Margaret O’Brien Movies

Want to know the best Margaret O’Brien movies?  How about the worst Margaret O’Brien movies?  Curious about Margaret O’Brien box office grosses or which Margaret O’Brien movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Margaret O’Brien movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Margaret O’Brien (1937-) is an American actress.   O’Brien became one of the most popular child stars in cinema history and was honored with a Juvenile Academy Award® as the outstanding child actress of 1944.  In her later career, she appeared on television, on stage, and in supporting film roles.  Her IMDb page shows over 77 acting credits since 1941.  This page will rank Margaret O’Brien movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, movies that were not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings.  To do well in our overall rankings a movie has to do well at the box office, get good reviews by critics, be liked by audiences and get some award recognition.

1944’s Meet Me In St. Louis

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

1949’s The Secret Garden

Margaret O’Brien 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 Margaret O’Brien movies by his co-stars
  • Sort Margaret O’Brien movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Margaret O’Brienmovies by yearly domestic box office rank.
  • Sort Margaret O’Brien 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 how many Oscar® wins each Margaret O’Brien movie received.
  • Sort Margaret O’Brien movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
1942’s Journey For Margaret

Best IMDb Trivia On Margaret O’Brien

1. Angela Maxine O’Brien was born in San Diego, California in 1937.

2. In a practice common among child actors at the time, Margaret O’Brien adopted as her professional first name the name of the character who was her first credited part in Journey for Margaret (1942).

3. Margaret O’Brien was named to Quigley’s Annual Top Stars Poll three times:  She was ranked 9th in 1945, 8th in 1946 and 19th in 1947.

4.  Margaret O’Brien’s special Academy Award® as Outstanding Juvenile Performer for Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) was stolen and she was unable to regain it for nearly fifty years when two memorabilia collectors came across it at a swap meet and managed to give it back to O’Brien.

5.  In 1991, Margaret O’Brien appeared in Murder, She Wrote, season 7, episode “Who Killed J.B. Fletcher?”, reuniting O’Brien with her Tenth Avenue Angel co-star Angela Lansbury.

Check out Margaret O’Brien’s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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17 thoughts on “Margaret O’Brien Movies

  1. Margaret O’Brien was never on the Oracle of Bacon Top 1000 Center of the Hollywood Universe list; these are the actors on the list she appeared with;

    30 ANTHONY QUINN Heller in Pink Tights (1960)
    57 ORSON WELLES Jane Eyre (1944)
    119 DEAN STOCKWELL The Secret Garden (1949)
    172 MICKEY ROONEY Babes on Broadway (1941)
    227 KEENAN WYNN Lost Angel (1943)
    232 ANGELA LANSBURY Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)
    242 AVA GARDNER Babes on Broadway (1941)
    242 AVA GARDNER Lost Angel (1943)
    339 SOPHIA LOREN Heller in Pink Tights (1960)
    512 KEYE LUKE Dr. Gillespie’s Criminal Case (1943)
    512 KEYE LUKE Journey for Margaret (1942)
    646 ELIZABETH TAYLOR Jane Eyre (1944)
    646 ELIZABETH TAYLOR Little Women (1949)
    656 CAMERON MITCHELL Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)
    661 ANN DORAN Her First Romance (1951)
    672 WALTER PIDGEON Madame Curie (1943)
    782 EDWARD G. ROBINSON Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945)
    819 JENNY AGUTTER AMY (1981)
    867 PETER LAWFORD Little Women (1949)
    867 PETER LAWFORD The Canterville Ghost (1944)
    HM (746) ROSSANO BRAZZI Little Women (1949)

    Margaret appeared with 14 Oscar winners;

    ANTHONY QUINN Heller in Pink Tights (1960)
    CHARLES LAUGHTON The Canterville Ghost (1944)
    DONNA REED Babes on Broadway (1941)
    DONNA REED Dr. Gillespie’s Criminal Case (1943)
    DONNA REED Thousands Cheer (1943)
    ELIZABETH TAYLOR Jane Eyre (1944)
    ELIZABETH TAYLOR Little Women (1949)
    GREER GARSON Madame Curie (1943)
    JAMES CAGNEY You, John Jones! (1943)
    JANE DARWELL Three Wise Fools (1946)
    JOAN FONTAINE Jane Eyre (1944)
    LIONEL BARRYMORE Dr. Gillespie’s Criminal Case (1943)
    LIONEL BARRYMORE Three Wise Fools (1946)
    MARY ASTOR Little Women (1949)
    MARY ASTOR Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
    MARY ASTOR Thousands Cheer (1943)
    SOPHIA LOREN Heller in Pink Tights (1960)
    THOMAS MITCHELL THREE WISE FOOLS (1946)
    WALLACE BEERY Bad Bascomb (1946)
    WALTER BRENNAN Glory (1956)

    1. Hey Dan….wow…..these look like baby lists compared to some of the other ones you have posted. With a small quantity of movies it does not surprise me at all that she is not on the Oracle list. First list…pretty good list of 2 timers….Ava, Liz and JFK’s brother-in-law. Mary Astor checks in with 3 movies on the second list. Good stuff as always.

  2. Have to confess I didn’t like her at all in Meet Me in St. Louis when I first started watching the musical as a young man. I would fast forward thru the video tape when she appeared, unless she was with Judy Garland. Garland and her songs are the only reason Meet Me in St. Louis is a favorite of mine. Of course I don’t fast forward any more, but young Margaret’s performance still kinda grates. 🙂

    And perhaps mercifully that’s the only film I’ve seen of hers. [cue hissing]

    To be fair I haven’t seen any Shirley Temple films either, well… until she grew up and appeared in Fort Apache. [more hissing and some booing in the back row]

    1. Hey Steve. Wow…..it is like you were reading my mind. Granted I have only seen Meet Me In St. Louis once….but I did not enjoy her role at all. And like you….that is the only O’Brien movie I have seen. I guess we should sample at least one more O’Brien movie…..just so we can have a comparison of her different acting performances. I have seen more Shirley Temple movies. My mother-in-law love her, and one Christmas she bought a massive Temple DVD set for my daughters….they watched about 15 minutes of one movie…and left the room. I however….watched all the movies in that collection. Movies in the house have to be watched…..it is one of my rules….lol.

      1. Thanks Bruce, glad I wasn’t the only one. I thought there was something wrong with me. 😉

        I do like kids generally, just not that particular one. [cue more booing]

        1. Hey Steve….not alone at all. Her Halloween scene in Meet Me In St. Louis is one of the weirdest scenes in a classic movie that I can remember. If that is how Halloween was done back then? It was like a bunch of juvenile delinquents were allowed to destroy a neighborhood and belittle lonely old people. I think the scene was supposed to show how brave she was….but to me it showed me how mean and nasty a child can be. Just my two cents.

  3. Glad that Margaret O’Brien has finally gotten her own UMR page! I expected a larger number of movies.

    I have seen 14 Margaret O’Brien movies, including 9 of the top 10.

    The HIGHEST ranked movie I have seen is Madame Curie.

    The highest ranked movie i have NOT seen is Music For Millions.

    The LOWEST ranked movie I have seen is Heller in Pink Tights.

    Favourite Margaret O’Brien Films:

    Meet Me in St. Louis
    Little Women
    Madame Curie
    Jane Eyre
    Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
    The Canterville Ghost
    The Secret Garden
    Lost Angel
    Tenth Avenue Angel
    Journey For Margaret

    Other Margaret O’Brien Films I Have Seen:

    Thousands Cheer
    Dr. Gillepse’s Criminal Case
    Heller in Pink Tights

    1. Hey Flora….your 14 or 70% destroys the tally contest. Steve and I sit a 1…..or a combined total of 2. I think Bob saw more…but he did not provide a tally. But….Steve and I did see the movie on top of your favorites list….so that has to be worth something….lol Good stuff as always.

  4. HI BRUCE Thanks for the feedback . In the 1950s our local Curran Theatres cinema chain here in N Ireland had a permanent contract to show RKO films so that I was a close observer of the last sad years of RKO and the films it made in those years.

    Their movies were in fact top of the bill at Curran Theatres right up until around 1957/58 and I saw in those declining years for example, as well as Glory, many RKO movies that you HAVE given us grosses for on the Cogerson pages of various thespians: Great Day in the Morning [Virginia Mayo] Tension at Table Rock [Richard Egan] Slightly Scarlet [Rhonda Fleming] While the City Sleeps [Dana Andrews/George Sanders] Tennessee’s Partner [Ronald Regan] and two starring Charley Bill Stuart – The Americano and Appointment in Honduras. At the age I was at then, most of these really entertained me.

    As those flicks were shown widely within the Curran chain they were regarded as major releases, not in the league of the latest Al Leach film of course [such as An Affair to Remember which I also saw at Curran’s Astoria near me] but much superior to anything Margaret was involved with after Glory.

    Anyway it’s nice to go down Memory Lane in exchanges with you. The Curran cinemas are, like RKO, all long gone now, and a purpose-built telephone exchange stands on the site of my flattened local Curran Astoria so that the days of watching the Great Archibald A. Leach there are in the distant past-

    “Alas! The very spot
    Where many a time he triumphed
    Is forgot.”

    1. Good memoires on the Curran Theater. It sound a lot like my father-in-law’s Tiger Theater in Auburn Alabama. That interview with him has become WoC’s favorite UMR page. Thanks for sharing these wonderful memories.

      1. HI BRUCE

        [Have you ever seen that old long-running TV western series [1962-1971] ? starring James Drury and firstly Lee J Cobb, who was replaced in 1967 by John McIntire -wonderful actor. By the way I thought you were originally a Canuck?]

        Yes as I was writing about the Astoria I was thinking of Bob Coats and The Tiger. We had our own ‘Bob Coats’ who ran The Astoria. I never knew his name but, whilst I did not back then have the kind of overview of the movie world that guys like you have given me today, I sensed that The Astoria was on its last legs.

        Accordinglly I remember once stopping our ‘Bob Coats’ in the foyer and asking how business was doing. He acted as if he had been stung by a wasp, mumbled “Doing fine” and scuttled away into the Rest rooms! ‘My Tiger’ closed in 1969/70 and I think the final movie was Bond’s OHMS, George Lazenby’s sole outing as 007.

        1. BRUCE:

          In case you are wondering what my opening comments in my 8.04am post have to do with it all the series was called The Virginian! Apologies for any earlier confusion.

  5. Incredibly Margaret is 83 and as shown above made her debut at the age of 4 [albeit uncredited] in Rooney and Garland’s Babes on Broadway in 1941; and has still been going strong in recent years so that she has had 5 feature films released in 2017/2018.

    In two of them she is top billed and one of the 5, This is Our Christmas, is listed above. Another of the 5 is a 2017 version of the classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and in that Margaret is reunited with her old Babes on Broadway co-star Mickey Rooney, who died a week after the filming of his scene was completed back in 2014. He and Margaret both have cameos in the movie.

    As Bruce says above Margaret also had stage and television careers and in fact worked extensively on TV from way back in 1950. Indeed I last saw her only a few weeks ago in a rerun of a 1963 Perry Mason television episode in which she had a supporting role. [Round about the same time Bette Davis also took a guest-starring role in that series].

    I had also seen Margaret a year or so ago in a 1991 episode of the Murder She Wrote television detective series residentially starring Angela Lansbury and that appearance reunited Angela and Margaret who had appeared together in 1948’s 10th Avenue Angel – see tables above.Margaret credited television with helping her change her public image so that she could perform as an adult; she said that the movies were not much interested in her in that capacity.

    In addition Margaret worked a lot on radio for a while and Wikipedia lists a run of 7 productions that she was in between 1943 and 1949 including a St Patrick’s Day special program with Bing Crosby in 1948.

    Margaret is probably best known on the big screen for her cute portrayal of Tootie Smith in Meet Me In St Louis [1944] with Garland; but I will always remember too my seeing Margaret in 1956 in what was to be her final MAJOR cinematic release, the horseracing drama Glory [not covered above] co-starring Hollywood stalwart Walter Brennan.

    After that over the years it was largely obscure unimportant films/roles but mostly virtual wall-to-wall TV work for Margaret, but in 2016 her net worth was assessed at $10 million. This new page is definitely “Voted Up!”

    1. Hey Bob…thanks for the thoughts on Margaret O’Brien. Figured it was time for a classic star. I saw her name on the celebrity birthday list the other day…and thought I should do a page on her. I have only seen one of her movies…and that was Meet Me In St. Louis.

      I put her appearance on Murder, She Wrote on our trivia list. That was problem a fun episode for Lansbury to film. Sorry that, like Monkey on my Back….that Glory did not make the table. That was at the end of RKO….and those movies barely got released. My RKO ledger stops at 1951.

      Her later films would probably considered D movies versus B. No budgets, no release information….heck even IMDb barely acknowledges them. Only her Christmas movie seems to have played in a single theater. She is actually listed as …best known for …..Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde…..that seems so hard to believe. Thanks for the vote up, the extra O’Brien information (net worth, other acting jobs). Good stuff as always.

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