Want to know the best Doris Day movies? How about the worst Doris Day movies? Curious about Doris Day’s box office grosses or which Doris Day movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Doris Day movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place ….. because we have all of that information.
Every April 3rd, my wife and Doris Day (1922-2019) share birthdays (with Marlon Brando and Eddie Murphy as well). Doris Day will turned 91 this year and she is still going strong…..as is my wife. Doris Day began her career as a big band singer in 1939. Her popularity began to rise after her first hit recording, Sentimental Journey in 1945. Four years later, Day started her movie career with the movie Romance on the High Seas. She would become one of the biggest movies stars of all time.
Her IMDb page shows 41 acting credits from 1948-1973. This page will rank 39 Doris Day movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her television appearances were not were not included in the rankings.
Doris Day Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Doris Day Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In The Following Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Column one – the link will take you to that movie’s trailer
- Sort by Doris Day’s co-stars of her movies.
- Sort Doris Day movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Doris Day movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Doris Day 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 Doris Day movie received.
- Sort Doris Day 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.
| R | Movie (Year) | UMR Co-Star Links | Adj. B.O. Worldwide (mil) | Review | Oscar Nom / Win | UMR Score | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R | Movie (Year) | UMR Co-Star Links | Actual B.O. Domestic (mil) | Adj. B.O. Domestic (mil) | Adj. B.O. Worldwide (mil) | B.O. Rank by Year | Review | Oscar Nom / Win | UMR Score | S |
| 1 | Pillow Talk (1959) AA Best Actress Nom |
Rock Hudson & Tony Randall |
22.20 | 399.4 | 399.40 | 6 | 83 | 05 / 01 | 98.8 | |
| 2 | The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) | James Stewart & Directed by Alfred Hitchcock |
11.70 | 229.6 | 229.60 | 21 | 81 | 01 / 01 | 98.0 | |
| 3 | Lover Come Back (1961) | Rock Hudson | 24.30 | 353.8 | 353.80 | 7 | 79 | 01 / 00 | 97.3 | |
| 4 | Love Me or Leave Me (1955) | James Cagney | 11.50 | 239.0 | 333.60 | 23 | 69 | 06 / 01 | 96.5 | |
| 5 | The Thrill of It All (1963) | James Garner | 15.70 | 197.0 | 197.00 | 14 | 73 | 00 / 00 | 95.7 | |
| 5 | That Touch of Mink (1962) | Cary Grant | 24.30 | 349.1 | 349.10 | 5 | 69 | 03 / 00 | 95.5 | |
| 7 | Move Over, Darling (1963) | James Garner | 17.40 | 218.5 | 218.50 | 9 | 69 | 00 / 00 | 95.0 | |
| 9 | On Moonlight Bay (1951) | Gordon MacRae | 7.80 | 168.7 | 229.80 | 18 | 78 | 00 / 00 | 94.6 | |
| 10 | Young at Heart (1954) | Frank Sinatra | 7.10 | 167.4 | 167.40 | 42 | 76 | 00 / 00 | 94.1 | |
| 9 | Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960) | David Niven | 15.20 | 236.9 | 321.70 | 11 | 66 | 00 / 00 | 94.0 | |
| 11 | The Pajama Game (1957) | John Raitt | 7.70 | 147.5 | 219.90 | 26 | 75 | 00 / 00 | 91.8 | |
| 12 | Midnight Lace (1960) | Myrna Loy & Rex Harrison |
10.00 | 156.2 | 156.20 | 22 | 71 | 01 / 00 | 91.8 | |
| 13 | Calamity Jane (1953) | Howard Keel | 7.60 | 136.1 | 204.50 | 30 | 73 | 03 / 01 | 91.2 | |
| 14 | Teacher's Pet (1958) | Clark Gable | 7.70 | 138.6 | 191.00 | 28 | 73 | 02 / 00 | 90.8 | |
| 15 | Send Me No Flowers (1964) | Rock Hudson | 12.90 | 147.4 | 147.40 | 15 | 72 | 00 / 00 | 90.8 | |
| 16 | Romance on the High Seas (1948) | Jack Carson | 5.80 | 156.0 | 228.70 | 54 | 63 | 02 / 00 | 89.3 | |
| 17 | Tea for Two (1950) | Gordon MacRae | 6.60 | 149.0 | 234.30 | 26 | 65 | 00 / 00 | 88.6 | |
| 18 | I'll See You in My Dreams (1951) | Danny Thomas | 7.00 | 150.2 | 196.90 | 30 | 59 | 00 / 00 | 86.6 | |
| 19 | Lullaby of Broadway (1951) | Gene Nelson | 6.00 | 129.5 | 190.00 | 39 | 65 | 00 / 00 | 86.4 | |
| 20 | The West Point Story (1950) | James Cagney | 6.10 | 137.7 | 185.40 | 39 | 61 | 01 / 00 | 86.1 | |
| 21 | April in Paris (1952) | Ray Bolger | 7.60 | 149.7 | 193.80 | 21 | 57 | 00 / 00 | 85.7 | |
| 22 | My Dream Is Yours (1949) | Jack Carson | 5.50 | 138.9 | 190.90 | 47 | 60 | 00 / 00 | 85.5 | |
| 21 | By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) | Gordon MacRae | 5.70 | 102.7 | 143.90 | 53 | 70 | 00 / 00 | 85.0 | |
| 24 | Young Man with a Horn (1950) | Kirk Douglas | 4.70 | 105.3 | 149.00 | 64 | 69 | 00 / 00 | 84.9 | |
| 25 | The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) | Rod Taylor | 11.50 | 112.7 | 112.70 | 25 | 61 | 00 / 00 | 82.1 | |
| 26 | It's a Great Feeling (1949) | Jack Carson | 5.70 | 143.4 | 188.90 | 42 | 51 | 01 / 00 | 82.1 | |
| 27 | With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) | Brian Keith | 14.30 | 117.6 | 117.60 | 26 | 58 | 00 / 00 | 81.2 | |
| 28 | Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962) | Jimmy Durante | 7.10 | 102.7 | 164.30 | 36 | 61 | 01 / 00 | 80.4 | |
| 29 | Do Not Disturb (1965) | Rod Taylor | 10.40 | 110.0 | 110.00 | 22 | 58 | 00 / 00 | 80.0 | |
| 30 | Storm Warning (1950) | Ginger Rogers & Ronald Reagan |
3.60 | 80.2 | 80.20 | 93 | 66 | 00 / 00 | 78.7 | |
| 31 | The Winning Team (1952) | Ronald Reagan | 4.00 | 78.3 | 87.40 | 86 | 63 | 00 / 00 | 75.8 | |
| 32 | It Happened To Jane (1959) | Jack Lemmon | 4.90 | 87.3 | 87.30 | 51 | 60 | 00 / 00 | 75.4 | |
| 33 | Lucky Me (1954) | Robert Cummings | 4.60 | 108.9 | 168.10 | 62 | 53 | 00 / 00 | 75.2 | |
| 34 | Starlift (1951) | Gordon MacRae | 4.80 | 104.4 | 141.80 | 64 | 53 | 00 / 00 | 73.9 | |
| 35 | The Tunnel of Love (1958) | Richard Widmark | 5.00 | 89.8 | 138.10 | 50 | 56 | 00 / 00 | 73.0 | |
| 36 | Julie (1956) | Louis Jordan | 4.00 | 79.2 | 145.60 | 77 | 54 | 02 / 00 | 68.6 | |
| 37 | Caprice (1967) | Richard Harris | 5.00 | 44.5 | 44.50 | 49 | 54 | 00 / 00 | 46.7 | |
| 39 | Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) | Robert Morse | 10.00 | 82.3 | 82.30 | 37 | 41 | 00 / 00 | 45.6 | |
| 38 | The Ballad of Josie (1967) | Peter Graves | 1.30 | 11.8 | 11.80 | 126 | 62 | 00 / 00 | 41.7 |
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Doris Day Table
- Twenty-three Doris Day movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 58.97% of her movies listed. Pillow Talk (1959) was her biggest hit.
- An average Doris Day movie grossed $117.40 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 28 of Doris Day’s movies are rated as good movies…or 71.79% of her movies. Pillow Talk (1959) was her highest rated movie while Caprice (1967) was her lowest rated movie.
- Thirteen Doris Day movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 33.33% of her movies.
- Four Doris Day movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 10.25% of her movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 30 Doris Day movies scored higher that average…. or 76.92% of her movies. Pillow Talk (1959) got the the highest UMR Score while Where Were You When The Lights Went Out (1968) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Doris Day
1. Doris Day (1924-) was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio.
2. At the suggestion of orchestra leader, Barney Rapp, she adopted the stage surname Day. He got Day from the fact that he admired her rendition of the song “Day After Day”.
3. During the location filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), when she saw how camels, goats and other “animal extras” in a marketplace scene were being treated. From that day she began her lifelong commitment to preventing animal abuse.
4. Doris Day was nominated for one acting Oscar® nomination…1959’s Pillow Talk.
5. Doris Day was nominated for five acting Golden Globe® nominations…1958’s The Tunnel of Love, 1959’s Pillow Talk, 1960’s Midnight Lace, 1962’s Billy Rose’s Jumbo and 1963’s Move Over Darling.
6. During the peak of her movie career (1959-1964), she was named the number one movie star…. four times.
7. Doris Day has often said Calamity Jane (1953) as her personal favorite of the 39 films she appeared in.
8. Doris Day briefly dated Ronald Reagan.
9. Doris Day was the first choice to play Mrs. Robinson in 1967’s The Graduate.
10 Doris Day She has two Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One for music career and one for movie career.
For one of the best Doris Day pages out there….check out The Magic of Doris Day.
Steve Lensman’s Doris Day You Tube Video
Our Doris Day Box Office Only 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.
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0MG SO difficult I love all her movies here goes “Calamity Jane” ” Love me or leave Me” Her 3 movies with Rock Hudson “Young at Heart” ” The glass bottom Boat” “Moonlight Bay” “By the light of the silvery Moon” It’s Magic” her movies with Gordon MaCrae “The man who knew too Much” “With 6 you get egg Roll” “Midnight Lace” her two movies with James Garner
Hey Janet…..thanks for sharing your favorites. My favorite are the two with Garner….with Move Over Darling being my all-time favorite. Somehow I have managed to not see Young At Heart….but I love the music fro that movie.
So Frau von Kappelhoff has turned 95 yesterday- Happy belated birthday to Doris Day! She has been extremely popular here in Germany, and to this day her movies are shown on TV. Thus, I have managed to see all but one of the above listed, but I own that one (Billy Roses Jumbo) and will see it one day. My favorite Day movies are By the Light of the Silvery Moon, On Moonlight Bay, Storm Warning, Young Man with a Horn, The Thrill of it all, That Touch of Mink, The Man Who Knew Too Much and the final Version of Monroe’s Something’s got to Give, Move over, Darling. Doris Day had an outstanding career at the boxoffice, personally I dislike the repetitiveness of some of her comedies after Pillow Talk, I wish she would have explored her dramatic talents for more variety in her pictures. But, like Streisand, she played it save most of the time. Yet, Storm Warning, Young Man with a Horn and her film for Hitch are proof that there would have been other possibilities for her. Not that I didn’t enjoy a lot of her comedies as my favorites show 🙂
Doris Day has always been my favorite star. To put it simply, she has class. After Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back, times changed and audiences wanted more open sex and harsh language in them. She understood it but it wasn’t for her. She turned down the role in The Graduate, for that reason. In my mind, while there many very good singers, Doris Day is by far the best. No one can put the feeling and emotion into a song like she can. She was grateful to be working, all her co-stars spesk well of her, she showed up for work, even with broken ribs after James Garner picked her up in The Thrill of it All) and has always remained a lady and a good mother. Something lost on a lot of people!! Notice how she always has a kind word for people, always has. Thank you Doris for sharing your acting talent, your beautiful voice and your undying devotion to your wonderful animal foundation. You are in my prayers daily. God bless.
1 MARILYN I’m a great fan of DeNiro’s acting but I watched a film recently in which the swear words came tumbling out of him non-stop as if he couldn’t help himself so that every other word was a four-letter expression throughout.
2 With the prevalence of this so-called “realism” there has thus there has been a tendency in more modern times to belittle the qualities of which Doris was an exponent in her movies with for example her along with Sandra Dee being mocked in song in the 1978 film Grease and with jokes by stand-up comics and others such as the most-quoted one “I knew Doris Day before she was a v****n”.
3 However on THIS site Doris has not been short of admirers. My back posts across the site will show that Doris Day, Deanna Durbin and Joan Crawford have long been my favorite female film stars from the classic era of movies along with Julia Roberts and Barbara Streisand in the modern era. Doris was able to play a lead part in carrying most of her almost 40 movies whereas other actresses – and you know who they are Bruce – relied to an exceptional extent on the male leads in my opinion
4 When teamed with some of the male greats of her time such as Cagney, Gable, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant Doris held her own with them. Cagney was her own personal favourite and Cary loved to tell the story of how on the set of That Touch of Mink Doris said to him “Jimmy Cagney’s my favourite actor and I hope you don’t mind that you’re my second.” Grant told her he didn’t mind at all!
5 Also In my post dated 19 Oct 2016 below on this page I have used Bruce Cogerson’s stats from the site to illustrate my belief that Doris is one on the handful of the very greatest female box office stars of all time.
6 Indeed in his page on the 25 Greatest screen legend actresses from 1950 – 2010 Bruce himself ranks Doris 5th and in his observant associated comments he too highlights her uniqueness as a box office star. I’ve tried to tell him recently he and I agree on a lot of things!
8 Finally Steve Lensman on HIS site provides an excellent video appreciation of Doris to which I’m sure Bruce would be happy to provide a link for any interested person.
7 In my opinion Doris is in terms of movie super stardom one of those FOREVER Greats who well deserves the time-worn accolade “We shall never see her like again.”
Cogerson
Just came across an article on-line that a reporter has found Doris Day’s birth certificate and she was born on April 3, 1922, and so will be 95 tomorrow. Apparently Ms. Day was never actually certain herself of her birth year. Anyway, happy birthday Doris.
Hey John….yep that story is all over the internet. Gotta be confusing to her. But on the bright side….she does not have to wait 7 years to reach the 100 club….in the blink of an eye she is down to 5 years.
Thanks for the info. Good work
Thank you jd harris.
BRUCE:
1 I am pleased that we now have a comprehensive table of DORIS DAY’S WW grosses based on the figures in the Warner Bros ledgers and including 6 global figures for movies that she made for other companies. The big surprise was seeing a WW stat for Teacher’s Pet as it was a Paramount movie and their WW figures are usually hard to locate. The average split of the 22 Day WW grosses is 70.5% domestic and 29.5 % foreign.
2 It is also most unusual to find global stats for CARY GRANT movies and the new table of 27 WW grosses on Cary’s page is greatly illuminating in terms of his overall career and the average split is 68.3% domestic and 31.7% foreign. It should be remembered though that the foreign ratio is based on a larger than normal combined overall gross for 27 movies and if the same ratio was applied across his 63 films his adjusted overall domestic gross of around $8.6 billion would become approx $12. 6 billion [a very high average of $200 mil per movie WW] globally which would have been excellent in the marketplace in which he competed.
3 Grand effort by you in also producing an extended table of 29 WW grosses for OLIVIA DeHAVILLAND and the GWTW global figure is indeed a rarity. The various reruns of that monster make its adjusted earnings so tricky to calculate that the few sources who make an effort at all will not go beyond an adjusted domestic figure for the movie – so Guns Up on this one Bruce. When GWTW is included the average split of the 29 is 61.7 %domestic/38.3% foreign and when the epic is excluded the split of the other 28 is 64.3% domestic/35.7% overseas. An added bonus for me is the Alan Ladd WW gross for the Proud Rebel.
BOB