Want to know the best Janet Leigh movies? How about the worst Janet Leigh movies? Curious about Janet Leigh box office grosses or which Janet Leigh movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Janet Leigh 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.
Janet Leigh (1927-2004) was an Oscar®-nominated American actress. She is best remembered for her performance in 1960’s Psycho, for which she was awarded the Golden Globe® Award for Best Supporting Actress and received an Academy Award® nomination. Her IMDb page shows 86 acting credits from 1947-2005. This page will rank 48 Janet Leigh movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television roles and shorts were not included in the rankings. This page comes from a request by Mike.
Janet Leigh 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 Janet Leigh movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Janet Leigh movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Janet Leigh movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Janet Leigh 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 Janet Leigh movie received.
- Sort Janet Leigh movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Stats From The Above Janet Leigh Table
- Sixteen Janet Leigh movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 33.00% of her movies listed. Psycho (1960) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Janet Leigh movie grossed $90.90 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 26 Janet Leigh movies are rated as good movies…or 54.16% of her movies. Psycho (1960) was her highest rated movie while Night of the Lepus (1972) was her lowest rated movie.
- Eleven Janet Leigh movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 22.91% of her movies.
- One Janet Leigh movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 2.08% of her movies.
- An “a good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 31 Janet Leigh movies scored higher than that….or 64.58% of her movies. Psycho (1960) got the the highest UMR Movie Score while Night of the Lepus (1972) got the lowest UMR Movie Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Janet Leigh
1. Jeanette Helen Morrison was born in Merced, California in 1927.
2. In winter 1945, Janet Leigh was discovered by actress Norma Shearer. Shearer showed talent agent Lew Wasserman a photograph she had seen of Leigh while vacationing at Sugar Bowl, the ski resort where the girl’s parents worked. Shearer later recalled that “that smile made it the most fascinating face I had seen in years. I felt I had to show that face to somebody at the studio.
3. Janet Leigh secured a starring role in 1947’s The Romance of Rosy Ridge as soon as she reached Hollywood…despite having no previous acting experience.
4. Van Johnson was responsible for her stage name. While they were filming 1947’s The Romance of Rosy Ridge, he suggested she shorten her first name to Janet. He also thought that, since the film they were doing was a civil war drama, Lee would go well as her last name. But then he suggested she spell it Leigh. She was concerned there might a problem in being confused with Vivien Leigh; but then Van Johnson reminded her of Van Heflin. He said “there’s two Van’s and it hasn’t hurt either of us”.
5. Janet Leigh was married 4 times and had two children. Both of her daughters (Kelly & Jamie Lee) became actresses as well. Jamie Lee Curtis has been starring in movies for almost 40 years.
6. Janet Leigh made 5 movies with her third husband, Tony Curtis: 1953’s Houdini, 1954’s The Black Shield of Falworth, 1958’s The Vikings, 1958’s The Perfect Furlough and 1960’s Who Was That Lady?
7. Janet Leigh wrote four books: “There Really Was a Hollywood” (1984–an autobiography); “Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller” (1995, co-authored with Christopher Nickens); “House of Destiny” (1996–a novel); and “The Dream Factory” (2002–a novel).
8. Janet Leigh and Psycho trivia: (1) She stopped taking showers after filming Psycho…took baths for the rest of her life. (2) She only worked on the movie for three weeks. (3) One of those three weeks was filming the shower scene. (4) Hitchcock hired her because he knew audiences would be shocked to see a star of her stature killed off early in the movie.
9. Janet Leigh’s agent initially rejected Leigh’s role in 1958’s Touch of Evil due to the low salary offered without even consulting the actress. Orson Welles, anticipating this, sent a personal letter to the actress, telling her how much he looked forward to their working together. Leigh, furious, confronted her agent telling him that getting directed by Welles was more important than any paycheck.
10. Check out Janet Leigh’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
Steve’s Janet Leigh You Tube video goes very well with this page.
Want more Janet Leigh stats? How about adjusted worldwide box office grosses on 19 of her movies?
- Psycho (1960) $626,811,593.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Little Women (1949) $330,801,051.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Words and Music (1948) $259,044,716.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Pepe (1960) $227,307,390.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- That Forsyte Woman (1949) $207,309,446.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947) $154,486,854.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Harper (1966) $154,009,323.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Rogue Cop (1954) $134,800,294.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Hills of Home (1948) $131,571,067.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- If Winter Comes (1948) $110,913,500.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- The Red Danube (1949) $103,878,214.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Holiday Affair (1949) $90,802,657.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Angels in the Outfield (1951) $82,348,000.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Act of Violence (1949) $63,086,881.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Just This Once (1952) $46,264,396.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Strictly Dishonorable (1951) $43,546,574.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Fearless Fagan (1952) $41,502,527.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- It’s a Big Country (1951) $32,375,704.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
- Confidentially Connie (1953) $32,022,474.00 in adjusted worldwide box office grosses
Who has the Curtis/Leigh family bragging rights – based on UMR score?
great page, love the family list, agree with all praise of sortable tables, yea Cogerson, yea UMR, yea WoC!
Happy Thanksgiving.
Hey bob…thanks for all the kind words and turkey wishes…all are appreciated. Hope your Thanksgiving is a safe and fun one. My Black Friday shopping will be buying lots of DVDs at good prices. My favorite shopping day….DVDs, DVDs and more DVDs.
1 BRUCE As your table above illustrates Janet appeared in prestige flicks in her heyday but she was never regarded as a prominent box office star and in most of her movies she was 2nd billed or less with her roles usually subordinate to the top stars of her time such as Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Victor Mature, husband Tony and Sinatra. Indeed when my generation spoke of her in the 1950s it was usually within the context of W of Tony.
2 However I greatly welcome Janet’s page as she was prolific in her 1950s output and therefore was big part of my first decade as a movie buff. Also of course she very easy on the eye, so much so that according to an old interview with her that I watched recently she was another of those Hollywood actresses whom Howard Hughes compulsively pestered [when she was making Jet Pilot with The Duke] and in fact she claimed that Hughes drove her to a near breakdown and she had to ultimately tell him to get lost.
3 I last saw Janet in a 1975 Columbo TV episode and at 48 she still looked very lovely. Her fellow guest artist in that one was another Golden Oldie from the Hollywood classic era, 1950s B movie cowboy actor John Payne who started his career in the 1930s. My favourite Leigh films apart from Psycho of course are Scaramouche, The Naked Spur with my Jimmy, Touch of Evil with Chuck, Holiday Affair with Big Bob and The Black Shield of Falworth with then-husband Bernie
4 Some especially great stories this time in Possibly Interesting Facts and I was particularly interested in the comment about Janet being killed off early in Psycho because I vividly remember the newspapers of 1960 reporting the squabble over billing between Janet’s agent, who certainly would never have been hired by Sandra Bullock! and the agent of Vera Miles because the latter had the larger role in Psycho in terms of time on screen but Janet was the bigger star. It will be seen from posters that Hitch resolved matters by giving Vera 2nd billing after Perkins and Janet special billing and the shot of the semi-clad Janet dominates most of the Psycho posters.
Hey Bob
1. I think most of the actresses took second billing to their male stars….only the legends got top billing…and even then it was not all the time……so Leigh is among the many….rather among the few.
2. The history of the making and the long delay of the release of Jet Pilot is far more interesting than the actually movie. I always get a kick out of the fact…that if people do not know that Hughes took almost a decade to finally release the movie…..that John Wayne’s appearance is out of whack when looking at his movies….I mean he was in his early 40s when he filmed the movie (think Wayne’s The Quiet Man look) and in his early 50s (think his Rio Bravo look)…when the movie actually made it to screens.
3. I watch a lot of movies….an average 600 movies a year since 2012….two classic movies have blown me away….one is The Sundowners and the other is Scaramouche….shocked both are not mentioned more…..so I am glad to see you mention that movie. When I was attaching the Holiday Affair trailer…I thought it looked interesting….I will have to check that one out…as well as yours and Steve’s favorite Black Shield of Falworth.
4. She might have not gotten top billing in the movie…..but she and Perkins have gone done in the history books for Psycho….Miles might have the bigger part…..but her part is rarely mentioned when people talk about the movie.
Good stuff.
HI BRUCE
1 I agree with all your points in your 7.32 posts. Easy to do when they comedirect from you and not from You-know-Who !
2 One of those observations could apply to Laddie and Shane. When the latter was released in 1953 Alan looked in prime condition in the movie but the following year his features to me seemed very puffy.
3 An explanation for that could be that Shane was made in 1951 but Stevens took a long time editing it and that drove up the costs to the point that Paramount feared it would not be able to recoup them and those fears further delayed the release of the film . Therefore as Laddie is said to have had a problem with alcohol those abuses could have accelerated the ageing process in the intervening 3 years 1951-1954.
4 Certainly with a year he was gone at the age of 51 whereas grotesquely obese ole Mumbles carried on until 80 still getting million dollar offers – for example he was offered 1 million dollars for a short cameo Scare Movie 2 but fell ill and James Woods took over and the part was so small that Woods is 17th in the cast list on IMDB
5 Incidentally Van Heflin’s wife said that the only time she personally ever saw him cry was when he heard of Laddie’s premature death.
BRUCE
Sorry in my last post I said that Laddie was gone 1 year after 1954 but I meant 10 years. Could you amend the post accordingly? Many thanks BOB
Hey Bob…..currently away from my main computer…..so I can not fix your Ladd error….I will try and remember to fix that later tonight.
Hey Bob….I did not know Shane was on the shelf that long. That would explain Ladd’s changing appearance which was 3 years versus the one year one would expect.
Brando in a Scary Movie? That would have been interesting. I bet Brando would have been billed higher than 17th. Interesting about Van Heflin and Ladd’s passing. Lots of good trivia nuggets in this comment.
Another epic page. Love the family Top 10. The one stop shop for Janet Leigh fans.
Hey SteinHOF….I liked how this page turned out….I figure a Janet Leigh page will really enjoy this page….glad you like our Family Top 10…..looks like Daddy Tony is the winner there. Good to hear from you.
Hi, Bruce.
Edit note: At the top of the page, you have the name Kim Novak listed once in the first paragraph.
I have seen 26 Janet Leigh films.
The highest rated film I have seen is Psycho.
The highest rated film I have not seen is Pete Kelly’s Blues.
The lowest rated film I have seen is One is a Lonely Number.
My favourite Janet Leigh movies are:
Psycho
Touch of Evil
The Manchurian Candidate
Little Women
The Naked Spur
Hey Flora
1. Thanks for the heads up on Kim Novak sneaking into this page…..she has been asked to leave and replaced with Janet Leigh….lol.
2. 26 tops everybody….Steve came in at 14…..to my 12. Just the three of us sharing tally counts….just like the old days.
3. I have not see Pete Kelly’s Blues either.
4. I have seen 4 of your Top 5. I have not seen her version of Little Women. I have seen two or three of the other versions…so seeing this one has not been high on my list of movies to watch.
5. Psycho, Touch of Evil and The Manchurian Candidate…are her Big 3 movies…..and I enjoy all of them.
As always…thanks for sharing your thoughts on Janet Leigh.
I always like how you can click on different aspects to change the order by reviews, box office, etc. I’ve really come to appreciate Janet Leigh over the years, too. A bit of the underdog amongst all the box office divas!
Hey Richard…we love the sort button too. Our old web provider did away with their sortable tables…..which is why they are our “old” web provider. Her Top 3 when sorting by reviews…is pretty impressive….!. Psycho 2. Manchurian Candidate and 3. Touch of Evil. Thanks for the feedback.
Gotcha. I’ve really come to realize that when you compare an actor’s $$$ “hits” versus the films they are remembered for…your sort button makes it very clear that the list becomes very different! That was immediately apparent when comparing Janet’s films.
Our ranking system combines box office, reviews and awards…..but realizing people might not care about ranking system…we knew we had to have a way for people to rank the movies the way they wanted. So by sorting by box office, reviews, awards and UMR score….you actually get 4 different lists….I play with those sort buttons all the time. You are right….Janet Leigh’s movies look very different everytime you sort the movies. Thanks for an excellent comment.