Want to know the best Esther Williams movies? How about the worst Esther Williams movies? Curious about Esther Williams box office grosses or which Esther Williams movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Esther Williams movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Esther Williams (1921-2013) was an American competitive swimmer who become one of the most popular actresses working in the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1942 and 1953 she appeared in an incredible 17 $100 million (adjusted gross) box office hits. Esther Williams’ IMDb page shows 31 acting credits from 1942-1963. This page will rank 24 Esther Williams movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her television appearances and short films were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: Dan should be a happy camper….not only is this Esther Williams page one of his requests….but the next two current UMR pages will also be Dan requests. So Dan hits the trifecta….make sure you save that ticket. Since Esther Williams spent most of her career at MGM we were able to find not only her domestic box office grosses but her worldwide box office grosses. Gotta admit before putting this page together my basic knowledge of Esther Williams (I have only seen one of her movies) was….”she was the swimming lady”. After putting this page together and seeing her phenomenal box office numbers…now my thought is “goodness gracious movie audiences back in the 1940s and 1950s loved musical swimming movies”.
Esther Williams Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Esther Williams 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 Esther Williams movies by co-stars of her movies and by by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Sort Esther Williams movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Esther Williams movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Esther Williams movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Esther Williams 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 how many Oscar® wins each Esther Williams movie received.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Esther Williams Table
- Seventeen Esther Williams movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 70.83% of her movies listed.
- An average Esther Williams movie grossed $146.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 12 of Esther Williams’s movies are rated as good movies…or 50.00% of her movies. Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) is her highest rated movie while Magic Fountain (1963) is her lowest rated movie.
- Four Esther Williams movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 16.66% of her movies.
- One Esther Williams movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 4.16% of her movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 20 Esther Williams movie scored higher that average….or 83.33% of her movies. Bathing Beauty (1944) got the the highest UMR Score while Magic Fountain (1963) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Esther Williams
1. Esther Jane Williams was born in Inglewood, California, on August 8, 1921.
2. After breaking many swimming records Esther Williams was a strong contender for an Olympic Gold Medal in the 1940 Summer Olympics. When the outbreak of World War II ended that dream….she joined Billy Rose’s Aquacade. While performing at the Aquacade she was spotted by MGM scouts and signed to a MGM contract.
3. One of the clauses in Esther Williams’ MGM contract was it would be 9 months before she appeared on camera…. to allow for acting, singing, dancing, and diction lessons. Her thoughts on this: “If it took nine months for a baby to be born, I figured my ‘birth’ from Esther Williams the swimmer to Esther Williams the movie actress would not be much different.”
4. Esther Williams was not nominated for any Oscars® or Golden Globes®. She did receive the Golden Globe® for World’s Favorite Actress in 1952.
5. Esther Williams’ movie career played a major role in the promotion of competitive and synchronized swimming. It became an Olympic sport at the 1984 Olympics.
6. One tough lady. (1) Esther Williams broke her neck filming a 50 foot dive off a tower during a climactic musical number for 1952’s Million Dollar Mermaid and was in a body cast for seven months. Other swimming issues: (2) Her plaid flannel swimsuit in 1945’sThrill of a Romance was so heavy that she was dragged to the bottom of the pool, and had to unzip the suit, swimming naked to the edge of the pool to avoid drowning. (3) In another movie she nearly drowned after not being able to find the trap door in the ceiling of a tank. The walls and ceiling were painted black and the trap door blended in. Williams was pulled out only because a member of the crew realized the door was not opening. (4) Her many hours spent submerged in a studio tank resulted in ruptured eardrums numerous times.
7. Esther Williams nickname was America’s Mermaid. Her MGM nickname was Million Dollar Mermaid…probably due to the massive success her movies achieved.
8. Esther Williams was married four times….and had 3 children.
9. Esther Williams’ cumulative box office totals: Adjusted domestic box office: $3.41 billion. Adjusted worldwide box office: $5.38 billion.
10. Check out Esther Williams‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
10A. For Laurent. Some France box office information: 1944’s Bathing Beauty was one of the most popular movies of 1946 in France with admissions of 5,438,665.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
I have today made one of my periodic visits to this page and notice in paragraph1reference in the Possibly Interesting THINGS section to 1942’s Mrs Miniver starring Greer Garson?
Hey Bob….that has been fixed. Thanks for the catch. Kept that information (just for you)…..and added in our chronological table. Hope you had a good weekend.
HI BRUCE : I breathe again as I thought I had missed something- ie that you had been combing the net looking for even more Split-type love for Mr Gimme More and instead had come across an obscure cameo of Esther’s, which you had forgotten to include in the tables
Indeed MGM’s Mrs Miniver was made in 1942 and Esther made her debut at MGM that year and was immediately placed in two shorts and a small role in Andy Hardy’s Double Life and the following year went into another supporting role in A Guy Named Joel. Therefore it was not inconceivable that she would be stuck into a walk-on part in Greer’s Miniver
By the way I think it’s possibly a bit disproportionate to compare Brando’s Superman Returns with Brucie’s Split ‘appearance’ as you did in a previous post. Marlon had not just a cameo in SR but did a voice-over throughout the movie too and his name was extensively used to promote the movie, a key criterion for Cogerson grosses love. Conversely, I never realized Mr Moore was in Split – even after I had seen it!
In fact are you sure you haven’t imagined it? John McCormack sings a lovely song that captures well how the imagination can play tricks with us when somebody that we long to see is not actually there-
Sometimes between long shadows on the grass
The little truant waves of sunlight pass.
My eyes grow dim with tenderness the while,
Thinking I see thee. Thinking I see thee SMILE!
And sometimes in the twilight gloom apart
The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart.
From my fond lips the eager letters fall.
Thinking I hear thee. Thinking I hear thee CALL!
HI BRUCE
1 I have now finished my Esther Williams exercise. You will recall that I drew your attention to the fact that her big hit On an Island with You was missing from Esther’s Cogerson page.
2 I now observe that you reckon that Esther lived until she was 109. Is that a mispring or was it really so?
Hey Bob….not sure what is going on with On An Island With You….efforting on getting that one in the correct spot on the table. As for the age…….I just took away 17 years away from her….hope you are happy now…..lol. Should have the Williams table correct in about 3 more updates of the database. Good eye…as always.
Hey Bob…..this page….should be 100% updated.
1 BRUCE Thanks for feedback on my Bassett post and the Roger Rabbit explanation. Knowing you as I do it wouldn’t have surprised me if the young 20 something Bruce had seen Angela in the audience for Rabbit R and the generous seasoned statistician had decided to give her credit for its grosses !!
2 Nice that you liked Mr M’s final swansong. I gather that the actual set though was not a happy one as DeNiro and Mr M virtually took over the direction of the movie and gave the director much grief. Ed Norton said in an interview that he was just happy to be working with the two acting Legends so he kept his head down and let them all get on with it.
3 W o C’s workmates can be reassured that I am not a cheavunist
as your Esther Williams page is one of my favorites and I regularly re-read it. However as the tagline on the posters for Rear Window said about Jimmy’s voyeur character “He looked too often and saw too much,” and now I cannot reconcile my own database updates with your update of Esther’s page –
(1) The table lists a 24th entry but it says immediately below that there are only 23 and entry No 8 appears to be missing
(2) However if I multiply your ready reckoner average of 142.1 by 23 I get $3268.3 and if I multiply the same figure by 4 I get $3410.4 whereas when I add up the actual figures in the table I come up with $3332 .9.
4 Most of my calculations are done manually and I find your figures are usually more reliable in the end so I’d be grateful if when you get a moment you’d check matters out and give me your verdict
BRUCE
In para 3(2) of my previous post I should have said “multiply the same figure by 24 I get $3410.4”.
Sorry for typing error. Errors in the post when it hits your site are actually easier to spot than when they are originally in the comment box.before transmission. BOB
Hey Bob….got it. Let me know if you need in other explanations on this Esther Williams page.
Hey Bob
1. No….there was no Angela Bassett padding here…..just a mistake…..but I can see why you might have thought that…..lol.
2. Interesting about the behind the scenes stories of The Score….your comment motivated me to finally listen to the Frank Oz commentary on the movie…I wonder if that conflict will come out in the commentary. It was done the weekend The Score was released…so Oz was probably not going to see DeNiro or Brando anytime soon.
3. One of the glitches of the new ranking…is sometimes it duplicates the ranking number…I just hit the update Esther Williams button….and the number of movies is back down to 23….at least the ranking column…as they were always only 23 movies.
4. I think the ready reckoner section was a little off….but it is fixed now.
Glad you like this Esther Williams page so much.
Hi Bob, thanks for checking out my Hollywood mermaid video, what was that famous quote? “Wet she’s a star, dry she ain’t”. A bit harsh but probably true.
I remember reading Williams caused a bit of a ruckus over the compilation movie That’s Entertainment ! which was a surprise hit back in the 1970s, she tried to sue the studio for what she saw as unauthorized usage of footage from her films even though it was MGM that produced those films.
She had a small but eyecatching role in A Guy Named Joe and made quite a splash in Ziegfeld Follies, geddit? ‘splash’? oh why do I bother…
I saw ‘Raw Mind in Eden’ when I sneaked a peak at Bruce’s charts a few days ago but didn’t have the heart to say anything. It’ll probably end up on Bruce’s Jeff Chandler page too if he gets round to doing one on him. 🙂
I’d simply love to see a Cogerson page and a Lensman video on Jeff Chandler who was one of my favourite actors albeit as a ‘matinee idol’ in the 1950s. The AKA will probably be retained as the Cogerson site is a law unto itself even going as far as recasting old classics – for example retrospectively signing up Angela Lansbury as Delilah to replace Hedy Lamarr in the Vic Mature/DeMille blockbuster
I will add Mr. Chandler to the request list….though he might already be on there.
STEVE:
1 In some ways Esther reminds me of Betty Grable in that many of her movies had a similarity with each other but nonetheless she churned out a string of commercial hits of which she was the mainstay.
2 Also like Grable, Esther was very easy on the eye and the kind of movie that M-s Williams made normally well demonstrated that as do your posters. One has only to look at your reproductions for Easy to Love, On an Island with You, This Time for Keeps, Skirts Ahoy and The Thrill of a Romance to see what I mean. I must also mention again that wonderful poster from Fiesta which first caught my eye in your Cyd Charisse video; and I was quite impressed with the one for Raw Wind in Eden which was one of Esther failed attempts to turn to post-musicals drama.*** I liked the stills from Andy Hardy’s Double Life, Easy to Love and Dangerous when Wet and the super closing solo of Esther in swimsuit.
3 You and Bruce agree on 4 of the Top 5 Esther Williams movies but Ziegfeld Follies and a Guy Named Joe that were not really ‘Esther Williams’ films. However overall I regard the video as a 9.5/10
***I am surprised that you didn’t use the highly-inventive Cogerson AKA for this one of Raw Mind in Eden to which I drew attention some 6 months ago but which is still beloved by this site !!
Hey Bob…good comparison between Williams and Grable. Yeah….how did the classic Raw Mind in Eden not make his video….I want my money back…lol.