Want to know the best Joel Hirschhorn movies? How about the worst Joel Hirschhorn movies? Curious about Joel Hirschhorn box office grosses or which Joel Hirschhorn movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Joel Hirschhorn 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.
Joel Hirschhorn (1937-2005) was a two-time Oscar® winning American singer, composer and writer. Hirschhorn’s songs sold more than 90 million records. Various artists including Elvis Presley, recorded his songs…and Hollywood is still using his work in current movies. His IMDb page shows over 80 credits from 1966-2017. This page will rank Joel Hirschhorn movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.
Drivel Part 1: Why a Joel Hirschhorn UMR page? Well….his book….Rating the Movie Stars…is one of the most influential books on this website. Published in 1983, it is a book I have been referencing for almost 40 years. In that book, Hirschhorn, rated every movie that a movie star appeared in during their career. Sometime in 2010, for the millionth time I was looking at his book when I wondered; had he updated his ratings lately? A quick internet check provided the sad news that Mr. Hirchhorn had passed away in 2005. About a month later, I thought I could update the ratings….tunrs out those were the first baby steps of UMR.
Drivel Part 2: This page is from a request from Bob. Bob has been requesting a Joel Hirschhorn page for almost 2 years now. Constantly filling up our request page…with Hirschhorn requests….day after day. Well Bob….finally your Hirsch page is here….hope it was worth the wait…lol.
Joel Hirschhorn Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Joel Hirschhorn 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 Joel Hirschhorn movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn 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 Joel Hirschhorn movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Joel Hirschhorn movie won.
- Sort Joel Hirschhorn 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 Joel Hirschhorn Table
- Five Joel Hirschhorn movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 22.72% of his movies listed. The Towering Inferno (1974) was his biggest box office hit when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average Joel Hirschhorn movie grosses $91.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 14 Joel Hirschhorn movies are rated as good movies…or 46.80% of his movies. The Ice Storm (1997) is his highest rated movie while The Fat Spy (1969) was his lowest rated movie.
- Three Joel Hirschhorn movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 13.63% of his movies.
- Two Joel Hirschhorn movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 9.09% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 8 Joel Hirschhorn movies scored higher than that average….or 36.36% of his movies. The Towering Inferno (1974) got the the highest UMR Score while The Fat Spy (1969) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Joel Hirschhorn
1. Joel Hirschhorn was born in Bronx, New York in 1937.
2. After graduating from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts, he became a regular performer on New York’s nightclub circuit, both as a solo singer and as a member of the rock & roll band, The Highlighters.
3. During the mid-1960s, Hirschhorn branched out into writing film soundtracks. The results were horrible. 1969’s The Fat Spy is considered to be one of the worst movies ever made.
4. Joel Hirschhorn’s The Fat Spy (1969) is the 11th worst movie in our UMR 36,000 plus movie database.
5. Joel Hirschhorn worked with songwriting partner Al Kasha from the 1960s until the late 1990s.
6. Joel Hirschhorn (and Al Kasha) were nominated for four Oscars® and four Golden Globes®. They won Oscars® for 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure and 1974’s The Towering Inferno. They received two Oscar® nominations for 1977’s Pete’s Dragon.
7. Joel Hirschhorn and Al Kasha also worked together on Broadway musicals, receiving Tony Award® for Best Original Score nominations for both Copperfield and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
8. Joel Hirschhorn the book author. Besides his book RatingThe Movie Stars, Hirschhorn also wrote 2001’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Songwriting.
9. *Joel Hirschhorn’s Bette Davis story: “Star quality is difficult to define, but my personal definition was formed after a lunch with Bette Davis. At the time (1972), Davis was to appear in the musical “Copperfield,” which I had co-written with Al Kasha. Al and I went to the Bel Air Hotel to play the score for her. She was a petite, almost delicated woman, but there was nothing timid about her direct gaze, and authoritative speaking voice. We need a piano and the empty dining room didn’t have one, so she told a work-man, “We must have a piano immediately.” She wasn’t rude, but her firmness brooked no argument. The piano materialized in seconds. She applauded after we performed the songs, and I modestly ventured that “We had a lot of help from Dickens.” She responded, “Yes, but look what you did with him!” Her conviction made me feel we were on par with Dickens, that he was lucky to have us as collaborators! She had wit, intelligence, force, charm, vulerability – but most of all, a highly charge belief in herself, in her ability to dominate. The performer who has this belief and this assured, takeover quality can make film vehicles timeless.”
10. Check out Joel Hirschhorn’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.
*Bette Davis story comes from Hirschhorn’s Rating The Movie Stars book.
Joel shows up at about 45 seconds.
I’m told that every American feels that it is his/her right to be free to make as much money as possible [legitimately of course] and if that is correct I am sure Hirsch [who I feel was a deeply law-abiding guy] wouldn’t have wanted to denyeven Marlon his constitutional rights; but maybe he thought that The Great Mumbler had too much “freedom”!
He could be right; but I am sure that Hirsch would not have dared to repeatedly attack the ‘excesses’ of others who were wallowing in wealth and there were and are many of them in Hollywood ; Marlon though was a soft target at the time Joel was writing his 1983 book and penning that other Brando-‘demonising’ material that The Work Horse once published on this site.
It had though all gone full circle again when Brando died in 2004: Time magazine had designated him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century on a list that included the likes of Albert Einstein, JFK, FDR and just 3 other mainstream movie stars [Monroe as a sex symbol, Chaplin as a silent comedian and Sinatra as a musician]; the AFI had ranked Brando the 4th greatest movie legend of all time; Variety listed him as one of the top 10 entertainers of the 20th century from all branches of entertainment; modern movie geniuses such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg have sung his praises; and President George W Bush publicly mourned Brando’s passing when Marlon died in 2004.
Of course Hirsch could not have know all that back in 1983 when he was treating The Great Mumbler like some kind of nincompoop. It was then impossible for Joel to see that one day once again Marlon would be “in with the in-crowd” whereas most if not all of his detractors from Joel’s time would be “out with the out crowd”.
“During his absences from the screen I used to experience great excitement at the thought of Brando returning. I would lie awake at night sometimes wondering when that would be and in what acting guise he might reappear.” – Martin Scorsese in TV interview.
Frasier has had a long running feud with his upstairs neighbour Cam Winston in the posh apartment complex where they both live. In the 2- Part “Mother Lode” [Season 9, episodes 12 and 13 aired Jan 2002] presentation of TV’s Frasier the feud comes to a head when Cam complains to the complex condo board that Frasier’s car is taking up too much room in the block’s car park; and Frasier retaliates by paying a plumber to turn off Cam’s water supply when the latter is taking a shower.
Cam counter-retaliates by draping from his balcony a massive reproduction of the national American flag which completely covers the window of Frasier’s apartment blocking his view and leaving the living room in semi-darkness.
The dispute goes before a meeting of the condo board where Cam claims to have showcased the flag as he wanted fellow patriots in the neighbourhood to share in enjoying sight of it. This attracts a round of furious applause from the gathering at the meeting.
A frustrated Frasier frantically attempts to counter with a plea to the meeting that he bought his apartment so that he could enjoy the magnificent view which Cam’s flag was now blocking. However Cam jumps up again and shouts out “NO! NO! You bought that apartment because you are FREE – you are an American!”
This extracts from the gathering another enthusiastic round of applause and Cam then leads them in a chorus of the patriotically-rousing ‘America! America!’ and Frasier wisely gives up the ghost.
I had always presumed that Joel Hirschhorn’s attacks on Brando’s movie earnings were part of the general demonisation that Hollywood unleased on Brando for a couple of decades in retaliation for his shenanigans at the 1973 Oscars.
Indeed page 57 of Joel’s 1983 book mentions the severe criticism that Brando had received from many quarters in the preceding decade so that reference illustrates clearly that Joel was fully aware the Tinsel Town had declared what Pauline Kael the film critic called “Open Season” on attacking Marlon.
However after watching a rerun of an episode of the sitcom Frasier last night it occurred to me that -whilst Joel’s frothing at the mouth about The Great Mumbler and his earnings might to an extent have been Hirsch wanting to show the Top Brass in Hollywood that he was what Richard Nixon used to call a ”Team Player – there might have been an additional reason for Joel’s animosity: Brando’s “freedom”. Part 2 of this post explains what I mean.
Joel Hirschhorn was not alone. Besides HIM there were many at the time of Superman who griped about Marlon’s generous salary; after-all it was, as revered film critic Pauline Kael has observed in great detail in a prize- winning essay on Brando, “Open Season” on Marlon for his detractors within the movie community following his shenanigans at the 1973 Oscars. He was thus at the time of the 1983 book a soft target for Hirsch and his ilk.
So Alexander Salkind [who produced Superman] when they confronted him about the perceived extravagance of the salary educated the Joel-types in the facts of business-life in Hollywood: Brando was being paid for his name-
“It was a big risk potentially trying to sell modern audiences ‘a man who could fly’ and at first we couldn’t raise the necessary finance for the movie; we were unable to arrange sufficient advance-bookings in overseas markets; and prestige actors were wary about signing-up for the main roles.
All that changed when we got Brando with for example Gene Hackman [because he was keen to appear in a Brando movie] leading the charge of fine actors now wanting to come on boar and GlennFord and Trevor Howard quickly followed Gene. Apart from Brando’s production value to the movie the size of the salary itself has gotten us loads of free publicity which more than pays for the salary. He’s a SUPER-SUPER star and you don’t get many of those, so I’ll get all of my money back in the end.”
How right he was!: Brando’s $3.7 million fee is worth $17.3 million in 2022 money and he got 11.3% of the gross on top of the salary; but the movie grossed in today’s dollars the equivalent of $1.25 BILLION worldwide. Wow! – audiences really DID “believe a man could fly”!!
A few years back The Work Horse posted for my benefit one of Joel’s rants about Brando. That article was a more general tirade against The Great Mumbler than appears on the notorious page 57 of Hirsch’s 1983 book which confined itself for the most part to Brando’s films and performances.
However the additional article did include a reference to what appears to be a strange fixation with Joel: Brando’s wealth; and page 57 of the 1983 books couldn’t resist getting the knife in -twice in fact! – about Marlon’s earnings. Here’s what page 57 has to say on the subject:
Brando in 1978’s Superman “added nothing to the picture (except a three and a half million-dollar salary to the budget)”
“Marlon Brando seems to have retired after enduring a barrage of criticism in the last decade. Either the Great Method Actor has run out of method, or he’s made enough money.”
Note there the needless sarcasm running through what one supposes should ideally be an objective analysis of Brando’s films and performances. Anyway Joel was wrong: Brando went on making movies for another 2 decades after Joel wrote that.
Initially the ravings in the 1983 book and elsewhere about Brando’s fees puzzled me because after all as I’ve said before America is always lauded as The Land of The Free and of Opportunity where the accumulation of great wealth is encouraged and people who generate it are usually admired and even idolised regardless of how they accrue it short of criminality.
Also Hollywood has always been awash with thespians who earned great riches so why was Joel fixated on Brando? For example Archibald Alec Leach [whom both The Work Horse and Joel drool over] reportedly earned in 2022 dollars the equivalent of $26.91 million for just one movie – 1959’s Operation Petticoat- at a time when salaries were very tightly controlled in Hollywood.