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.
Every movie was memorable. I loved her in every one. My favorites were an affair to remember, tea and sympathy, vacation from marriage, the Hucksters, from here to eternity, and of course the king and I . She was a gracious actress, and a truly beautiful woman. I’ve heard she was gracious and generous in real life also. Another actress said she was always willing to help new actresses, I wish I could remember who said it. They also said the studio wasn’t good to her when she got older. It’s is shame as she brought beauty and elegance in every thing she did.
I found that list to be very inaccurate, as far as the movie quality is concerned. That a banal and poor film like The Proud and the Profane can be ranked 11th, while The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is 20th, and Vacation From Marriage, 26th, possibly because of the time they were made, is quite ridiculous. The Sundowners ranking is also out of proportion to how it is generally perceived. Most followers of Deborah Kerr would rank it number one. She did, herself.
Hey Julie…..thanks for commenting on our Deborah Kerr page. Our rankings are based only on a combination of statistics: Box office, reviews and awards. The Proud and the Profane was one of her biggest box office hits…got middling reviews and no award love…so it docks in 11th place. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp only had a limited box office success in the United States….so that hurt it’s rankings.
However….the beauty of these tables….is that you can change the rankings. If you want to rank the movies by reviews by professional critics and movie going audiences….just click the sort button on the headings column. If you do that…The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is the second highest rated movie on the table. Trailing only Black Narcissus. Our “niche” here on UMR is ranking by statistics.
Just having a list with our personal preferences is available in many many places….but a statistical review of her career is currently only located in one place. Overall…our ranking system does a good job in getting the “cream to the top”…..but it does struggle when looking at movies with great reviews that struggled at the box office….Citizen Kane, Shawshank and your Colonel Blimp….but….I think it is “saved” by the sort button for reviews.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Ahead of her time I think….
Many of her themes are current now….It took daring and courage to select her roles….Without Her, We would have far less to learn and grow with..My favorite…Black Narcissus…Suggest you read the book as well……
1 Your posters for Eye of the Devil, Bonjour Tristesse, Heaven Knows Mr Allison and Quo Vadis particularly caught my eye but your entire range of marvellous posters demonstrates that from 1947 until 1969 in terms of co-stars Deborah went through virtually the entire ‘Who’s Who’ of Hollywood’s greatest male stars of those days working with 16 of them at different times starting with the King in the Hucksters, thru Golden, Sinatra, Dino and Burton in the 1960s and ending with Kirk Douglas in The Arrangement. I admired the still of Debs/Granger and the closing one of Deborah solo – unbeatable stuff from you nowadays !
2 Bruce and you are reunited in being unanimous in your Top 5 and I was pleased to see that included was The Innocents (1961) as it and Psycho were the only films that were so good that they ever really seriously frightened me Here Dan could enjoy some dot-joining. Deborah who as I have said worked with almost every Hollywood Great of her day claimed that the only other star to whom she ever wrote a personal fan letter was Marlon Brando (when he was working on Sayonara) and in 1971 Brando made The Nightcomers which was a very inferior ‘prequel’ to The Innocents with Marlon as the evil Peter Quint who had been played better in my view by the very excellent (French born of British parents) Peter Wyngarde in Deb’s version.
3 Moreover your fellow countryman Michael Winner directed The Nightcomers and years later Winner who during his career directed the likes of Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Big Bob Mitchum, Olly Reed and Charles Bronson said that The Nightrcomers was the only film where he had addressed one of his actors as “Sir.” [ ! Definitely 9/10 for your Kerr video !]
4 Debs being from Scotland it always amused me that American critics and journalists would refer to the sweet and sophisticated young Kerr as “the perfect English rose.” Another example of “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” ? Bruce shows Deb with a career that amassed nearly $4.5 billion in adjusted domestic grosses which is good for just the 39 movies listed and which would of course have been higher had he not decided to reduce her Julius Caesar stat.
Thanks Bob, appreciate the review and thanks for the trivia. Deb was very popular and respected, like you say she starred alongside so many famous Hollywood stars. Scanning Bruce’s chart I don’t see John Wayne listed, no movie with the most popular actor of them all?
The Innocents is one of my favorite spooky movies, it can still send a shiver down the spine. I expected The King and I to do well but it missed the top 5, it’s probably her most popular film. When I think of Kerr (rhymes with ‘star’ thanks to one of the poster taglines) I nearly always picture her dancing with the King of Siam. The other iconic ‘Kerr’ moment – on the beach with Burt.
I’m kind of glad her top two highest rated films were British. They top Bruce’s chart too. Black Narcissus is an astonishing film, the color photography is amazing and the climax is a shocker, the crazed nun looking like she’s possessed by the devil. I’ve posted frame captures from the film on my forum many times over the years.
1 I suppose even Debs couldn’t act with everybody but I would like to have seen her co-star with Tweedie and indeed I think the part of the heroine in his The Naked Jungle would have been ideal for her as the movie sought to contrast the sophistication of the leading lady with the ruggedness and even uncouthness of Christopher Lanniger whom Tweedie played.
2 Deborah’s film I see a Dark Stranger which i think you included in your chart but which is not included in Bruce’s table was very popular in Belfast because of its Irish connection. It was called The Adventuress in the States but I preferred ‘our’ title ! Anyway thanks again for feedback.
BOB
Hey Bob….mmmmm….maybe I can figure out the grosses for I See A Dark Stranger….especially since I have discovered the Harrison Reports. I can’t imagine it did too well in the States….but good to know it was so popular in Belfast.
I have only seen Julius Caesar once….so Brando and Kerr have no scenes together? I guess that is not surprising since Kerr and Greer Garson are barely in the movie.
Good stuff.
Hey Steve….you are right it seems strange that Kerr and Wayne did not make a movie together. Wayne was awesome with O’Hara (another redhead) while Mitchum (a Wayne like actor) and Kerr were awesome together. Too bad it never happened.
Yep..I was equally surprised when The King and I did not crack my Top 5 either…..glad you like my top two picks. I just recently watched Colonel Blimp…a long but enjoyable movie.
Good thoughts on Black Narcissus. As well as the rest of your comment…..it is greatly appreciated.
Hey Bob….good comments on Deborah Kerr and Steve’s You Tube Video. You comments of the Kerr/Granger movies makes me think I need to get a Granger page done. Did I reduce the gross for Julius Caesar?….lol. Thanks for sharing your movie thoughts.
WOW – You have certainly got LOTS of comments and I want to add mine too. I always thought she was a very good actress. I enjoyed her movies and she and Robert Mitchum played in a few movies which were very good as well. An Affair To Remember was so good with Cary Grant. Thanks so much for this one – great job as usual. Interesting about how many children and grandchildren she had too. THANK YOU,
Hey BERN1960….good to see again. You have been slacking lately.,…but I forgive you. I agree she and Mitchum made a great screen team. Not surprised you brought up An Affair To Remember….I figured you have seen that movie many many times. Thanks for the visit and the comment.