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.
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Hi
I smiled when I came to your new page because I was actually going to request Wilder.
It was once said that Wilder was one of the most intelligent writers to come out of Hollywood, and because of his Austrian accent, he could insult people and get away with it. I watched a documentary where he talked about his childhood and him going to Vienna to watch the funeral of the old Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916 and how the pomp and ceremony really touched him. I’m sure when he was making The Emperor’s Waltz, he must have relived that time. Although it wasn’t one of his better films.
I didn’t realise he lost family in the Holocaust, or that he had worked with Spielberg on Schindler’s List. There’s no doubt he was a very skilled writer, very gritty and always with dark humour. I would agree that Sunset Boulevard is his masterpiece.
Ace in the Hole a year later, was also very good, but maybe too dark as it failed at the box office.
In The Apartment, the story ends with the couple being homeless and yet it was a big hit.
You mentioned about Cooper being too old for Love in the Afternoon, I also think Bogart was too old for Sabrina. But that aside there’s no doubt he’s one of the all time greats.
Hey Chris….I guess I was reading your mind. Wilder’s career crossed with almost every great actor (Cary Grant being an exception) and actress that almost every movie was already in my database…I wish they were all that easy….lol. That is interesting about the funeral of Emperor Franz Joseph influenced him so much. He had thoughts about directing Schindler’s List…but his age and the the fact that the story was so personal made him withdrawn from that project. Ace In The Hole has escaped me so far…but it is high on my list of movies to watch. I did not have nearly the same issue with Bogey as I did Cooper. It is strange but they were both made their Hepburn movies and then about 3 years later they both passed away. I knew Wilder was an all-time great….but I have to admit that after finishing this page I was surprised just how great his career was….is he actually underrated? As always…thanks for stopping by and talking movies.
I think ‘The Lost Weekend’ is also one of his best; and ‘Irma La Douce’ is superb!
Our site has lots of classic actors, actresses and directors. When I first got a request to do a page on Clark Gable…I quickly dismissed it…thinking …”nobody wants to read about Gable”….well fast forward the dvd a few years…and now 70% of our traffic comes from our classic pages.
Irma La Douce, really? I like it, but you’re right, surprising. Sunset Boulevard was his masterpiece.
Irma La Douce was about prostitutes. Not surprising about its success.
Especially in the 1960s.
Hey Frank….Irma was huge….as was Some Like It Hot….which finished in a close second when looking at box office grosses. I agree Sunset Blvd is his masterpiece….but he has so many other movies that are right there with Sunset.
I’ll put him in the top 3
Hey Kj Taffe….in my ranking system….the directors with the three highest average scores are Spielberg, Kubrick and Billy….that is with a minimum of 10 movies…..sorry Cameron.
that’s very good …..KUBRICK DEFINITELY…. Throw in Elia Kazan over Spielberg for me…
Hey KjT. I have not done a page on Kazan….currently working on Fred Zinnemann….but maybe I will do Kazan after that.
Wilder always delivered.
He got an individual Oscar nomination for almost half of his movies….that is delivering!