Want to know the best Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies? How about the worst Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies? Curious about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies box office grosses or which Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis 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.
One of our Ultimate Movie Ranking page asked the question….”Which Screen Duo was the most successful of all-time when looking at box office grosses?” The answer turned out to be the Screen Duo team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, but coming in second place was the Martin and Lewis screen duo. They made 16 movies (plus a cameo) together in the late 1940s and 1950s. Those 16 movies grossed over $2 BILLION in adjusted domestic box office dollars.
Martin & Lewis were listed as Top Ten Box Office Stars 6 times from 1951 to 1956. They ranked number one in 1952. This page looks at all the Martin & Lewis movies. The movies are ranked from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. You can decide which is the best way to rank their movies……just pick the category and sort the results. This page comes from a request from UMR Hall of Famer….Mike.
Martin & Lewis Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Martin & Lewis 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 Martin & Lewis movies by the year they were made
- Sort Martin & Lewis movies by co-stars of their movies.
- Sort Martin & Lewis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Martin & Lewis movies by domestic box office rank by year
- Sort Martin & Lewis movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort Martin & Lewis 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.
Jerry Lewis, born Joseph Levitch, was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. Lewis was an American comedian, actor, singer, director, producer, writer, and humanitarian. His contributions to comedy and charity made him a global figure over an eight-decade career. In 1945, Lewis was 19 when he met 27-year-old singer Dean Martin at the Glass Hat Club in New York City. They would work together for the next decade. Lewis passed away in 2017. To see our Jerry Lewis UMR page click on this link. You will see all 49 of his movies ranked there.
Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, was born in Steubenville, Ohio in 1917. Martin was an American singer, actor and comedian. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the mid-20th century, Martin was nicknamed “The King of Cool”. After the Martin & Lewis team went their separate ways, many predicted Martin would struggle without Lewis. That prediction turned out to be very wrong as Martin became a member of the Rat Pack, made many more movies and hosted his very own television show. Martin passed away in 1995. To see our Dean Martin UMR page click on this link. You will see all 51 of his movies ranked there.
Check out the Martin & Lewis movie career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
8/It is accordingly not a big stretch to calculate that Lewis was the mainstay of the M & L team movies. However as Dino as well as being in a succession of movie box office hits had phenomenally-successful recording and television careers Martin was probably OVERALL the more commercially successful of the pair
9/Also Jerry’s roles were rather repetitive amounting to a zany slapstick character throughout his heyday films both with Dino and on his own. Dino though whilst never one of the acknowledged ACTING Greats could competently tackle a much broader range of roles than were in Jerry’s gift
10/Dino’s range apart from light comedy, ladies man roles and musicals included the likes of a cowboy in Rio Bravo; a pilot in the disaster-movie monster hit Airport and a soldier in the war drama in The Young Lions.
11/Indeed for the latter Martin won respectable acting reviews for being able to hold his own with dramatic powerhouses Monty Clift, Marlon Brando and Maximilian Schell who was later to win a best actor Oscar for Judgement at Nuremberg where he stole the acting honours from screen legends Tracy, Dietrich, Garland, Widmark and Lancaster.
Great breakdown on Martin and Lewis. I appreciate you putting this information together…you are the man.
DEAN MARTIN’s STAND-ALONE MOVIE BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE
The Silencers $153 million – Matt Helm
Murderer’s Row $133 million – Matt Helm
Texas Across the River $91 million***
The Ambushers $89 million- Matt Helm
How to Save a Marriage $50 million
The Wrecking Crew $48 million – Matt Helm
Ten Thousand Bedrooms – $45 million
Toys in the Attic – $28 million
Who’s Been Sleeping in my Bed? – $26 million
Something Big – $16 million
Mr Ricco – $11 million
***Texas Across the River included major continental star Alain Delon but as he was not a high-profile in the US I have given Dino the benefit of it being one of his stand- alone flicks. Those who know me will tell you that that’s the type of guy I AM!
JERRY LEWIS’S MAIN STAND-ALONE MOVIE BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE
Don’t Give Up the Ship $175 million
The Sad Sack $164 million
The Delicate Delinquent $159 million
The Geisha Boy -$140 million
The Bellboy-$137 million
Rockabye Baby-$136 million
The Nutty Professor-$122 million
Visit to a Small Planet-$122 million
Cinderfella-$110 million
The Ladies Man- $99 million
The Errand Boy- $89 million
OVERALL SUMMARY OF ABOVE BOX OFFICE FIGURES
MARTIN: TOTAL GROSS $690 million [AVERAGE $63 million]
LEWIS: TOTAL GROSS $1.475 billion [AVERAGE $134 million]
Good stuff Bob. Lewis benefitted from not having any movies when past his prime….movies like Slapstick Of Another Kind, Cracking Up and Hardly Working….while Dino’s past his prime movies (Something Big and Mr. Ricco) were included. Both were in their mid 50s when they made those movies. Good stats.
Within the context of the final paragraph in my Part One Jerry in my view was a greater “beast at the films box office” than Dino – just as overall in each case the movies of Doris Day, Crawford, Betty Grable and Durbin grossed less than those of The Thin Woman but individually the other 4 all shade Myrna at the box office in my book.
For example the delectable Deanna was THE main star in 18 or 19 of the 21 movies that she made whereas Thins was usually accompanied by another major -and almost invariably greater than she -star or stars:
many times with each of Bill Powell/Archibald Alec Leach/Clark Gable; and then with the roster of other Legends whom The Work Horse [being a Loy idolater] shoots himself in the foot by listing on Myrna’s own page in Possibly Interesting Facts section numbered 6 and 7.
In short Myrna’s grosses are largely comprised of “other people’s money” as Danny DeVito expressed it in the 1991 film of that name; whereas “When Joan was in a movie you didn’t have to look at the credits to determine who was THE star of the film!” -Dougie Fairbanks Junior one-time hubby of Crawford.
I should add though that on top of conquering the big screen Dino was for several years reportedly the highest paid TV star in the world with “The Dean Martin Show” which ran from 1965 – 1974.
According to Celebrity Net Worth site the financial legacies of Dean and Jerry are virtually identical: when adjusted for inflation Jerry has left behind $60 million and Dino $59 million. However hanging around with high-living “party animals” like Sinatra and his Rat Pack probably means that Martin SPENT a lot more money than Jerry when they were alive.
By comparison for example Al Leach aka Cary Grant is said to have left behind for his loved- ones a net worth equal to $130 million in today’s money. As the saying goes though none of these guys would have been short of a dollar or two!
Hey Bob….well….I guess we will have to agree to disagree on Loy and Martin. Both Loy and Martin were above the title performers….in my mind those people get credit for the box office…even though they might not be the top billed person. Good information on the net worth of Martin, Lewis and Grant. Hope your weekend is going well.
The Sad Sack is no longer on this table…so problem fixed.
HI O Beast of the Viewing Figures! Good to see you are well enough to return comments. Keep the site informed of further progress please.
I’m glad you have sacked The Sad Sack. You had me worried for a bit as I thought I had missed an entry in Martin & Lewis filmography; and you know that modest chap that I am !!! I pride myself on being THE expert on classic era films with the exception of the undoubted Beast of the “Have Seen@ competitions – Flora.
Agree to differ, eh? I remember a work colleague opining years ago that this statement is probably a bit of a misnomer. He argued that one person couldn’t actually stop another “differing” as that is beyond the former’s control unless one debater convinced the other to change his/her mind – in which case of course they are obviously then both in agreement.
There is though actually a certain renowned ‘guillotine’ rule called Godwin’s Law which applies within formal Internet Debating Societies. It is that the longer a political or current affairs debate goes on the sooner will come the point when one of the debaters will be unable to resist drawing a comparison with Hitler and the Nazis; and at that stage the person who makes the comparison will have been deemed to have lost the argument.
Say! – there’s a thought: maybe we should introduce a Cogerson ‘guillotine’ rule [we could call it Thin’s Law] under which anytime there is a debate about box office prestige or performance the first person to draw Myrna Loy’s name into the comparisons forfeits the argument.
Hey Bob….funny thought on the Thin Law. Still trying to figure out how The Sad Sack made the table. Some of my mistakes are quick fixes….mistakes like this require a lot more effort to fix. As for you disagreeing with a work colleague….I just can’t even imagine that happening….lol.
Anyway for my money given that when the likes of The Duke or Al Leach were at their peak it would have been difficult for any of their co-stars NOT to be in a, usually substantial, box office hit; and it therefore would always be an open question how much did The Duke contribute to the total of a movie and how much did the presence of Dino for example bring to the table.
Conversely no such conundrum arises when someone like Lewis has a long run of stand-alone hits as nobody else in them is a recognised box-office draw and the likes of Lewis [and for example Elvis] must therefore come into ANY discussions about Beast status.
Your always highly reliable tables show that Lewis has for example 9 stand-alone movies that crashed your $100 million barrier with a total adjusted domestic gross of around $1.260 billion, an average per movie of some $140 million.
Dino has though in your tables just two stand-alone movies that passed the $100 mark: The Silencers and Murderers Row both Matt Helm spy spoofs that cashed in on the Bond mania of the 1960s. The combined Cogerson adjusted domestic gross of the 2 Helms is $285 million.
Cost against profit is of course in reality what determines the size of a hit but apparently the arbitrary current rule of thumb among the money-men in today’s movie market is that to be considered a hit a movie should in 2022 dollars gross at least 80 million at the domestic box office. 11 of Lewis’ stand-alone movies crossed that threshold whereas Dino got just 4 over the line.
Lewis achieved 7 Top 10 entries in the prestigious Quigley polls from 1957 until 1964 inclusive. No 3 of your Possibly Interesting Facts on Jerry’s page lists just 6 ignoring for some reason 1964 when as in 1963 Jerraldo was listed 10th.
Dino has just 2 entries in the Top 10 [1967 and 1968] so that it took Dean 11 years after the pair split-up in 1956 to make the top 10, his 1st solo film Ten Thousand Bedrooms being a flop with a puny $45 million Cogerson gross.
Jerry though stormed-into the Quigley Top 10 immediately in 1957 with his first 2 solo movies The Delicate Delinquent and The Sad Sack attracting an adjusted domestic gross of approx $310 million – wow! However Lewis never had the TV or recording success that Dino had; so it could be argued that overall Dino had the greater commercial success. Also Jerry was virtually a one-trick pony and could not have played the variety of roles that Martin undertook albeit arguably merely competently. Unlike some guys – Hirsch comes quickly to mind – I always try to take the broad and comprehensive view.
“When they offered me the part in The Young Lions they told me that they couldn’t pay me my usual top-rate fee as two other major stars would be in the movie – Brando and Clift. I replied don’t worry. If Marlon Brando and Monty Clift are going to be in it I’ll even do it for nothing – just wait until Lewis sees my name up on the marquee beside THEIRS!’ ” Martin in TV interview at the time.
Largely based on the figures helpfully provided by The Work Horse on this site I have how completed my personal statistical exercise on the careers of Martin and Lewis both solo and as a team. My general take-away conclusions based on my own interpretation of Bruce’s figures are as follows:
1/The movie money markets as a rule of thumb regard as a firm hit any movie with a minimum domestic gross of $80 million in today’s money.
2/Following their break-up as a team Jerry made 11 solid hits out of 22 stand-alone films whereas Dino was successful with only 4 commercial successes out of a total of 11 stand-alone movies. Three of those 4 Dino stand-alone hits were Matt Helm spy-spoof films which fed off the Bond spy movies craze of the 1960s. The Helm series quickly fizzled-out after a couple of years.
3/Nearly all of Jerry’s total post M & L output were stand-alone films whereas the bulk of Dino’s flicks required the presence of other big stars such as among males The Duke and Sinatra both multiple times and once each the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Brando, Burt Lancaster and Robert Mitchum. Important female stars who were Martin’s co-stars included Lana Turner, Deborah Kerr and several times Shirley MacLaine.
4/Jerry’s 22 stand-alone outings were in a continuous run from 1957 until 1970 and were interspersed just once with 1965’s Boeing Boeing in which Jerry shared the honours with popular Tony Curtis
5/Jerry’s 22 stand-alone movies have an overall Cogerson adjusted domestic Gross of $2.035 billion [average approx $93 million]. Dino’s 11 stand-alone movies have an adjusted domestic gross of just $690 million [average around $63 million]. See also part 3.
6/In the 8 years inclusive from 1957-1964 Jerry was a virtual fixture in the Quigley Top 10 popularity polls whereas Dino made just 2 appearances in those polls in 1967 and 1968.
7/It is therefore not unreasonable to conclude that whereas Dino was undoubtedly popular in movies, audiences for the most part wanted to see him in the earlier days with Lewis and later teamed with other big stars such as Shirley MacLaine and Sinatra
DEAN MARTIN’s MAIN STAND-ALONE MOVIE BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE
The Silencers $153 million – Matt Helm
Murderer’s Row $133 million – Matt Helm
Texas Across the River $91 million***
The Ambushers $89 million- Matt Helm
How to Save a Marriage $50 million
The Wrecking Crew $48 million – Matt Helm
Ten Thousand Bedrooms – $45 million
Toys in the Attic – $28 million
Who’s Been Sleeping in my Bed? – $26 million
Something Big – $16 million
Mr Ricco – $11 million
***Texas Across the River included major continental star Alain Delon but as he was not a high-profile in the US I have given Dino the benefit of it being one of his stand- alone flicks. Those who know me will tell you that that’s the type of guy I AM!
JERRY LEWIS’S MAIN STAND-ALONE MOVIE BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE
Don’t Give Up the Ship $175 million
The Sad Sack $164 million
The Delicate Delinquent $159 million
The Geisha Boy -$140 million
The Bellboy-$137 million
Rockabye Baby-$136 million
The Nutty Professor-$122 million
Visit to a Small Planet-$122 million
Cinderfella-$110 million
The Ladies Man- $99 million
The Errand Boy- $89 million
OVERALL SUMMARY OF ABOVE BOX OFFICE FIGURES
MARTIN: TOTAL GROSS $690 million [AVERAGE $63 million]
LEWIS: TOTAL GROSS $1.475 billion [AVERAGE $134 million]
Hey Bob….good breakdown on M & L. The only thing I disagree with is pretty much throwing out his “other” movies with stars. This is the same thing we disagreed on with Loy. In my mind above the title stars get equal credit or blame for a movie.
The Gray Man is now out. It stars Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Pretty sure Gosling has top billing….but Chris Evans is the main reason people are talking about the movie. Based on social media stats…Evans brings his MCU crowd. To me they are “in it together”. We could also look at Red Notice with Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot….to me the get equal credit for being the number 1 viewed Netflix movie of all-time. I suspect you would only give credit to Johnson.
As always good disagreeing with you…lol.
Hey Bob….good stats on the “stand alone” Dean and Jerry movies. That is one way to look at it….while….I still give Mr. Martin credit for all those other hits where his name was above the title. Another good point on Mr. Grant and Mr. Wayne.
Hey Bob….when looking at their Top Hits…..while I agree Lewis was the “star” in his movies in the 1960s and Martin was “one of the stars”. If you look at their top box office movies…..Jerry’s Top 10 shows 9 movies with Dean. Dean’s Top 10 only shows 4 movies with Jerry. Jerry’s Top 19 only shows 3 movies without Dean. Together their movies were hits….but apart Dean’s were even bigger hits while Jerry had successful movies they were not as popular as the Martin/Lewis movies….and nowhere near as popular as the Dean movies. Good conversation.
The Work Horse writes “Jerry had successful movies they were not as popular as the Martin/Lewis movies….and nowhere near as popular as the Dean movies.”
That would be par for the course as it would be unusual if one star on his own in what was a quite repetitive long-running series such as the Jerry Lewis one was churning out monster hits like 1970’s Airport.
Conversely additional stars in multi-star movies will usually bring additional box office and the conundrum is working out how much the additionality can be credited to this performer or that. Therein for me lies the Dean Martin problem.
Lewis in his heyday was for the most part a one-trick pony with little variety in his films so audiences were bound to start falling away the longer his run of hits went on. Dino experienced that with his Matt Helm series after just a couple of films – Cogerson adjusted domestic grosses show their quick downward progression as follows : The Silencers $153 million; Murderer’s Row $132 million; The Ambushers $89 million; The Wrecking Crew $48 million.
Also even the M & L films being of course a repetitive series over a number of years but one with TWO stars in them never got anywhere near the super $300 million mark and only 2 of them grossed over $200 million.
Also as the saying goes there are ” Horses for Courses”. The type of movies that Martin was in needed more than one movie star such as The Young Lions, Airport and all those Sinatra ensemble “Clan” films.
However as said the other major stars were bound to magnify the box office take of those films and it is therefore unrealistic to give Dino full credit for their grosses especially when his stand-alone movies collectively did so relatively poorly.
Conversely Lewis’s flicks such as Cinderfella and The Nutty Professor -like those of Elvis and Deanna – were tailor-made for just one star and indeed it would probably have been difficult to attract many other major stars to what were in effect “one man/woman shows”.
No way Al Leach for example was gonna play an unfunny “straight man” to Lewis in something like The Delicate Delinquent or Rock-a-bye Baby; indeed one of the main reasons M & L split was reportedly that Dino got fed-up with Jerraldo’s character basking in most of the limelight by being the funny one.
And could you see Old Cantankerous Tracy [Myrna Loy maybe!] being willing to sit quietly in a corner while Elvis took centre stage belting out a string of Hit Songs in films like GI Blues and Blue Hawaii? Greg Peck [sometimes confused with Royal Edward Dano Senior aka Ed Dano] actually walked out on Let’s Make Love because Monroe was getting her part built-up at his expense, so lesser star Yves Montand replaced Greg.
There were usually a LOT of contemporary selling features in Dino’s multi-star films that were big hits whereas our discussion about Lewis as a stand-alone Beast reminds me of a quote some years ago by a film historian:
“That Alan Ladd was a big box office star in his heyday is beyond doubt. We KNOW that because most of his peak-year films were popular at the box office, and besides Alan Ladd there was nothing much-else in most of them.”
PUZZLE: I am surprised at The Sad Sack being listed above. It WAS scheduled initially as an M & L movie but they split-up before it was made with Jerry starring in it on his own and it is not listed anywhere else as a Dino cameo; nor is it listed among the massive 160 archive footage entries on Martin’s IMDB page?
This new page is most welcome to viewers such as I who do numerous private exercises related to movies. The 16 full-length movies listed on the new page are of course also listed on the individual Cogerson pages of Jerry and Dean.
However they are scattered throughout the latter as they are mingled with the pair’s solo-careers films and it is useful to have their joint-career stats assembled on the one page.
Actually the appearance of the new page is timely for me as I am by coincidence in the middle of an exercise dealing with the careers of Martin & Lewis both jointly and solo.
It is indeed the case that a new Cogerson page [or a Lensman video] often coincides with my personal day-to-day connection with movie matters.
For example last night I watched a TV rerun of a Perry Mason episode [1958’s The Case of the Lonely Heiress] and who should appear in it? -the young L Q Jones playing a con-man gigolo and showing us how the youthful L Q could sway the ladies in his early movies!
Bruce has famously said on Dino’s individual Cogerson page that Martin was a “beast at the box office” and certainly his overall box office exceeds Jerry’s.
However after they broke-up nearly all of Jerry’s films were stand-alone with no other major star in them -Lewis is ALL that is there – whereas Dino in HIS films was substantially paired with many of the screen’s greatest stars of Dean and Jerry’s era such as The Duke, Brando, Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Judy Holiday, Susan Hayward, Shirley MacLaine, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, Bob Mitchum, Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster; and in most cases Dean was billed 2nd or 3rd.
Hey Bob…you are 100% correct…not sure how I managed to include that Jerry Lewis movie in this Martin & Lewis page…..I am efforting in fixing that error Thanks for the heads up. Glad this page is making it easier for you to do your “exercise”. I agree with your point that Dino had some help…but he still appeared in blockbuster after blockbuster. Speaking about Jerry Lewis. Sharing a Cogerson story. A few years before he passed away, WoC read that he was appearing in a show in our area. She wanted to know if I wanted to go….for some reason I said no. Turns out one of friends went and told us after the show Lewis held court with the audiences signing autographs and taking photos. I have no idea what I did that night…..but not thinking I made the right decision. Good comment.
I have seen three Martin and Lewis films. None are favourites. They are:
Artists and Models
Hollywood or Bust
Road to Bali
Hey Flora….Thanks for checking out our Martin & Lewis page. I have not seen your three seen movies. This was a request by Mike. Hope you are enjoying your weekend.