivien Leigh was a 2 time Best Actress Oscar® winner. Her roles as Scarlett O’Hara in 1939’s Gone With The Wind and as Blanche DuBois in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire might be the greatest one two punch ever for an actress. Even more amazing in my mind is the fact that she did not appear in many movies during her 30 year career….and yet she still managed to appear in these two legendary roles.
Her IMDb page shows 20 acting credits from 1935-1965. This page will rank 15 Vivien Leigh movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her television appearance, uncredited and 3 of her very early movies which were not released in North America were not included in the rankings.
Vivien Leigh Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Vivien Leigh 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 Vivien Leigh movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Vivien Leigh movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Vivien Leigh movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Vivien Leigh movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Vivien Leigh movie received and by how many Oscar® wins each Vivien Leigh movie received.
- Sort Vivien Leigh 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.
- Use the sort and search button to make this a very interactive page.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Vivien Leigh Table
- Six Vivien Leigh movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 40.00% of her movies listed. Gone With The Wind (1939) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Vivien Leigh movie grosses $200.80 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 11 of Vivien Leigh’s movies are rated as good movies…or 73.33% of her movies. Gone With The Wind (1939) was her highest rated movie while 21 Days Together (1940) was her lowest rated movie.
- Seven Vivien Leigh movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 46.66% of her movies.
- Four Vivien Leigh movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 26.66% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking Score (UMR) is 40.00. 9 Vivien Leigh movies scored higher than that average….or 60.00% of her movies. Gone With The Wind (1939) got the the highest UMR Score while Dark Journey (1937) got the lowest UMR Score.
Check out Vivien Leigh‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time. Another wonderful website is Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier….tons of great stuff to look at here…..and it is highly recommended for Leigh and Olivier fans.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Great article – and she is my all-time favorite actress. She was magic on the screen – and it’s a shame she didn’t do more movies. I really don’t understand why she wasn’t nominated for best actress for Waterloo Bridge and That Hamilton Woman- both of these performances were incredible.
Hey Lawrence…..glad a Leigh fan found our Leigh tribute page. I agree with you that she was “magic on the screen”…and that it was a shame she did not make more movies. I am sure the fact that she had just won the Oscar in 1939…..had something to do with the fact that she did not get nominated for Waterloo Bridge and That Hamilton Woman. Good stuff.
I believe Vivien Leigh had a special quality on the screen and further it would have been justufiable for her to have received a third Oscar for “Ship of Fools.”
Hey Steve….good points on Vivien Leigh. She is a legend…which is even more impressive when you realize how few movies she actually made. I could see her getting a Best Supporting Nomination for Ship of Fools…..not thinking her part was big enough to get a Best Actress nomination. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on her.
BRUCE
1 Thanks for deleting my duplicate posts.
2 I think your term “one-two-punch” sums things up beautifully. If she was going to have only two classics and wanted them to have variety she couldn’t have picked two better movies. Streetcar whilst not being an epic or all-time box office winner like GWTW is credited with heralding in a new style of screen acting and Vivien could be said to have been a big part of that demonstrating via the two movies that she could master both the perceived former and contemporary styles of acting that existed in 1951 and win Oscars as an exponent of both styles. On top of all that of course she could boast about a very prolific stage career which could be said to have demonstrated her proficiency in yet a 3rd way of acting.
HI BRUCE You will see that I have made a pig’s ear this morning of transmitting my posts and that in my post to Steve about Howard Keel I have duplicated this post to you about Vivien and have also duplicated my comments to Steve When you get a moment I would be grateful if you would delete the duplicates. Many thanks..
1 Vivien made so relatively few movies that the only real stand-out classics to her name are I feel Gone with the Wind and Streetcar Named Desire – what Bruce calls the one-two punch.. As Bruce’s table shows Caesar and Cleopatra was popular enough with audiences but according to Variety production costs were such that it actually lost just short of $30 million in today’s money. So it is possible that without GWTW she would have been an also ran among female stars.
2 We’ll never know that of course but there is no doubt that WITH GWTW her legend was secure. I recall retrospectively reading a review of the 1951 Streetcar movie by one columnist who remarked “She has made only 5 movies since Gone with the Wind a dozen years ago and her last one was in 1948 but because of Gone with the Wind she is still an important star in Streetcar.”
3 Indeed she got top billing in that movie and in fact is the only female star apart from Elizabeth Taylor in Reflections of a Golden Eye to ever be billed above Brando in any movie in which he played a normal full-length role. The loose Dan-like link here is that Elizabeth played the lead in Elephant Walk (1954) when Vivien fell ill and had to withdraw. Reportedly Vivien later turned down the Rita Hayworth role in Separate Tables offered to her by Burt Lancaster. Some historians reckon Vivien was more interested in the stage than movies and she did in fact have a hugely successful stage career appearing in over 30 productions. However despite the relative scarcity of movies from her Vivien was recognised by AFI as a legend and she undoubtedly deserves this page and its update which I welcome.
Hey Bob
1. Through the power of the edit button I was able to “fix” your previous comment…..so it all looks good now.
2. That “one-two” punch was probably the greatest of all-time…and it represents almost 20% of all her movies.
3. The power of GWTW…..she could make a movie today….and the ads would still say….GWTW’s Vivien Leign….
4. I think the stage and her illness is the main reason she has so few movies….then again….after GWTW and SCND I am sure all scripts looked weak at best.
Thanks for checking out my Leigh update. On my massive $100 million box office hit page….only two more people to update….Mr. Steve Martin and Mr. John Huston….so close….but that section of updates will be done….FINALLY. Tuna Fish 2.