Jack Lemmon Movies

Jack Lemmon in 1955's classic movie...Mister Roberts
Jack Lemmon in 1955’s classic movie…Mister Roberts

Want to know the best Jack Lemmon movies?  How about the worst Jack Lemmon movies?  Curious about Jack Lemmon’s box office grosses or which Jack Lemmon movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Jack Lemmon 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.

John Uhler “Jack” Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was a two Academy Award® winning actor. Lemmon’s film debut was a uncredited bit part in the 1949 film The Lady Takes a Sailor but he was not noticed until his official debut in 1954’s It Should Happen To You.

Over the next 45 years, Lemmon would appear in numerous classic movies. Movies like Mister Roberts, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Day of Wine and Roses, The Great Race and The China Syndrome. Jack Lemmon received 8 Oscar® nominations for acting in his career.

He won twice, once as Best Supporting Actor in 1955’s Mister Roberts and once as Best Actor for 1973’s Save The Tiger. Lemmon also received an incredible 16 Golden Globe® nominations for his movie roles. So basically for every three movies Lemmon made, he would receive one nomination…..not a bad ratio.

His IMDb page shows 96 acting credits from 1949-2000. This page will rank 53 Jack Lemmon movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and bit parts were not included in the rankings.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon 1959's Some Like It Hot.
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon 1959’s Some Like It Hot.

Jack Lemmon Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Jack Lemmon 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 Jack Lemmon movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Jack Lemmon movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Jack Lemmon movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Jack Lemmon 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 Jack Lemmon movie received.
  • Sort Jack Lemmon 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.
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in 1993's Grumpy Old Men
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in 1993’s Grumpy Old Men

Possibly Interesting Facts About Jack Lemmon.

1. Jack Lemmon was born in an elevator.

2. His father was the president of a doughnut company.

2. Jack Lemmon graduated from Harvard University in 1947.

3. Lemmon taught himself to play the piano. He appears in numerous movies playing the piano.

4. Lemmon appeared in 7 movies directed by Billy Wilder. From 1959’s Some Like It Hot to 1991’s Buddy Buddy.

5. Lemmon made 12 movies with Walter Matthau. From 1965’s The Fortune Cookie to 1998’s The Odd Couple II. To see all 12 movies….just type in Walter in the search box…and they will all pop up.

6. Other roles Lemmon turned down over the years: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? , All That Jazz, Never So Few, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Hustler.

7. Lemmon was married twice. His son Chris Lemmon, was his first child by his first wife, actress Cynthia Stone. His second wife was the actress Felicia Farr, with whom he had a daughter, Courtney and a step daughter Denise.

8. Lemmon directed one film in his lifetime…1971’s Kotch. Kotch starred his friend Walter Matthau, and earned Matthau an Oscar® nomination for Best Actor.

9. Lemmon passed away about one year after Matthua passed away. His gravestone simply reads “JACK LEMMON in”

10. Check out Jack Lemmon‘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 Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press. 

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74 thoughts on “Jack Lemmon Movies”

  1. Awesome Movie Page! I love Jack Lemmon as an actor. I just saw Irma La Douce. But my favorites would be a tie between Some Like It Hot and Days of Wine and Roses. Some Like It Hot is the premiere cross-dressing flick and is so funny. Tony Curtis is amazing in it as well. Days of Wine and Roses is one the most convincing heartbreakingly accurate portrayals of anyone dealing with addiction. I wanted to slap him and kiss him all at once. Wonderful page!

    Reply

    2. Thanks for the compliment Alecia it is greatly appreciated. All three of the movies you mentioned were very highly rated. I agree Days of Wine and Roses is very convincing ….when I first saw the movie, I was shocked when Lee Remick became the bigger addict…as I did not see that one coming.

      Curtis and Lemmon made a great team…they would later make The Great Race together….which was another huge hit. Thanks for checking out my Jack Lemmon movie page and leaving a comment.

      Reply

  2. An excellent actor, both in comedy and in drama. And from everything I’ve heard about him, he seems to be one of the nicest guys ever you’d ever meet. I read one anecdote where he was asked about his Mr. Nice-Guy reputation and why he was always so amiable and he answered “Because there’s no reason not to be”.

    Lemmon made James Cagney laugh so much during the filming of “Mr. Roberts” that Cagney couldn’t get though the few scenes they had together. The scene where they first meet took over a dozen takes because Cagney kept breaking up laughing.

    Great star. Great movie page.

    Rob

    Reply

    1. Thanks for checking out Mt Lemmon movie page. That is great to hear about his great outlook on being nice as well as the behind the scenes of MIster Roberts. As always your comentS Rob, are greatly appreciateted

      Reply

  3. Another excellent movie page Cogerson, keep em comin’ mon ami.

    Jack Lemmon good actor, nominated 8 times and winning twice? wow! And I didn’t know he made that many films with Walter Matthau.

    Some Like it Hot, definitely my favourite of his films and one of my favourite comedies too. (Btw I’ve updated my top 50 movies list to top 60, it won’t be long before it’s a top 70).

    Of the 52 films you’ve listed I’ve only seen 14. The Apartment and Mister Roberts are classics but I’m not too fond of the grumpy old men films.

    I’ll recommend Glengarry Glen Ross because I don’t think many people have seen this, not just for Lemmon but for an amazing ensemble of acting talent – Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey. Well worth a watch.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve, thanks for stopping by and voting on the poll. Lemmon’s 8 Oscar noms are impressive….but how about the 16 Golden Globe noms….and if you look at his tv work…he was pretty much nominated every year he was an actor..

      Only 14 ? we are both trailing Flora…and we thought we were movie buffs….lol. When I was doing the research on this hub….I was shocked that Lemmon got no award recognition for Glengarry Glen Ross not even a Golden Globe….probably his last great role….as always thanks for your comments.

      Reply

      1. Jack’s back! (bursts into tears) The cruel thing is they don’t tell you what was wrong with it Conanson. It’s all automated and that isn’t a good thing.

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        1. Yep Steve after 5 days Jack has returned, refreshed and better than ever….lol. Let the frustration start to end. Thanks for checking back on Jack.

          Reply

  4. Yes, as a western it is not one of my favourites of Jack’s I am a Ford fan and I have indeed seen Cowboy more than once. 🙂 Interesting bit of information about that: Usually films are filmed out of sequence and instead focuses on similar times of day or sets for the order. But Jack couldn’t ride a horse and his character couldn’t ride one either, so this movie was shot in sequence to capture the natural learning curve of both Jack and his character.

    Just for that, I will have to list the movies I have seen in their movie order. To make it less confusing I will list them all, even if I have mentioned them before. But just the titles this time

    Some like It Hot

    Mister Roberts

    The Apartment

    The Odd Couple

    The Great Race

    The China Syndrome

    Days of Wine and Roses

    Grumpy Old Men

    Under the Yum Yum Tree

    How to Murder Your Wife

    The Front Page

    Grumpier Old Men

    Bell Book and Candle

    The Fortune Cookie

    It Should Happen to You

    The Wackiest Ship in the army

    My Sister Eileen

    Glengarry Glen Ross

    Cowboy

    It Happened to Jane

    You Can’t Run Away From It

    My Fellow Americans

    Fire Down Below

    The Prisoner of Second Avenue

    Out to sea

    The Grass Harp

    I see by rewriting these out I’ve actually seen six made before I was born. For some reason I had The China Syndrome was made after I was born-I think I must have thought it was made the same year I was born. Oh, well.

    So a recalculation: I’ve seen 20 films made before I was born for 64% of Jack’s films-so the difference between what I’ve seen of Lemmon’s films and Garner’s films is much bigger.

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora, I figured you would have seen Cowboy….funny Lemmon never figured out how to ride horses…I bet Robert Redford is glad of that fact…..makes you wonder what would have happened to Redford if Lemmon would have played the Sundance Kid.

      The longer I do movie pages….the more I am realizing that doing the older actors is more fun to try and find the information….all the younger actors…have all the information on many different websites….so there is no challenge….but the older actors….that is sometimes very hard to find…so I like doing the older actors ….BUT numerous people started to voice opinions that I was doing too many people that were lacking pulses….but I think my mom would be a great tie-breaker….which on this poll she told me she tried to vote for all three no pulse people…lol…..thanks for the suggestion….and it does look like Sidney or Robert will be the next movie page.

      Reply

      1. Another excellent movie page Cogerson, keep em comin’ mon ami.

        Jack Lemmon good actor, nominated 8 times and winning twice? wow! And I didn’t know he made that many films with Walter Matthau.

        Some Like it Hot, definitely my favourite of his films and one of my favourite comedies too. (Btw I’ve updated my top 50 movies list to top 60, it won’t be long before it’s a top 70).

        Of the 52 films you’ve listed I’ve only seen 14. The Apartment and Mister Roberts are classics but I’m not too fond of the grumpy old men films.

        I’ll recommend Glengarry Glen Ross because I don’t think many people have seen this, not just for Lemmon but for an amazing ensemble of acting talent – Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey. Well worth a watch.

        Reply

      2. Well, if you focus on actors from the golden age of Hollywood who are still alive, you satisfy both types of your readers at the same time-those who love the studio system (like me), and those who complain about dead people being featured a lot (whoever they are)

        Reply

        1. Good points Flora…I know Sidney Poitier will be done soon….my mother-in-law has actually been requesting him for months now…..maybe Sidney will be next…as he is tied with Deniro currently in the poll.

          Reply

  5. Nice job, I have always thought Mister Roberts was one of the best movies ever, I have never thought Some Like it Hot was very funny, so I always shake my head when I read that it is the supposed to be the best comedy of all-time. Another movie of his that I liked was Dad and Out to Sea, I really like Matthau and Lemmon movies.

    Reply

    1. Hey hinton1966….I appreciate the comments….I agree 100% with you…Mister Roberts is in my Top 50 as well….I need to post my personal Top 50….like Steve Lensman does on his profile…but Mister Roberts and The Great Escape from my last hub…would be on that list…I also agree with you about Some Like It Hot…it is a good movie…but not all that funny at least not anymore….I am sure in 1959 it was fresh and original….thanks for reading about Jack Lemmon.

      Reply

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