Want to know the best Deborah Kerr movies? How about the worst Deborah Kerr movies? Curious about Deborah Kerr box office grosses or which Deborah Kerr movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Deborah Kerr movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.
Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) was a 6-time Oscar® nominated Scottish film, theatre and television actress. Her IMDb page shows 53 acting credits from 1940-1986. This page will rank 38 Deborah Kerr movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television roles and 6 of early British films were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: After really struggling with our last two movie pages (Top 50 Stars 1950-2010)…we were happy to see Lyle’s request for a Deborah Kerr page. Why you ask? A quick look in our database showed we already had 26 of her movies ready to go. That would leave about 10 movies to research….which is actually a very manageable amount of movies. In other words…..it was going to be easy to do…..and it moved up to the top of the request list. So without any further delay…please check out one of the most underrated actress of all-time….Deborah Kerr.
Deborah Kerr 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 Deborah Kerr movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Deborah Kerr movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
- Sort Deborah Kerr movies by yearly domestic box office rank or trivia
- Sort Deborah Kerr movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins each Deborah Kerr movie received.
- Sort Deborah Kerr movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (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 table very interactive. For example…if you type in “David Niven” in the search box….the 4 Niven/Kerr movies will pop right up.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Deborah Kerr Table
- Thirteen Deborah Kerr movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 34.21% of her movies listed. Quo Vadis (1951) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Deborah Kerr movie grosses $115.00 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 27 of Deborah Kerr’s movies are rated as good movies…or 71.10% of her movies. Black Narcissus (1947) was her highest rated movie while Casino Royale (1966) was her lowest rated movie.
- Eighteen Deborah Kerr movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 47.36% of her movies.
- Eight Deborah Kerr movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 21.05% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 24 Deborah Kerr movies scored higher that average….or 63.15% of her movies. From Here to Eternity (1953) got the the highest UMR Movie Score while Count Your Blessings (1959) got the lowest UMR Movie Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Deborah Kerr
1. Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1921.
2. Deborah Kerr holds the record for most Best Actress Oscar® nominations without winning. She was nominated 6 times.
3. Deborah Kerr is one of 4 Scottish actors to receive an acting Oscar® nomination. The other three? Mary Ure, Tom Conti and Sean Connery. Connery is the only one to win one.
4. Deborah Kerr did receive an Honorary Oscar® in 1994. For being “An artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance.”
5. 7 Deborah Kerr movies received a Best Picture Oscar® nomination: 1950’s King Solomon’s Mines, 1951’s Quo Vadis, 1953’s From Here To Eternity, 1953’s Julius Caesar, 1956’s The King and I, 1958’s Separate Tables, & 1960’s The Sundowners.
6. Deborah Kerr was married two times. She had two children and three grandchildren.
7. Deborah Kerr replaced Joan Crawford in 1953’s From Here To Eternity. She replaced Maureen O’Hara in 1956’s The King And I. She really wanted the Katharine Hepburn role in The African Queen….but MGM thought it was similar to her role in King Solomon’s Mines..and would not let her take the role.
8. Deborah Kerr’s An Affair To Remember (1957) was voted the 5th greatest romance of all time by the American Film Institute.
9. Our favorite quote on Deborah Kerr comes from William Wyler….” I still think of Audrey Hepburn as the princess but Deborah Kerr as the queen”.
10. Critical rating scores for the 6 early Deborah Kerr British movies: 1941’s Major Barbara 68.5%, 1941’s Love on the Dole 67.0%, 1942’s The Avengers 58.0%, 1942’s Courageous Mr. Penn 57.5%, 1942’s A.J. Cronin’s Hatter’s Castle 61.0% & 1946’s I See A Dark Stranger 64.5%.
10A. Deborah Kerr’s cumulative totals: Adjusted domestic box office: $4.37 billion. Her movies received 71 Oscar® nominations….winning 22 Oscars®.
Check out Deborah Kerr’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. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
I don’t know if anyone has answered the question yet about the movie in which Deborah Kerr played a queen. It was Young Bess. She played Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII.
Thank you Marlene…..Steve asked the question….but he never answered it. Thanks for answering it. I will have to check that one out.
I’d forgotten all about the question in my comment, you are quite correct Marlene. Deborah Parr… sorry, Deborah Kerr played Catherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six wives (and she outlived him too) in the movie Young Bess. Kerr’s Black Narcissus co-star Jean Simmons played the young Queen Elizabeth in that film.
Hey Steve….Thanks for the confirmation on the answer.
She was a wonderful actress with so many great roles. Looking at your rankings I think they look good but I would have thought An Affari To Remember would have been a touch higher. Interesting stats as always.
Hey Stein….she was a very talented actress. One of the problems of having so many great movies ….is great movies end up getting ranked near the bottom of the Top 10….that is what happened with An Affair To Remember. Glad you liked the stats…thanks for stopping by.
Hello Bruce. That was fast. Deborah Kerr was always one of my favorite film stars. I always liked English actresses. I had most of the Box Office information of most of her films except “Vacation from Marriage” (1945), “Black Narcissus” (1947), “The End of the Affair” (1955) and “Bonjour Tristesse” (1958).
My favorite Deborah Kerr films are.
I See a Dark Stranger (1946)
Black Narcissus (1947)
King Solomon’s Mines (1950)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
The Sundowners (1960)
The Innocents (1961)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
The Night of the Iguana (1964)
As for Richard Burton in “The Night of the Iguana”, He goes way over the top but I find his performance quite funny and entertaining. Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner are both beautiful and give great performances. My absolute favorite roles that Deborah Kerr plays are “The Sundowners” ( also my favorite Robert Mitchum performance) and “The Chalk Garden”.
Thanks for doing a page on one of my favorite actresses.
Hey Lyle…turned out Deborah Kerr was the perfect person to do. My latest pages have been very time consuming….when I saw your request and did my first check….I was so happy that so many of her movies were already done. The four movies you listed…..I have to admit that I have no idea where I got the numbers….they were already in the database…and when I entered them…there was no place for sources….the wife has since fixed that problem. I know I researched Otto Preminger at one point…so I think it is a good chance it came from a Otto book….another book that I found useful was one that looked at the British film industry.
I have seen 5 of your Top 8 …with The Sundowners being my favorite. From Here To Eternity…is of course a classic. I will have to revisit Black Narcissus…as the first time I did not find too impressive….it looked awesome (saw on a great Blu-Ray copy)….just found the story slow moving. I have not seen either King Solomon’s Mine (I want to) or The Chalk Garden (gotta admit I was unaware of this movie before doing the page). Glad you liked Burton in Night of the Iguana….I thought Ava Gardner stole the show in that one.
Glad you enjoyed the page.
Just as the glamorous Grace Kelly went ‘dowdy’ in “The Country Girl” so also did Deborah Kerr in what I consider her finest performance, “Separate Tables.” Her ‘yes mummy. no mummy’ frustrated spinster in the film was such a marked contrast to her beautifully dressed, compassionate, sophisticated characters of “The King and I’, “Tea and Sympathy” and “An Affair To Remember.” I was quite shocked when I first saw Ms Kerr in “Separate Tables” but I also instantly thought that she should have won the best actress Oscar for her performance. Certainly, over due winner Susan Hayward was superb in “I Want To Live”, but Deborah Kerr had to be my first choice that year with Rosiland Russell’s “Auntie Mame” a very close second.
Hey Gordon….great comment. She was stellar in Separate Tables…despite her getting an Oscar nomination for that movie…seems her performance gets lost…when compared to Niven, Lancaster and Wendy Hiller. But I agree it is just as impressive.
Hayward was outstanding in her role, it’s so hard to elect a winner. Gable lost his Oscar to Goodbye Mr. Chips which was an outstanding performance as,well.
She herself said The King and I was her least favorite movie. She did not want to make it but had to.
This is absolutely untrue, as is the previous assertion that she replaced Maureen O’Hara in the role of Mrs Anna.
Maureen wanted the role, but it was Yul Brynner who wanted Deborah.
The King and I was one of her favourite films – I corresponded with Deborah for over twenty years and I have letters in which she said that film was ‘a joy to make – I wish it could have gone on forever.’
Hey KDP….yes Brynner wanted Kerr…..but the studio wanted O’Hara….in the end Kerr replaced the studio’s choice of O’Hara.
Very cool that you got to communicate with Ms. Kerr…..that is awesome. Glad she found the movie a “joy to make”. Thanks for checking out our Kerr page….she seems to have lots of great fans.
Good points Kathleen and Dan….thanks for checking out my Deborah Kerr page
Love her! Always impressed with her 3 roles in Col. Blimp. And her 2 roles in Vacation From Marriage…if you’re familiar with that movie you know what I mean.
Both of the movies you mentioned are on my to watch list. Colonel Blimp sits at my local library just waiting for me to check it out and watch it. I did not realize she had dual roles in the movies…good to know.
Hey Bruce Cogerson 3 separate roles in Blimp, but in Vacation her character goes through a dramatic transformation. When DK was in it, you know it’s a good movie.
Good to know. Thanks for the information. I look forward to watching both movies.