Want to know the best Frank Capra movies? How about the worst Frank Capra movies? Curious about Frank Capra’s box office grosses or which Frank Capra movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Frank Capra 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.
Frank Capra (1897-1991) was an Italian-American film director, producer and writer. Capra was one of America’s most influential directors during the 1930s, winning three Best Director Oscars® in a five year time period…(1934-1938). His movies even created a new word… the adjective….”Capraesque”. Capraesque means…”Of or evocative of the movies of Frank Capra, often promoting the positive social effects of individual acts of courage.” So we figured if he could create brand new words…the least we could do is the give the man a UMR page.
His IMDb page shows 58 directing credits from 1921-1964. This page ranks 24 Frank Capra movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His short films (5 movies), his documentaries (14 movies, his television projects (2 movies) and most of his early movies (13 movies) were not included in the rankings. Sadly I was only able to find box office grosses for one of his movies made from 1926 to 1929.
Frank Capra 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 Frank Capra movies by the stars of his movies.
- Sort Frank Capra movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Frank Capra movies by yearly domestic box office gross rank
- Sort Frank Capra movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Frank Capra movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Frank Capra movie won.
- Sort Frank Capra 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.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Frank Capral Table
- Sixteen Frank Capra movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 66.66% of his movies listed. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Frank Capra movie grossed $139.58million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 22 Frank Capra movies are rated as good movies…or 86.66% of his movies. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) is his highest rated movie while Riding High (1950) is his lowest rated movie.
- Ten Frank Capra movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 41.66% of his movies.
- Six Frank Capra movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 25.00% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 23 Frank Capra movies scored higher that average….or 95.83 of his movies. It Happened One Night (1934) got the the highest UMR Score while For The Love of Mike (1927) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Frank Capra
1. Francesco Rosario Capra was born in Bisacquino, Sicily, a village near Palermo.
2. Frank Capra read a newspaper article about a new movie studio opening in San Francisco. Capra phoned them saying he had moved from Hollywood, and falsely implied that he had experience in the budding film industry. He got the job and immediately went to the movies to figure out how to make movies. It must have been a great movie….because he quickly became one of the most respected directors working.
3. Claudette Colbert and Frank Capra. Colbert’s 1st ever movie was 1927’s For The Love Of Mike. During the filming Colbert and Capra did not get along at all. After the completion of filming, Colbert told one and all, “I shall never make another film”. When Paramount loaned her out to film Capra’s It Happened One Night…she was not happy at all. The other star,Clark Gable, was not happy either (he had his own reasons). Then Gable and Colbert did not get along during filming. Well…..somehow all of that unhappiness resulted in the 166th best film of all-time (according to IMDb.com).
4. Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) won five major Academy Awards®: Best Picture, Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Colbert), Best Director (Frank Capra) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Riskin). Only two other movies have accomplished this Oscar® sweep….those two movies are 1975’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and 1991’s Silence of the Lambs.
5. Frank Capra directed 3 movies on AFI’s Top 100 movies: 1934’s It Happened One Night, 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and 1946’s It’s A Wonderful Life.
6. Frank Capra directed 7 movies that received a Best Picture Oscar® nominations. 1934’s It Happened One Night and 1938’s You Can’t Take It With Your won the Best Picture Oscars®.
7. Frank Capra directed 10 different actors in Oscar®-nominated performances: May Robson, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, H.B. Warner, Spring Byington, James Stewart, Claude Rains, Harry Carey and Peter Falk.
8. Frank Capra was married twice in his life and had 4 children.
9. Frank Capra even quicker facts: (a) Entertainment Weekly voted Capra the 9th Best Director of All-Time. (b) Capra hosted the 1936 and 1939. (c) His last name means goat in his native Italy. (d) Was awarded an American Film Institute Life Achievement Award.(e) Honored on a US Postage Stamp in May 2012.
10. Check out Frank Capra‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Hello Bruce,
I think Frank Capra, was one of the better director of the 30’s. I’ve seen 10 of this movies (of wich of the first seven). My favorite is “it happened one night”, but I like very much “Platinum blonde” and “arsenic and old laces”.
Hey Laurent….without a doubt he owned the 1930s. You know your comment triggered my memory….I have actually seen Platinum Blonde twice now….and it was not in my tally count….so I am at 11….and in second place in this tally count. I had to go to IMDb to look up Platinum Blonde…and the summary sounded so familiar I had to look it up. Heck here is my mini-review of that movie. Thanks for checking out my latest page.
http://letterboxd.com/cogerson/film/platinum-blonde/
I’m surprised it took you this long to do one on Frank Capra, Bruce. He was so popular especially in the 30s when he kept getting nominated for Best Director and winning three times in 4 years!
Not as prolific as other directors, just 24 films? I’ve seen 10 of those films. I have The Bitter Tea of General Yen in my collection but I can’t remember watching it. I did watch Dirigible a few months ago, not one of his best but interesting. I love looking at airships on film, I’m fascinated by them they were massive, if you stood the Hindenburg on end it would be as high as a skyscraper..
My favorite slice of Capra-corn is It’s a Wonderful Life, a film I still watch semi-regularly and usually at Xmas. Coming up close behind is It Happened One Night, which is probably Capra’s most enjoyable film, Wonderful Life can be quite depressing. Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith are highly rated classics I don’t watch as often as I should.
Arsenic and Old Lace was a black comedy I used to enjoy when I was younger but watching it recently I find some of the characters more annoying than funny, notably the two mad old ladies and their nutcase brother. (a feeling of deja vu writing this paragraph) 🙂
Lost Horizon was an interesting movie, it took ages to finish and it was an expensive flop. Capra cut 30mins out and still no one was interested. 35 years later a big budget musical remake starring Peter Finch was even more disastrous. (more deja vu).
It Happened One Night tops the UMR and Wonderful Life the critics chart, fair enough. Looking at the box office chart, wow was Mr. Deeds that popular? I’m impressed.
A nice tribute to Capra, plenty of facts and stats. Voted Up.
Hey Steve.
1. Yeah I am surprised too. I was recently looking at a list of the all-time great directors…and of the 10 they listed he was the only one that did not have a UMR page already….so I figured I needed to fix that error.
2. Everything he touched (well not Lost Horizon) turned into gold in the 1930s. Not thinking many directors have had some many successes in such a short period of time.
3. He had 24 movies after 1930….but his total would be 37 if you added in his movies from 1926-1929. I got shut out on all of those movies. Columbia did not keep great records…probably because they did not want anybody to know how successful a film was. Capra and Columbia had epic fights over how box office receipts were reported.
4. Columbia packaged It Happened One Night in block sales of 6 movies. Instead of recording sales for each individual movie…..they would get the combined total of the 6 movies and divide the total by 6. For It Happened One Night…they bundled it with 5 turkeys….the 5 turkeys did nothing…while It Happened One Night packed theaters. Columbia then reported the box office grosses for the same 6 movies as the same. I am sure Capra’s contract for bonuses when his movie reached a certain gross…had NOTHING to do with Columbia’s practices..but it really really pissed Capra off.
5. Good catch on Mr. Deeds….it was a little too high…..not sure how that number got into the table….since adding the links….it is causing some issues with the table…got my IT team trying to figure out what is causing these errors. It still was his biggest hit.
6. I have the same thoughts on Arsenic and Old Lace. I have not watched It’s A Wonderful Life…but after recently doing a page on Lionel Barrymore and Capra…the itch to watch it again…is happening.
7. Wow….another page that you do not disagree with the rankings…be still my beating heart…maybe the new calculations are more Lensman friendly…lol.
8. Tally count….Flora…13….you and me 10….Laurent 10. So combined me take down the mighty Flora…..got celebrate….when it happens so rarely.
Thanks for sharing your Capra-corn thoughts.
Actually my tally is 11….I forgot that not only have I seen Platinum Blonde….I have seen it twice….the memory is going…the memory is going…did I already say that?
New tally count….Flora 13, me 11, Steve & Laurent 10…2nd place in a classic category….proud day.
They do not make them like this anymore. Very interesting.
I agree with you 100% Jill…thanks for stopping by.
One of my favourites.
Glad you liked the page, Leonnie….thanks for stopping by.
This would be a perfect page for you to share on TCM forums, Bruce!
The highest ranking movie I have seen is Number 1: It Happened One Night
The lowest ranking movie I have seen is Number 20: Pocketful of Miracles.
The highest ranking movie I have never seen is Number 6: Lost Horizon
I have seen an unlucky number of these films: 13
My favourite movie overall is It Happened One Night.
Other top 5 favourites in no particular order:
You Can’t Take it With You
Arsenic and Old Lace
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Hole in the Head
Cheers,
Flora
Hey Flora.
1. Tally count…I am at 10…that is actually pretty close to your 13….I am happy with that total. I bet Steve and I will have a combined total of at least 14….I can smell victory…lol.
2. You might be right…this might be a good one to share on TCM…I actually have done no promoting of the page yet….I will do that probably tomorrow morning.
3. Lost Horizon is a pretty interesting movie..not sure if it is good….but it was interesting.
4. I really like three of your Top 5….It Happened One Night, Wonderful Life and Arsenic and Old Lace…the other one I enjoyed was Mr. Deeds Goes To Town…..and rounding out my Top 5 would be Mr. Smith Goes To Washington…..he should have made more movies with Stewart.
5. As always…thanks for stopping by…..oh yeah…in case you are curious…I found another classic page without the Flora touch. Mr. James Stewart….another one that I accidentally deleted the comments.
No Jimmy Stewart comment?
I will correct that as soon as I have reviewed the 1935 movie SHE on TCM which I just watched on youtube by request to see what I thought of it because I will forget details soon.
Hey Flora…..yeah not sure how I lost all the comments for two of my favorite actors….Cary Grant and James Stewart….but I managed to do it. It is so sad seeing Jimmy at 4 comments…when at one point there were over 100 comments on his page. Thanks for re-doing your comment.