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. Great list, I find the movie box office information to be fascinating. some of his movies sold a ton of tickets, I will have to bookmark your website, no time to check out all your actors.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for checking out my page Ari….always glad to see new people posting on my page….come back anytime…we are open 24 hours a day…7 days a week.

      Reply

  2. Thanks for the page about Cary Grant. I love the type of characters he played, and the style in which he played them. My favourites would be North by Northwest and – first and foremost – Charade (which had the added benefit of Audrey Hepburn). Both are great movies with a similar mix of suspense and comedy.

    One other trivia fact – his real name, which some of your readers may not know – was Archibald Leach. Can’t imagine why he changed it can you?!

    Reply

    1. Thanks foe checking out my Cary Grant hub Greensleeves….North by Northwest is my favorite as well…..one of my favorite Grant moments is in His Girl Friday when he mentions Archibald Leach in an line about someone he used to know. And finally Charade is a movie I can watch repeatedly….Grant and Hepburn make an awesome screen couple.

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  3. The number of Cary Grant movies I’ve yet to see is dwindling. Favourites of mine include all 4 of his Hitchcock movies, Charade, Operation Petticoat, Arsenic and Old Lace (he hated this), The Biship’s Wife, The Awful Truth, and Destination Tokyo

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora…when I was in college, I discovered Cary Grant and tried to watch everything he was in….I think Every Girl Should Get Married is the only one I have not seen of his movies from 1937 on….his pre-1937 movies are very hard to find to watch…..your list is a good list….just needs My Favorite Wife….lol…thanks for the comments

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      1. I was not allowed to watch the video. Most of the films that are really low in the new column you have are not typical Grant films and thus are likely why they got little box office. Crisis, for example, he made because he loved the script and wanted to help the screenwriter get money to back it. It is well done, but Grant in the middle of revolution was not something audiences wanted to see. I know a lot of these movies are listed as unknown final placement, but it is odd to see that of the films you could place, the highest was only #3 for the year.

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        1. Hey Flora, thanks for telling me about the video…it was one of the few things that survived the facelift and now it is gone.

          Yep Cary Grant never had a top grosser of the year…but had lots of Top 10 movies over the years….his career lasted so long that I have a hard time finding a yearly list for movies from 1930-1941….but I am working on one…during my searches I have found about 10 different sources…and the ten all list different movies for the same year….King Kong is a great example….half the sources say it was a Top Five movie…the other half do not show it as a top grosser at all…..my goal is to come up with the best list using all the sources….I especially want to see 1939 grosses.

          Thanks for checking out my Grant oage…I am surprised both of your comments have been so short…especially since Cary Grant is one of your favorites…don’t tell me Steve has convinced you that shorter is better…lol.

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        2. No, this last last comment was shorter because of wanting to each lunch.Why the first was was short I’m not sure-maybe because it was one of the earlier hubs of yours? I know I didn’t say much in my first comment on the Peck hub because I simply didn’t know where to start. I sort of feel that way about Grant too. Too much to say. I’ve said before Grant’s comedies are among the few that I’ve seen multiple times.

          Anyways-I see now that I never went over how many I’ve seen. I will correct that.

          I cannot list my favourite films in any specific order. Impossible.

          Of his top ten box office hits, I have seen 7 of them-I haven’t seen #2, 9, or 10 yet. Two of them air on TCm regularly on TCM.

          I’ve seen 9 of his top ten movies based on critics-I’ve not seen Talk of The Town yet. It also airs on TCM.

          The highest ranked film I’ve seen is #1-North By Northwest, only slightly behind Rear Window on my Hitch list. The lowest on the list is #53-Dream Wife.

          I have seen 8 of his top ten by movie score, and 16 of his top 20 movies. That’s the same percentage.

          Overall, I have seen 30 of his films that you have listed so far-that is 56% of his films and most of the ones I haven’t seen it’s because of availability. Others it seems that TCM airs them when I’m busy or its broad daylight-and I see no point in watching black and white films during the day.

          Ironically, looking at the list of movies on imdb, my list of films I’ve seen is not higher when I look at the movies for which you can find information. I still sit at 30 films.

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          1. Flora has me beat again, I’ve seen 24 of Cary’s films from your list Conanson. Fewer than I’d expected. So many enjoyable films. My top pick has to be North by Northwest which I’ve already mentioned in my previous comment.

            I am surprised to see Bringing Up Baby so low on your list Bruce, it’s the most famous screwball comedy of them all isn’t it or has it fallen out of favour in recent years? 🙂

            Only Angels Have Wings is another fave.

            Surprised he never had the no.1 of the year.

            Nice work on an English born Hollywood legend.

            Voted Up and Useful, interesting too.

          2. Hey Flora…Finally a classic star that I am the leader in the clubhouse with 47 movies watched…I have both Top Ten Lists done….and every movie in the Movie Score Top 40 except for #31 Every Girl Should Be Married.

            I have seen all three of his early more famous movies…Blonde Venus, I’m No Angel and She Done Him Wrong..but it was so long ago I can not really remember which movie is which….which can not be a great sign for how good they are…plus he has supporting roles in all three movies.

            I can watch his comedies over and over…my 17 year old daughter and I were talking about Father Goose this morning….and I was shocked and disappointed in myself that I have not made her watch that movie….I have about 10 months to get that done before she leaves for college.

            As for the movies not on the list…I do not think any of them would rank very high….the only that might is The Eagle and The Hawk with Frederic March…..but even that one would get a horrible critic/audience score….but my search will continue….even if it is impossible to get good box office numbers from the 1930s…back then the studios guessed how much a movie was making….no proof was required about the accuracy of the box office gross…..thanks for checking out my new and improved Cary Grant hub.

          3. Hey Steve…Wow…I almost double your Cary Grant movie count..finally a tally I am a leader in…I am so proud…lol.

            Bringing Up Baby is in my personal Top 15….as for why Bringing Up Baby is so low..number 37…when it was released it was a very famous bomb….it was in the middle of Katharine Hepburn’s box office poison run….it got so bad she left Hollywood and went back to the stage…also Howard Hawks took a beating for the movie as well…it was not until the French discovered the movie many years later that people started talking about how great the movie is…..I wonder if Rotten Tomatoes was around in 1938 what kind of score Bringing Up Baby would have gotten.

            After updating this hub…I have convinced my wife we need to light the fire and watch one of his great movies….I am leaning towards Father Goose for tonight.

            Thanks for the compliments/votes and thanks for the help in getting this hub to the magic 1000 hit club.

  4. I vaguly remember a movie where he was married with children and he and his wife adopted a troubled handicapped boy. They turned his life around and the boy became an eagle scout. Can’t remember the movies name.

    A great page

    Reply

    1. Hey ruffridyer…the movie you are thinking about would be Room For One More….it is actually one of the few Cary Grant movies I have not seen….so I had to cheat and look up your summary on the internet….I am so ashamed of myself for not knowing the movie….lol..thanks for reading and commenting

      Reply

  5. Just took a peek at this page. Cary Grant is my absolute all-time favorite leading man (followed by Jimmy Stewart)! I love my husband dearly, but if Cary Grant (or his ghost) propositioned me it would take every tiny bit of will power in my body to say no. The closest Hollywood comes to a Cary Grant these days is maybe George Clooney. Both my husband and I consider “Philadelphia Story” our favorite movie of all time.

    Thanks again for another great page!

    Reply

    1. Hey Caroline Chicago….Thanks for the compliment. I discovered Cary Grant when I was still in high school…I was sick and the only thing on tv was Bringing Up Baby…..after that I started watching anything with him in it….so far I have seen 65 of his 79 movies. I also love Pha Story…thanks for reading.

      Reply

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