Want to know the best Billy Wilder movies? How about the worst Billy Wilder movies? Curious about Billy Wilder box office grosses or which Billy Wilder movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Billy Wilder 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 and much more.
Billy Wilder (1906-2002) was an Austrian-born American director, screenwriter, producer, and artist, whose career spanned more than fifty years. Wilder was nominated for 21 Oscars® in his career. Wilder won 6 Oscars®. Without Billy Wilder there would be no Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960).
Recently we did a UMR (UltimateMovieRankings) page on David Lean. One of the items we were researched was the amount of times Lean got nominated for a Best Director Oscar®. Lean is in a tie for the 4th most Best Director nominations. The three directors ahead of Lean were William Wyler (12 nominations), Martin Scorsese (8 nominations) and Billy Wilder (8 nominations). Seeing that we already had Wyler and Scorsese UMR pages….we felt Billy Wilder was way overdue for his UMR page. A quick check showed we already had the stats on 93% of Wilder’s movies in our database. So we researched the last few Wilder movies….and this is the end result.
His IMDb page shows 27 directing credits, 79 writing credits and 14 producing credits from 1929-1995. This page will rank 30 Billy Wilder movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. The following table looks at all of the movies he directed and a few of his screenplay only movies. Many of his writing credits from 1929 to 1940 were not included in the rankings.
Billy Wilder 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 Billy Wilder movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Billy Wilder movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Billy Wilder movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Billy Wilder 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 many Oscar® wins each Billy Wilder movie received and
- Sort Billy Wilder 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 search and sort button to make this page very interactive. For example type “Lemmon” in the search box and up pop the 7 movies that Jack Lemmon made with Wilder.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Billy Wilder Table
- Twenty Billy Wilder movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 66.00% of his movies listed. Some Like It Hot (1959) was his biggest box office ht when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average Billy Wilder movie grosses $139.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 27 of Billy Wilder’ movies are rated as good movies…or 93.10% of his movies. Double Indemnity (1944) is his highest rated movie while Bluebeard’s Eigth Wife (1938) was his lowest rated movie.
- Seventeen Billy Wilder movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 58.62% of his movies.
- Eight Billy Wilder movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 27.58% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 26 Billy Wilder movies scored higher than that average….or 86.66% of his movies. The Apartment (1960) got the the highest UMR Score while Buddy Buddy (1981) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Billy Wilder
1. Samuel Wilder was born in Sucha Beskidzka, Austria-Hungary. Billie was the nickname his mother gave him when he was a child. He changed Billie to Billy when he arrived in America.
2. After the rise of Adolf Hitler, Billy Wilder, Jewish, left for Paris. From Paris he headed to Hollywood in 1934. Sadly Wilder’s mother, grandmother and stepfather all perished in the Holocaust.
3. After writing many successful screenplays between 1935 and 1941, Billy Wilder got to direct his first movie in 1942….The Major and The Minor. His third directed movie was Double Indemnity (1944) and his fourth directed movie was The Lost Weekend (1945).
4. Billy Wilder received 8 Best Director Oscar® nominations, 12 Best Screenplay Oscar® Nominations and 1 Best Producer Oscar® nomination. In 1988, Wilder received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures.
5. Billy Wilder was the first person to win a Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture Oscar for one movie….1960’s The Apartment. Billy Wilder directed two movies that won the Best Picture Oscar®…1945’s The Lost Weekend and 1960’s The Apartment.
6. Billy Wilder got an individual Oscar® nomination for 14 of his movies. That might be a record.
7. Billy Wilder directed 14 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Robert Strauss, Audrey Hepburn, Charles Laughton , Elsa Lanchester, Jack Lemmon, Jack Kruschen, Shirley MacLaine and Walter Matthau. Milland (The Lost Weekend), Holden (Stalag 17) and Matthau (The Fortune Cookie) won Oscars for their performances in a Wilder film.
8. Billy Wilder worked closely with Steven Spielberg on the screenplay for Schlinder’s List. Wilder’s idol and mentor was German director Ernst Lubitsch. Wilder always kept a sign hanging in his office that asked, “How would Lubitsch do it?”
9. Quick facts: (a) Billy Wilder was married two times. (b) He had two children. (c) Honored on a US Postage Stamp in May 2012 (d) He died on the same day as Dudley Moore and Milton Berle. (e) Almost made a Marx Brothers movie and a Laurel and Hardy movie.
10. Billy Wilder wrote five of the American Film Institute’s 100 Funniest Movies: 1959’s Some Like It Hot 1960’s, The Apartment, 1955’s The Seven Year Itch (1955), 1939’s Ninotchka and 1941’s Ball of Fire (1941).
Check out Billy Wilder’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
Billy Wilder is one of my favorite directors. Not only did he make a lot of films that are considered classics nowadays, but he is also responsible for some of my own favorite films. Of the above listed, I have seen 24 movies,of the ones he directed, my favs are Some like it hot, A Foreign Affair, Double Indemnity, Witness for the Prosecution, Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend, The Major and the Minor and Stalag 17. One of the most interesting things about having found the UMR Pages is the fact that they help set into perspective box office success vs. longevity. Although the figures of Wilder’s classics are not bad when you look at them, I am surprised time after time when checking out personal favorites. In this case, it is Sunset Boulevard along with Seven Year Itch and Double Indemnity that I expected to have done bigger business on original release. But as I said elsewhere, the stats are the stats.
Hey Lupino…glad you found and like these pages. About a year ago, we made a discovery that caused us to change our calculation when calculating box office grosses. This caused us to have to update all of our pages….well a year later we are only 87% done updating all of our pages. This Wilder page has not been updated….though this comment might get me to update it before you return. When I do update this page….his grosses should improve between 10 and 25%.
24 Wilder movies watched is pretty good….I am at 19 watched. I like all of your favorites with the exception of A Foreign Affair which I have not seen. *Just checked my William Holden page and Sunset Blvd new calculated gross is much better….over thirty million better. Thanks for the feedback.
Hey Lupino….like I said in the previous comment….I was going to update this page…so it should be pretty different from you earlier visit.
This page explains what our update is about. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/sorry-i-was-so-wrong/
A reminder that Billy Wilder movies are airing tonight on TCM. Right now witness for the Prosecution is on, Tyrone Power’s final film.
Thanks for the reminder….Witness For The Prosecution is a great movie….with a great ending.
Wow – I had not realized how many of the movies he directed that I have seen. Some really good movies. I agree about Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper being older romancing a much younger actress but I enjoyed both of those movies along with so many of his other movies.
Thanks for another interesting site. Keep up the good work…….
Hey BERN1960…glad to see you again. Bogie and Cooper looked more like Hepburn’s grandfathers than her love interest. The power of Hollywood….the stars get the young girls no matter how old they are. Glad you liked the page…I appreciate the kind words.