Alan Ladd Movies

Want to know the best Alan Ladd movies?  How about the worst Alan Ladd movies?  Curious about Alan Ladd box office grosses or which Alan Ladd movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which Alan Ladd 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.

In the hierarchy of movie-tough guys, Alan Ladd (1913-1964), is an honored name.  Ladd was an American actor who found success in film during the 1940s and early 1950s.  We think the best current comparison to Ladd is Bruce Willis.  Each specialized in box office hit action movies and each got very little respect for their acting abilities.  Ladd’s IMDb page shows 98 acting credits from 1932-1964. This page will take a statistical look at 50 Alan Ladd movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  His uncredited roles, his cameo roles and his television appearances were not included in the table.

Drivel part:  So after getting sidetracked on some other UMR movie page projects….we felt it was time to start knocking out some of the performers from our Request Hotline page.  So Søren, Flora & Dan…here is finally your requested Alan Ladd UMR movie page.

Alan Ladd in 1942’s This Gun For Hire

Alan Ladd Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

1942’s The Glass Key

Alan Ladd 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 Alan Ladd movies by his co-stars
  • Sort Alan Ladd movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Alan Ladd movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Alan Ladd 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 and how many Oscar® wins each Alan Ladd movie received.
  • Sort Alan Ladd movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Alan Ladd in 1964's The Carpetbaggers...his last movie was the biggest box office hit of his career
Alan Ladd in 1964’s The Carpetbaggers…his last movie was the biggest box office hit of his career

Possibly Interesting Facts About Alan Ladd

  1. Alan Walbridge Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas on September 3rd, 1913.

2. Alan Ladd was a swimming and diving champion in high school.

3. Alan Ladd has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1601 Vine Street.  He received his star in 1960.

4.  Alan Ladd He and Veronica Lake made seven movies together: 1942’s This Gun For Hire, 1942’s The Glass Key, 1942’s Star Spangled Rhythm,  1945’s Duffy’s Tavern, 1946’s The Blue Dahlia (1946), 1947’s Variety Girl and 1948’s Saigon (1948). In Variety Girl (1947), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy’s Tavern (1945), they appear as themselves.

5.  Alan Ladd was the visual inspiration for the original illustrations of superhero Green Lantern/Alan Scott (created in 1940). Ladd was 27 years old at the point. The Green Lantern’s full name is Alan Ladd Wellington Scott.

6.  Alan Ladd was ranked in the annual Top 10 Box Office Stars 3 times:  His was ranked 10th in 1947, 4th in 1953 and 6th in 1954.

7.  Alan Ladd was married two times in his life. He had 3 children.  His son, Alan Ladd, Jr. won an Oscar® for producing 1995’s Braveheart.  His son, David Ladd, earned a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1958’s The Proud Rebel.  His daughter, Alana Ladd, appeared in four of her father’s movies….including a part in Shane.  His granddaughter, Jordan Ladd, has over 50 IMDb acting credits.

8.  Alan Ladd was strongly considered for or actually attached to these roles:  Kirk Douglas role in Detective Story, Gregory Peck role in Roman Holiday, James Dean role in Giant, John Wayne role in The Sons of Katie Elder, Spencer Tracy role in Bad Day At Black Rock and William Holden role in Submarine Command.

9.  Check out Alan Ladd’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.

10.  Many people might have first discovered Alan Ladd in 1982’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.  Check out You Tube view to see his brief but impressive appearance in that movie ..

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

Figured it might be interesting to see the process of what it takes to put these pages together.  How we put together our Alan Ladd page.

Steve’s Alan Ladd You Tube Video

 

(Visited 2 times)

114 thoughts on “Alan Ladd Movies”

  1. Steve’s Alan Ladd video has been added to the page…as well as my comment on his channel.

    “Well this page will make a madman from Belfast happy. I have not seen very many of his movies….and even with so much Ladd talk at UMR…I have not been able to track down many of his movies to watch. I was looking at some Ladd comments on my website…and saw my tally count on March 8th 2016 was two…and today April 19th 2018 my tally is 2….but it is your #2 movie This Gun For Hire and #1 Shane….so I guess I watched the right two movies. I have also seen Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid….does that mean my tally is 3?…lol. Voted up and included on our Ladd page.”

    Reply

    1. Hi Bruce, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is an 80s favorite of mine, such a clever use of classic film clips. I don’t think anyone has attempted anything similar since. Only watched 2? I managed 13 and Flora 9. I’m sure Bob has seen more, Ladd is one of his idols. Lucky Ladd had a super western like Shane added to his filmography otherwise he would be chiefly known for noir classics with Veronica Lake, b-westerns and some dodgy historical adventures. Thanks again for the vote, share and comment, much appreciated.

      Reply

  2. CAPTAIN VIDEO and BRUCE
    1 It would be difficult for anyone to remember many actual grosses from certainly 1953 because we were never told what they were back then and we were normally just quoted Variety’s Top 20 rentals which were anyway unreliaable because the studios would often neglect to update them after the 1st year’s release of movies. However –

    2 SHANE. That ever-reliable and always helpful Work Horse quotes an actual 1953 figure of $22.7 domestically for Shane on the Cogerson 1953 Annual Review page with which Wikipedia, The Numbers and IMDB all virtually agree [Dare they do anything else?] Accordingly extrapolating from WH’s adjusted figures of $328 million in US and $452 worldwide we get a global actual gross of approx $32 million for Shane which converts to a figure of around $290 million in the Consumer Price Index of the US Bureau of Labour Stats [CPI]

    3 GODPOP Whilst actual domestic grosses quoted for this movie [which Variety commercially called “Jaws with brains”] are very consistent, worldwide figures vary from around $245 million to 286 million. In 2017 dollars those figures convert to:

    Ticket inflation method: $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion roughly.
    CPI Method: approx. $1.42 to $1.65 billion

    For what it’s worth Lees Movies site records Godpop’s actual DVD video sales as worth $85 million and its TV sales as amounting to some $16 million in the US alone I can’t convert those figure because Lees doesn’t give their phasing and even WH says that at times he has wrestled with that factor. I am not a fool who “rushes in where wise men fear to tread!”

    4 It will be seen from 2 and 3 above that general inflation caught up with, and for a while in the 1970s, even surpassed ticket price inflation and so stars like Newman, Redford, McQueen Hoffman, Eastwood and Mumbles who had 1970 blockbuster hits have relatively better showings in lists using the CPI method than had stars whose box office careers were confined to the Classic Era and perhaps the greatest “survivor” under either the CPI and Ticket Inflation method was The Duke [who else!?]who enjoyed box office successes well into the modern era which movie historians say began around 1962.

    MEMO TO STEVE; A famous mathematician is siad to have looked at a long page of statistics and reminded a colleague that “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob…..that is a lot of movie stats…I can see Steve’s glazing over….lol. Lots of sources…I wonder if in the future somebody will collect and average the grosses of all the sources….and use the average as the “best” gross. I agree with your logic of the grosses….however you are preaching to the choir…..Steve probably dozed off after the 2nd paragraph…..lol.

      Reply

  3. MR HIRSCHHORN
    Details of the sources for the following extracts can be given on request. We should emphasise that on all of these movies contrary opinions exist. However that IS our point. It benefits nobody and is misleading to keep quoting the one source as if it were the Oracle instead a just a bunch of guys trying to sell a book on a subject about which some of them may well have scant knowledge. Mr Cogerson apparently favours you Mr Hirschhorn because you are an influence on him but we think the his viewers should have the opportunity of finding out who influences THEM

    GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES Monroe and Russell were both praised for their performances as Lorelei and Dorothy On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 98% based on 40 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site’s critical consensus reads, “Anchored by Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s sparkling magnetism, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a delightfully entertaining 1950s musical

    HIS KIND OF WOMAN In a review of the film Variety magazine lauded the pairing of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell as the lead characters, writing, “The two strike plenty of sparks in their meetings as each waits out plot development … Both Mitchum and Russell score strongly. Russell’s full charms are fetchingly displayed in smart costumes that offer the minimum of protection.

    FOXFIRE Hollywood Reporter lead critic Jack Moffitt wrote “Jane Russell as the wife, does some of the best work she has done to date,”[8] while Variety wrote: “Miss Russell is extremely likable in her breezy characterization, playing it with becoming naturalness.”[9] Saturday Review said, “The socialite is well played by Jane Russell.” Hazel Flynn of The Beverly Hills Daily Newsline said, “Jane here continues in the trend she has been following of late…that is, acting instead of just exhibiting her charms. She is really good in “Foxfire” as is Jeff Chandler as the Apache with whom she falls in love.”[11]

    MACAO Film critic Denis Schwartz opined “A wonderfully tongue-in-cheek scripted RKO adventure story directed by Josef von Sternberg…Jane Russell enthralls as she gets romanced by the laconic Mitchum, and they create movie magic together through their brilliant nuanced performances.”

    FUZZY PINK NIGHTGOWN The Hollywood Reporter applauded Jane Russell saying, “She is responsible for the greater part of the picture’s success.

    Reply

  4. HI BRUCE

    1 I’m doing a personal project on Ladd this week and my database lists some of his worldwide grosses. Yours is the only site I can think of that would provide a series of WW figures for a classic era star and I thought I remembered you giving us as partial list of Laddie’s adjusted WWs after your Warners trip as he made a number of movies for WBs

    2 However I can’t locate them anywhere on the site [apart from Shane on your George Stevens page] so perhaps my memory’s playing tricks on me though if so goodness knows where my database Laddie WWs came from. ??

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob….sadly I do not have many adjusted worldwide grosses for him….this is what I currently have in my database.

      The Big Land (1957) $132.30 million in adjusted worldwide gross
      Hell On Frisco Bay (1955) $130.60 million in adjusted worldwide gross
      Iron Mistress (1952) $166.50 million in adjusted worldwide gross
      Joan of Paris (1942)$95.80 million in adjusted worldwide gross
      Paratrooper (1953) $110.90 million in adjusted worldwide gross
      Shane (1953) $451.30 million in adjusted worldwide gross
      Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) $292.30 million in adjusted worldwide gross

      It is only 8…but that is 16% of his movies. Hope that helps.

      Reply

      1. HI BRUCE

        I’m very grateful for your trouble because as the sales Logoof one of our biggest supermarket chains over here {TESCO] proclaims to us everywhere “Every little Helps”!

        Reply

        1. Glad to help….too bad he spent so much time in non Warner, MGM, RKO and Fox movies. I agree every bit does count.

          Reply

  5. JOHN – Your points B and C

    (1) Fox called a press conference to announce that the profits from Grable movies were so immense that they were financing other projects.

    (2) It would in my view have been impossible for a company, even if it had all the performers concerned in its own employment, to have made that statement on behalf of the likes of Bergman, Goddard, Garland or Lamour because many of their big hits involved numerous other stars who shared in the glory.

    (3) It might though have been possible to isolate groups of some of their films for the sort of accolade that Fox gave to the Grable movies – for example the Rooney/Garland films or the Hope/Crosby/Lamour Road movies but there again credit would have been shared.

    (4) Betty was the highest salaried female in America in 1946/47 financial year and as one economist said about employers who have the kind of cash that enables them to pay small fortunes to movie stars “They tend not to give their money away.”

    Reply

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