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.
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
I’m very, very glad to say.
THE 25 BEST MOVIE CRITICS OF ALL TIME
[SOURCE: Matt Barone COMPLEX site 8 Feb 2013]
1/Andre Bazin
2/Roger Ebert – considered the best known one. See *** below
3/Andrew Saris
4/Pauline Kael-resident with New Yorker magazine 1968-1991
5/J Hoberman
6/Johnathan Rosenbaum
7/David Denby
8/Monhola Dargis
9/Francois Truffaut – also master film maker
10/Anthony Lane
***As The Work Horse was actually the first to inform me Roger was a great Brando admirer. For example- “He was the most influential actor in the history of the movies. He was instrumental in the success of some of the greatest films of all time. He was a poet, but in all the seasons of his life, he was unmistakably, defiantly, brilliantly Marlon Brando. His performances broke through some kind of psychic barrier, freeing actors of his and later generations to tap emotions that most earlier actors were unable or willing to reveal. [In later years Jack Nicholson was to agree -“He gave us our freedom. When he died we all moved up one” ]. A recent Premiere magazine poll named Brando’s Don Corleone, from Francis Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972) as the single most memorable character in movie history” [Move aside McClane – Christmas is over!
11/James Agee
12/A O Scott
13/Janet Maslin
14/Manny Farber
15/Lisa Schwartzbaum
16/Dilys Powell-English film critic. Her admired main legacy, the book The Golden Screen: 50 Years at the Films published 1989 by Pavilion Books]
17/Philip French
18/Vincent Canby
19/Dana Stevens
20/Glenn Kenny
21/Ted McCarthy
22/Mike D’Angelo
23/Wesley Morris
24/Kim Newman
25/David Edelstein.
“Nobody cared for Desiree or Brando’s portrayal of Napoleon and he was a liability to the over-produced Guys and Dolls.” Joel Hirschhorn writing on page 57 of his 1983 book “Rating the Movie Stars”
1/“Brando’s performance as Napoleon is one of the most underrated of a historical figure in Hollywood’s history.” Countered Lord Olivier. 2/Despite Frank being a renowned professional singer “Somehow Brando managed to overshadow Sinatra.” in Guys and Dolls. [Renowned film historian and author David Shipman in his 1974 book The 4 Great Movie Makers [Brando, Chaplin, Hitchcock and Olivier]
FACTUAL POSITION
DESIREE [1954]
Production budget adjusted for inflation: approx $23 million.
Cogerson inflation-adjusted domestic gross: almost $255 million
GUYS AND DOLLS [1955]
Production budget adjusted for inflation: around $53 million
Cogerson inflation-adjusted domestic gross around $325 million.
Combined budget for the two movies $76 million
Combined Cogerson domestic gross $580 million
Excess of combined gross over total budget for the two movies: $504 million
HELP REQUIRED:
1/Definition of the “Nobody” to whom Joel Hirschhorn was referring. Bad word of mouth among the general public usually sinks a movie at the box office.
2/An explanation of how the top-billed, then red-hot star of a multi-million dollar profitable movie was a “liability” [“Guys and Dolls is the biggest money maker of 1956.” – Variety.]
It seems from the following extract from the United Kingdom press’ obituary on Joel Hirschhorn at the time of his death in 2005 that, to put it mildly, not everyone is aware of the pearls of wisdom that Joel imparts about movies!
“Joel Hirschhorn is probably best known as the songwriter who shared Academy Awards with Al Kasha for theme songs in two catastrophe-oriented films, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
Born in the New York’s Bronx, Hirschhorn graduated from High School for the Performing Arts and attended Hunter College. He then worked as a nightclub singer and pianist and performed in the rock band the Highlighters before establishing himself as a songwriter.
In 1985, Hirschhorn married the documentary film-maker Jennifer Carter, who specialised in real-life adventures. She was the first woman to dive to the wreck of the Titanic and her findings were displayed in museums.
In addition to his wife of 20 years, Hirschhorn is survived by her two sons, his mother, his sister and a grandson.”
Joel Hirschhorn and The Slums of Beverly Hills – even Dan in his finest form could not have fashioned a more appropriate link. I had forgotten about Hirsch being involved with the soundtrack of ‘Slums’. In my own databases I list a movie under only the lead partner where there is one and I had ‘Slums’ filed under Al Kasha.
As it is I am reminded of a general election campaign over here when a sitting Minister of the incumbent Conservative Government got up in public to make a campaign speech and didn’t notice that a garbage truck was parked in the background. The next day a newspaper supporting the Labour Party Opposition reported the speech with the headline “Minister talks garbage!”
It is worth pointing out that in the credits for ‘Slums’, and Freaky Friday, The Master is listed as Joel Hirschorn with just one small ‘h’? Maybe producers of those two flicks thought ‘Hirschhorn’ was too pretentious.
Some movie folk adds letters to their names so that they will be elongated in the credits. Others don’t need to get up to such tricks to have their names noticed – just ‘Elvis’ and ‘Asta’ were always enough; and there has never been a Marrlon Branndo; though ‘Loy’ could have done with a bit of lengthening!
I meant to say in my previous post that we have to be careful in our comments, to not by mistake link celebs with controversial/negative references or occurrences unless it’s our actual intention to be critical or disarranging.
I recall for example that, when I first saw WH credit Hirsch with 1976’s Freaky Friday, my thought-association process went into overdrive and I immediately associated Joel with the horror franchise Friday 13th and as I used to confuse that series with A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, a link between Hirsch and Freddie Krueger passed quickly through my mind. Politicians in particular are always alert for such traps. For example-
1/I remember well the 1966 British general election when Conservative Leader of the Opposition Edward Heath [later Prime Minister in a 19790 general election] cancelled an election rally that he was scheduled to hold at a certain junction in London. Heath was regarded as a [albeit moderate] ‘right-wing’ politician but before he was about to set up his stall he noticed that the sign at the junction said “Go Left”!
2/When I was in the Northern Ireland Civil Service my job was to pay funds for the construction of children’s playgrounds and the equipping of them with slides, swings etc. When the playground was ready for opening the practice was for a Government Minister to come along and perform the opening ceremony so that the politicians could get the credit for making the money available. My Department’s Minister duly did that on one occasion and the gathering photographers suggested that he pose with one foot on a slide and he initially obliged. Then almost immediately he took his foot off like a scaled cat and said to the reporters/photographers. “Hey fellas. You don’t get me to fall for that one. In tomorrow’s newspapers those of you that don’t support my party will quip “Government on the slide!”
But back to how WH’s mention of Freaky Friday and Teach’s linking Joel to slums on this page can immediately forge a thought-association oblique link between Joel and Freddie: as the old cliché goes “You couldn’t make it Up!”
Hey Bob….great breakdown on Mr. Kasha. I have reached out to him a few times on social media….but he has never responded. Maybe one day he will get a page. His music credits are good (heck two Oscar wins)….but the rest is pretty average when compared to other music greats that do not have a page yet. Good stuff as always.
HI BRUCE: Al is now 82. By coincidence he was born the same years as Joel – 1937. Thanks for your feedback and here are some further thoughts.
1/I agree a lot of Kasha’s movies are “pretty average”. However as I’ve mentioned before, after Pacino became an overnight sensation in 1972’s Godpop a former college chum of his said in an interview: “At school we called him Little Al – he’s Big Al now!” If Al Kasha was asked about his status in the years before and after he teamed up with Joel, Kasha might paraphrase in relation to his own career those words of Pacino’s old school chum and Kasha might conclude that he warranted a Cogerson page as part of ‘Team Hirsch’. Gods are indivisible – in The Bible we have The Father, Son and Holy Ghost”!
“Holy Father, Holy Son,
Holy Spirit: three we name thee,
though in essence only one;
undivided God we claim thee,
and adoring bend the knee
while we own the mystery.
2/ Regarding The Great Man Himself, I have to confess that when you first imposed Hirsch on us viewers I saw Joel as just a guy who wrote misleading profiles of movie stars and who had an addiction to saying unpleasant subjective and prejudiced, rather than fair and impartial, things about them. You get them in that profession: In the 1963 movie Critic’s Choice theatrical critic Bob Hope as the caustic Parker Ballantine couldn’t restrain himself from writing a negative review of even his own wife, Lucille Ball’s, play – almost causing a divorce!
3/However I have since come to realise that Hirsch has had a commendably diverse connection with the entertainment business overall: first in the early days he was a rock singer and stand-up night club entertainer and since then he has written books, dabbled in efforts to be a movie critic, won an Oscar for music, sold bucketloads of records, has been involved with Broadway productions, and was theatre critic for Variety at the time of his rather sad premature death at 68 in 2005.
4/Therefore In the round Hirsch should probably be regarded as a celebrated professional success especially if one considers that in partnership with Big Al he has sold 90 million records, and if one sets aside some of the crazy things he says in his 1983 book. After all certain of his observations in the 1983 book are reasonable enough and it is possible that when he was writing some of his wild stuff in the 1983 book he was doing so in tandem with preparing his later-published 2001 book ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Song Writing’ and he occasionally mixed the two up. Also as in his younger days he looked a bit like YOU, we viewers should probably regard Joel in the kindest light possible.
5//Anyway despite Joel displaying diverse talents I have been unable to find any reference to a desire by him to take up movie acting himself. Maybe he was content to leave THAT to the professionals in the field such as, umm? – well take Marlon Brando for instance.
Joel Hirschhorn’s Oscar winning songwriting partner Al Kasha relocated to Los Angeles two years later, working for Clive Davis at CBS’s Cinema Center Films for a year before accepting the presidency of National General Corporation’s music division.
After National General went belly-up in 1971, Kasha returned to songwriting, establishing a long-running collaboration with Joel Hirschhorn. The partnership soon yielded huge dividends when their song “The Morning After” was featured in The Poseidon Adventure, the Hollywood blockbuster about a luxury liner capsized by a giant wave. Recorded by Maureen McGovern, “The Morning After” proved a major pop hit, and in 1973 won its authors an Academy Award. Hirschhorn and Kasha repeated the trick two years later with “We May Never Love Like This Again,” their Oscar-winning theme to The Towering Inferno, an all-star feature spotlighting a high-rise engulfed in flames.
The duo also earned Oscar nominations in 1977 for their score to the animated Pete’s Dragon, with singer Helen Reddy’s version of their “Candle on the Water” also nominated for Best Original Song. In 1981 Hirschhorn and Kasha turned to Broadway with the Tony-nominated Copperfield, a year later receiving another Tony bid for their work on the updated Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
In all, Hirschhorn and Kasha’s songs sold over 90 million records [wow!] and they even collaborated on three books: 1979’s If They Ask You, You Can Write a Song, 1985’s Notes on Broadway, and 1986’s Reaching the Morning After. Apart from Hirschhorn, Kasha produced and directed the long-running Las Vegas revue Let the Good Times Roll, and produced the feature film Take This Job and Shove It.
He also scored numerous animated productions for film*** and television. From 1995 to 1998, he served as president of The Family Channel’s music division, from there founding his own Broadway production firm, the Kasha Entertainment Company, in addition to working on Rejoice, a musical written in collaboration with Grammy-winning producer and composer David Foster. In 2004, Kasha received the ASCAP Country Award for Sherrie Austin’s Christian hit “Streets of Heaven.”
***The basis for a Kasha page? Here are some of Al’s movies apart from Inferno and Poseidon:
1963/Gidget Goes to Rome
1966/The Fat Spy
1969/The April Fools
1970/The Cheyenne Social Club
1976/Freaky Friday
1977/Pete’s Dragon
2003/Rugrats Go Wild
2005/Adam and Steve.