Marlon Brando Movies

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

Marlon Brando (1924-2004) owned the 1950s as an actor. He received 5 Oscar® nominations for Best Actor between 1952 and 1958. He had it all…. blockbusters, critical acclaim, and an Oscar® win. His movies generated over 200 million ticket sales in the 1950s. Unfortunately the 1960s were not so kind to him. One could argue, that every movie he made in the 1960s was a box office failure. By the early 1970s he was considered box office poison. It was during this time that movie magic would happen again. That of course, was his role in The Godfather.

The Godfather was a blockbuster hit that won Oscars® for Best Picture and Best Actor. The following year he earned another Oscar® nomination for Last Tango in Paris. Then he pretty much stop making movies. Over the last 30 years of his life he only made 10 more movies and they were pretty much supporting parts.

His IMDb page shows 47 acting credits from 1949-2006. This page will rank 37 Marlon Brando movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  Television appearances, shorts, cameos, video game roles and direct to DVD movies were not included in the rankings.

Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire
Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire

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

Marlon Brando 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 by Marlon Brando’s co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Marlon Brando movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
  • Sort Marlon Brando movies by their yearly box office rank
  • Sort Marlon Brando 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 Marlon Brando movie received.
  • Sort Marlon Brando 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 Marlon Brando Table

  1. Sixteen Marlon Brando movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 43.24% of his movies listed. The Godfather (1972) was his biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Marlon Brando movie earned $144.60 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  28 of Marlon Brando’s movies are rated as good movies…or 75.67% of his movies.  The Godfather (1972)  was his highest rated movie while Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) was his lowest rated movie.
  4. Eighteen Marlon Brando movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 48.64% of his movies.
  5. Seven Marlon Brando’s movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 18.91% of his movies.
  6. A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) is 60.00 or above.  24 Marlon Brando movies scored higher that average….or 64.86% of his movies.  The Godfather (1972) got the the highest UMR Score while Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) got the lowest UMR Score.
Marlon Brando in 1955's Guys and Dolls
Marlon Brando in 1955’s Guys and Dolls

Adjusted box office grosses are used to make it easier, to figure out how successful a movie was when it was originally released and compare that to our current box office numbers. For example: The classic On the Waterfront grossed $9,240,000 in 1954. In 2014, $9,240,000 million would have ranked 134th for the year….right behind Mom’s Night Out. However its adjusted box office gross of $163,200,000 million would have finished 19th for the year right behind 18th place Gone Girl. 

And finally….just found this page from Luna B. on HubPages….a very interesting read.  Marlon Brando’s Top Ten Movies….highly recommend checking it out.

Steve’s Expanded Marlon Brando You Tube Video

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

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193 thoughts on “Marlon Brando Movies”

  1. BRUCE WILLIS PAGE
    Entry no 9 Split Adjusted domesztic gross $146.3 million

    MARLON BRANDO PAGE
    Entry No 16 One Eyed Jacks Adjusted domestic gross $152.1 million
    Entry No 17 One Eyed Jacks Ditto.

    Reply

    1. DEAR MR COGERSON
      It is coincidence that the re run of one eyed jacks has an identical box office figure to the first run especially when rerun money is usually much smaller than earlier box office and its also unusual to see the rerun occurring in the same year. So I suppose that possible errors in the information you give in your two columns is partly what the writer of the 13 Jan comments is mentioning.Regarding his or her other point I am a great fan of bruce willis and have seen Split but I cannot recall Mr Willis being in it though that was some time ago. I see on your nice Bruce Willis page that you credit him with the film but none of the posters that I have seen confirm that and I have never seen his name elsewhere connected with it so I take it that the 13 jan contributor feels you have made a mistake here as well though his/her way of suggesting that about rights and wrong seems rather strange to me.I follow many internet entertainment sights but I am very busy and don’t normally have the time to write in. However if I was sure willis was in Split I would try to get a DVD to see it again.

      Reply

    2. I can not get rid of this extra One Eyed-Jacks. WoC can not get rid of this extra One Eyed-Jacks either. We will keep trying. Our database has been a pain in the ass since we had the complete collapse and created a new one….SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FRUSTRATINGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      Reply

      1. Hi Mr. Cogerson,
        I do not see any duplication on my P.C.
        Its reads as follows:
        16 One-Eyed Jacks (1961) Karl Malden 152.1 14 66 01 / 00 89.9
        17 The Score (2001) Robert DeNiro &Edward Norton 115.3 33 71 00 / 00 87.0

        Reply

    1. BOB’s REPLY TO BRUCE’s POST ABOUT GIELGUD/BRANDO – COPY
      HI BRUCE: Thanks for the link which I enjoyed Apart from saying that Brando’s Antony [which Gielgud thought was good] could have been better if he had done the play on the stage Sir John was actually full of praise for Marlon and even tried to encourage him to play Hamlet. Indeed Gielgud tried to coax Marlon to join him on a tour of English theatres.

      On the same page as that link is another one: “Sir Laurence Olivier on the genius of Marlon Brando-The Dick Cravat Show” In it Lord Larry calls Brando an acting genius*** and also says among other superlatives “His Napoleon is the best that there ever has been.” Check it out if you have not already seen the clip.

      As you know Hirsch hyperbolically said on page 57 of his 1983 book “Nobody cared for Desiree or Brando’s portrayal of Napoleon.” My own conclusion: there MUST be a parallel universe somewhere in which Joel watched another Marlon – a different Brando from the one that Olivier and Gielgud saw in their lifetime.

      However if that’s not so and they all watched the same person – whose opinion should an unenlightened man-in-the-street value as likely the more accurate?-

      1/an obscure would-be-Elvis rock n roll singer and nightclub entertainer of the late fifties/early sixties who came late to the art of film criticism; OR

      2/a much-lauded doyen of the great British actor-knights club along with a Lord of the British realm who is world-famous as a great actor even today and who is included in the American Film Institute’s Top 25 greatest male acting legends of all time.

      Tough call! Anyway please take care. I hope you are still not queuing up to vote somewhere and that you voted in good time – and only once: I wouldn’t want you to be accused of fraudulent voting!

      *** Afterthought: I WONDER IF LORD LARRY THOUGHT HIRSCH WAS A GENIUS – ASSUMING OF COURSE HE KNEW WHO JOEL WAS

      Reply

      1. COPY
        November 26, 2020 at 3:21 am

        NOTES ON GIELGUD TALKING ABOUT BRANDO
        The Work Horse’s 24 Nov [6.32pm] post to me seems to suggest that Sir John ran down Marlon in the interview concerned. However I have studied the video a couple of times and here is my own transcript of what Sir John actually said in that interview:

        1/He found Brando a “sweet boy”.

        2/Brando would arrive on the set of 1953’s Julius Caesar “looking splendid” and whilst at times he appeared worried about something, he displayed “very touching” mannerisms and habits.

        3/Marlon was “striking” in the role of Antony in the 1953 movie but wasn’t as familiar with the “shape” of certain scenes that he would have better picked up if he had done the play on stage

        4/Sir John wished that Marlon HAD performed Julius Caesar on stage as he was a wonderful stage actor. Sir John had seen him in Streetcar on Broadway and he was great in the role of Stanley and was very “balanced” in the way he blended humour with high drama. Sir John thought it important to be able to marry humour with the serious stuff in a Tennessee Williams play.

        5/The upshot of all this was that Sir John tried to coax Marlon to do Shakespeare’s Hamlet on stage as he thought Brando would be good in the role but Marlon wasn’t interested as he said he “planned to retire”. I think Brando meant retire from the STAGE; and in fact in 1953 he did make a final stage appearance in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man in Boston summer stock and he played Sergius and his close friend William Redfield [Dale Harding in the film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest] acted Bluntschi. The Work Horse if he wishes can obtain a video of the filming for posterity of that Brando production for $79.99.

        It’s difficult for me to see how The Work Horse interprets the Gielgud interview as in any way a serious put-down of Brando: Sir John was simply saying that Marlon would have been even better as Antony if he had done the play on stage. Interestingly enough Lord Olivier in classifying Brando as a “genius” felt that only the screen -and not the theatre- could demonstrate genius. AS I HAVE SAID IN PREVIOUS POST I WONDER IF LORD LARRY SAW JOEL HIRSCHHORN TOO AS A GENUIS. AS THERE IS NO RECORD OF THE MATTER I SUPPOSE THE JURY WILL ALWAYS BE OUT ON THAT ONE.

        Anyway I can only assume that either (1) WH is trying to wind me up – he has picked on me a lot over the years OR (2) he has watched a version of the clip in that parallel universe that Joel seemed to regularly frequent where only ‘bad Brando things’ happen!

        However to be fair to Hirsch he did give Brando 3 stars for his Antony performance which I think is good for a Yank playing Shakespeare; and of course Marlon won an Oscar nom for the role.

        “Damn that Marlon: he’s such a wonderful actor. With his ability to demonstrate a deep range of feelings via just facial expressions and mannerisms he would have been the greatest actor of ALL eras had he flourished in the silent period of movies.” Richard Burton in his renowned diaries.

        Reply

        1. In a post above I referred to Dick Cavett as Dick Cravat. Apologies – I am not familiar with American TV entertainers the the extent that I am with US movie stars.

          Reply

          1. Hey Bob….thanks for moving the comments to this page as well….my editor button has not been working very well….so I think your mistake of saying Dick Cravat might stay around awhile. The behind the scenes of UMR have been crazy busy and crazy frustrating the last month…..that is just one of the issues we have had to deal with. Thanks again.

  3. Bob, as promised Val Kilmer talking about his hero Marlon Brando, excerpts taken from his autobiography “I’m your Huckleberry”.

    “I watched the 1973 Academy Awards live broadcast from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Liv Ullmann and Roger Moore announced that Marlon Brando had won best actor for The Godfather. But Brando didn’t accept the award. He refused to attend. In his place he sent to the podium the radiant Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache actress and activist who, with great poise, announced that Brando was rejecting the Oscar in protest of our treatment of Native Americans. Some booed. Others heckled. Later that evening Clint Eastwood joked while presenting the Best Picture award that he was doing so on behalf of all the cowboys shot in John Ford films. He saw Marlon’s ploy as a joke. I saw it as heroism.

    That same year Marlon told the Academy to screw themselves, he came on a TV talk show where host Dick Cavett asked him why he had so often belittled the art of acting. Brando’s unexpected retort still serves to keep me sane. “We couldn’t survive a second if we weren’t able to act… acting is a survival mechanism… we act to save our lives.”

    I read how he was crucifed for taking the role of Sky Masterson in the film version of the musical Guys and Dolls, in which Frank Sinatra played Nathan Detroit. This was 1955, the year Brando had won the Academy Award for playing Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, perhaps (along with Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar) his greatest role. I remember loving Guys and Dolls and loving Brando’s performance. In one interview, when a reporter accosted him for selling out, he bristled and said he had done the film because it was the most challenging thing offered him. Even more so than playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. Why? Well, because he had to sing and he wasn’t a singer. Not only did he sing, but he did so when his costar was Frank Sinatra, America’s most celebrated vocalist.

    Marlon was my guy. It wasn’t about being flawlessly eloquent like Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud. It wasn’t about being suave like Cary Grant or homespun like Gary Cooper. It was about the power of silence. The long, pregnant pause. The understatement. The boiling subtext. The unexpressed. The mystery. The mumbling. Trying as we all do in life to make sense of a moment. The rage that remains inside. The penetrating look. Eyes slightly shifting. Lips slightly curling. The beauty of subterfuge.

    Brando is the benchmark.”

    Reply

    1. HI STEVE: Thanks for taking the trouble to share those quotes with me none of which I have ever seen before. Interesting is Val’s take on Guys and Dolls. You may recall that Hirsch castigated Brando for being a “liability” in that movie in the role that was orignally planned for your Eugene. Variety called Guys and Dolls the “top earner of 1956” so Joel places the definition of liability within a whole new context – unique guy Hirsch!

      However the likes of Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert would have probaly explained WHY they specifically thought Brando in particular was a liability in a musical [given that the same year Deborah Kerr’s songs had to be dubbed for King and I in a performance that joel gave 4 stars] Hirsch was obviously above feeling the need to be consistent and considered sweeping statements sufficent with his his classic for my money being that “NOBODY was interested in Brando’s Napoleon” in Desiree which also made a box office fortune outgrossing On the Waterfront which everyone was raving over in 1954. Desiree was the 12th highest earner at the US/Canada box office in 1954.

      I’ve mentioned before that I saw an interview years after the 1973 Oscar Ceremony and Sacheen Littlefeather an old woman now told how she was terrfied when she read out Brando’s rejection speech because the Duke tried to gatecrash the stage to haul her off and he had to be restrained by “six strong bouncers” I wonder what Cagney thought of the whole thing!

      If other opinions are valid Val’s comment that Brando demonstrated “the power of silence” is quite observant. For example health clinics who train people who are deaf how to interpret others via facial expressions aloneallegedly use Brando films as training aids; and in his diaries Richard Burton opined that if Brando’s career had been in the silent era he would have been the greatest silent thespian of all time.

      Val’s benchmark comment echoes Martin Scorsese’s publicly expressed assessment of Brando “There is before Brando and there is after Brando. HE is the marker.” and Jack Nicholson said of Marlon “When he died we all moved up one. Those who don’t see him as the greatest ever American actor don’t know anything about acting.” I always like to think that when Jack made that last statement he had just finished reading Joel’s 1983 book. Anyway the weekend’s coming up and I hope you enjoy it – after you give us another video of course. Don’t be taking another break before that!!!!

      Reply

  4. HI STEVE: Thanks for sharing that Woody Allen quote with me. It quite surprised me as I regarded Woody as a comedian and would not have anticipated that he would be into Tennessee Williams.

    However my father would have considered Woody’s admiration of Brando quite appropriate because [Jerry Lewis aside] the two movie stars that dad hated the most in all the world were Woody and Marlon.

    Dad would often start rows in bars about Woody Allen. If during the debates the rest or most of the company were pro-Woody dad would suck in strangers. For example people passing our table would in turn be grabbed by the arm and asked “What do YOU think of Woody Allen?”

    Sooner or later of course he would get somebody who would agree with him that Woody was useless and dad would then turn on the rest of us in the company and triumphantly exclaim “THERE – I told you so!”

    Just like The Work Horse convinces himself that any opinion of Hirsch is the ‘definitive’ one so dad took the line that anyone who agreed with him [dad] about Woody was the all-seeing one who was “telling it as it is”!

    Anyway keep safe and thanks again for sharing that Woody quote.

    Reply

  5. Hi Bob, I’ve been reading Woody Allen’s autobiography, the one that just came out. I’m not actually a fan and I’ve only seen a handful of his films but I was very interested in his story, especially about certain events.

    Anyway turns out his favorite film is… wait for it… A Streetcar Named Desire.

    Here’s an excerpt from the book ‘Apropos of Nothing’ –

    “I grew up idolizing Tennessee Williams. Abe Burrows asked me when I was eighteen if there was anyone I wanted to meet to discuss my interest in writing with. I said Tennessee Williams. He said Tennessee’s not the kind of guy whom one can easily sit and chat with. I read all his plays, all his books. I have my favorite plays and productions.

    As I gushed earlier, the movie of Streetcar is for me total artistic perfection. With the exception of the bullsh*t end moment, bowing to what D. H. Lawrence called “the censor-moron.” It’s the most perfect confluence of script, performance, and direction I’ve ever seen. I agree with Richard Schickel, who calls the play perfect.

    The characters are so perfectly written, every nuance, every instinct, every line of dialogue is the best choice of all those available in the known universe. All the performances are sensational. Vivien Leigh is incomparable, more real and vivid than real people I know. And Marlon Brando was a living poem. He was an actor who came on the scene and changed the history of acting.

    The magic, the setting, New Orleans, the French Quarter, the rainy humid afternoons, the poker night. Artistic genius, no holds barred.”

    Reply

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