Cary Grant Movies

Want to know the best Cary Grant movies?  How about the worst Cary Grant movies?  Curious about Cary Grant’s box office grosses or which Cary Grant movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Cary Grant movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.

I would say my favorite three actors of all-time are Sir Michael Caine, Mr. Bruce Willis, and Archibald Leach….better known as Cary Grant (1904-1986). I discovered Cary Grant when I was in high school. During a sick day, I was stuck at home and bored out of my mind while watching television. As I flipped through the channels I came across a black and white movie. Back then I extremely disliked black and white movies. But I started to watch the movie that was on television. It took about 5 minutes before I realized I was enjoying the movie and another 45 minutes to realize I needed to see the beginning of the movie. That movie was called Bringing Up Baby and it opened the wonderful doors of Cary Grant movies.

Cary Grant made 73 full length movies from 1932-1966. When I wrote the page the first time I was able to find all the required information on 50 of the movies. Since then I have found box office information on the rest of the 23 movies.   In the table below Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks 73 of his movies in 5 different sortable columns.  Television roles, shorts and straight to DVD movies were not included in the rankings.

I have seen 51 of the 73 movies listed in the following tables. So I figure I would add my personal Top Ten Cary Grant movies…..located at the bottom of the page

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

Cary Grant 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 Cary Grant movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Cary Grant movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Cary Grant movies by domestic yearly box office rank or trivia
  • Sort Cary Grant 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 how many Oscar® wins each Cary Grant movie received.
  • Sort Cary Grant 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 buttons to make this a very interactive table.
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in 1955's To Catch A Thief
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in 1955’s To Catch A Thief

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Cary Grant Table

1.  41 of Cary Grant’s movies crossed the magical $100 million mark.  That is a percentage of 64.06% of his movies listed.  His top box office hit was Operation Petticoat (1959).

2.  An average Cary Grant movie grosses $147.10 million in adjusted box office gross.

3.  Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  49 of Cary Grant’s movies are rated as good movies…or 77.77% of his movies.  His highest rated movie is 1959’s North by Northwest.  His lowest rated movie is The Last Outpost (1935).

4.  28 of Cary Grant’s movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 44.44% of his movies.

5.  8 of Cary Grant’s movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 12.63% of his movies.

6.  A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00.  48 of Cary Grant’s movies scored higher that average….or 76.19% of his movies.  The Philadelphia Story (1940) got the highest UMR Score.  Born To Be Bad (1934) got the lowest UMR Score.

7.  Cary Grant starred in 6 movies that were nominated for a Best Picture Oscar® nomination.  She Done Him Wrong (1933), The Awful Truth (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Suspicion (1941), The Talk Of The Town (1942), and The Bishop’s Wife (1947).

Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Cary Grant Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

67c47ca87efd161407f941275ce01c98Cary Grant made many great movies….so picking a personal Top Ten for him is very very tough…but here goes my list in alphabetical order.

1. The Awful Truth (1937)….Cary Grant and Irene Dunne made a great screen couple, this was their first of three movies together. Grant is hilarious in the movie. Movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar® and won the director, Leo McCarey an Oscar® for Best Director.

2. Charade (1963)…..Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn team up in this almost Hitchcock like movie. Is Grant the good guy or the bad guy? A great supporting cast in James Coburn, George Kennedy and Walter Matthau.

3. Gunga Din (1939)…Gunga Din was one of my father’s favorite Cary Grant movies….so this story of soldiers in 19th century India makes my list….great action, great fun and a terrific ending.

4. Father Goose (1964)…Father Goose is a movie can I watch again and again. Grant is stuck on an island with a school teacher(Leslie Caron) and her 7 students(all girls) during World War II. Great lines throughout this movie.

5. His Girl Friday (1940)….one of the few times that Cary Grant got to be instigator of the comedy mayhem….versus being the one that had to react to all the craziness. A fast pace, fast talking comedy classic.

6. My Favorite Wife (1940)….his second movie with Irene Dunne and another classic. Dunne is assumed to have perished in a boat sinking seven years ago, she is rescued and returns home just as Grant remarries….and then the fun begins.

7. North by Northwest (1959) ….Grant’s fourth and final film with Alfred Hitchcock…. great scenes throughout the movie like the crop dusting plane, the auction scene and of course the Mount Rushmore finale.

8. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)….one of his lesser known classics from the great movie year of 1939…Howard Hawks directed this story about pilots that risk their lives flying in South America…a great supporting cast of Rita Hayworth, Jean Arthur and Thomas Mitchell.

9. The Philadelphia Story (1940)….Grant and Katharine Hepburn made 4 movies together…this by far is their best movie together….and yet James Stewart is the one that won the Oscar® for this movie…..this movie gets better every year.

10. To Catch A Thief (1955)…Grant thought his movie career was over….and then Hitchcock talked him out of semi-retirement to play a cat burglar nicknamed “The Cat”. This movie gives you a Cary Grant and Grace Kelly falling in love on screen and off screen…direction by the great Alfred Hitchcock….with the French Riviera as a backdrop…what more could you want?

Other great movies that just missed my Top Ten cut….Notorious, Operation Petticoat, Arsenic and Old Lace, An Affair To Remember and Bringing Up Baby.

Our brand new Cary Grant You Tube Video.

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

Want more Cary Grant information? Then I highly recommend http://www.carygrant.net/articles/i%20cary.htm

My Cary Grant letterbox.com reviews.  Highly recommend Letterboxd.com.  It is free and great way to keep track of the movies you have watched.

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225 thoughts on “Cary Grant Movies”

  1. Thanks for the video clip of Cary Grant. Have to go back and see the rest of it later. Quite interesting about the box office based on today…THANKS SO MUCH.

    Reply

  3. Cary Grant is one of my all-time favorites. He could do comedy (Topper, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Bringing up Baby, His Gal Friday, Arsenic & Old Lace), suspence thrillers (North by North west, Notorious, to Catch a Thief), action (Gunga Din, Destination Tokyo), Romance (An Affair to Remember) or Drama (Night & Day, None but the Lonely Heart.) he could do it all;. A great star. There’s no one like him today.

    Reply

    1. Hey RobWrite…..I agree 100%…one day I caught Bringing Up Baby on cable and was impressed by Grant…since then I have seen all the above movies except for Once Upon a Time….my girls and I watch Father Goose about once a year

      Reply

  4. BRUCE

    The following item which appeared recently in thee English Daily Mail contains a link-up between one of your idols and two of mine that even Dan seems to have missed.

    “In the fifties and sixties Marlon Brando was the quintessential American romantic symbol. Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Edith Piaf and Jackie Kennedy were among those females whom he dated but he was also selective and turned down Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford and Sophia Loren

    By his own confession, he also had close friendships with male superstars as he confirmed in 1976. On that list of those who were his closest companions were Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, James Dean and Laurence Olivier.

    He rationalised his serious friendships among both genders by saying they all wanted to be close to him and as a humanitarian it would have been unfair for him to discriminate in favour of one gender.”

    Reply

  5. Hello Cogerson,

    guess by now that Cary is your fav classic actor 🙂
    Almost the same here, but he has to share the spotlight with Monty Clift and- to a lesser degree, Jimmy Stewart (like him in Comedy and Drama, but I am not a Western Buff). I have seen 48 of the above listed movies, plus Madame Butterfly, Thirty Day Princess (strange how Sylvia Sidney keeps popping up in my posts!) and the short Singapore Sue. With a Body of Work spanning Decades, it is hard to name Favorites, but at the Top of my list you will certainly find North by Northwest, Charade, Holiday,In Name only, Arsenic and old Lace, Notorious, The Bishops Wife, Penny Serenade and Bringing Up Baby. Seems like I’ll have to find a way to watch Father Goose, not only was it a boxoffice winner, but it seems quite popular here.

    Reply

    1. Hey Lupino…..well of the movies listed…we are tied….but you pull ahead of me with the ones not listed…as I have not seen any of those movies. Cary Grant is the reason I like classic movies….one half viewing of Bringing Up Baby roped me in forever. Yep…I see you are mentioning Ms. Sidney again….one day there will be an UMR page on her.

      I think the only one you mentioned that you liked that I thought was ok was Penny Serenade….it is a cute movie….but not one I watch repeatedly like the other ones. I think you will enjoy Father Goose….his character is a blast to watch…and he and Leslie Caron have some wonderful moments in the movie. Thanks for stopping by and talking Cary Grant….that is always fun.

      Reply

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