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: I have used the link you kindly gave me to the Roger Ebert article on Brando and it certainly was a strong tribute. Here are some comments on the article.

    (1) Reports since Brando’s death suggest that he went to elaborate lengths to stage a ‘poverty’ con so that he could avoid paying bills/debts and thus hoard money. Wikipedia claims that he left an estate of over $20 million, about 27 million in today’s dollars.

    (2) Big Bug Man was a movie starring Brendan Fraser which was never released and in which Brando played as a voice only role an elderly woman named Mrs Sour. Although he would never be seen in the movie he insisted in recording his dialogue in drag.

    (3) The Indian girl Littlefeather who is of course an elderly woman now said in a TV interview about a year ago that when refusing the Oscar on Brando’s behalf because of the perceived Indians issue she became nervous because “John Wayne attempted to get onto the stage from a side door to drag me off and it took 6 strong men to restrain him.”

    (4) The eccentricity that Ebert hints at would certainly seem to be confirmed by the behaviour I have described at (1) and (2) above if those accounts are accurate ,and he once told an interviewer that he kept a draft of his memoirs in a fridge “to keep them fresh.”

    (5) Also Marlon was a close friend of Brigitte Bardot and often visited her at her home in France where apparently she operated a private dogs sanctuary. One year TV cameras caught Bardot driving through the centre of Paris in an open van with Brando sitting beside her staring stolidly ahead in a massive floppy hat and large frock with about half a dozen dogs yapping out from behind him at other the other road users.

    (6) As for the ‘rebel’ tag I have often thought that his attitudes reflected more of a contrary streak which like Tracy his status gave him the power to exercise. I see that a REAL REBEL is once more involved in controversy according to today’s papers over here which say that Russell Crowe has been accused of the assault of a 25 year old rapper who attended a gathering in his hotel room. Reports say that he and the rapper got into a slanging match in which he used the N word repeatedly and she called him and his friends “boring white men” whereupon he manhandled her out of the room. Crowe and the rapper were unavailable for comment today but there’s a guy who could show the Wild One how to be truly rebellious.

    Thanks again for the link. BOB

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob…glad you liked the Ebert tribute to Brando. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I think was too smart to lose all of his money. Big Bug Man has to be locked away….just waiting to see the light of day. You can add Michael Caine to the list of people that got upset when Brando refused the Oscar….Caine was one of Brando’s fellow nominees. Interesting about Brando and Barlot…seems like a strange duo. I see the traits in Crowe as well. Thanks for the feedback.

      Reply

      1. 1 Bud’s friend Chuck and Greg Peck held a joint news conference immediately after completion of ceremonies in which they too denounced the Oscar refusal. Brando was nominated again for Last Tango the following year but as industry insiders observed even if the Committee had agreed with famed film critic Alexander Walker and thought that Bud’s tango performance was the greatest ever by an actor there was no way he was getting another award following his antics the year before. The same consideration applies to his fellow ‘rebel’ Russell Crowe who many think denied himself a 2nd consecutive Oscar for A Beautiful Mind because of his public tantrums [He got one the year before for Gladiator.]

        2 Even without the Wikipedia information it is difficult to see how Bud was broke as he was professionally active and would have been paid good money for Big Bug Man and Always Brando about that Tunisian boy around the time he was supposed to be living in poverty; and did you know that he wrote a full-length pirate novel called Fan Tan that was published in the commercial markets after his death and which is currently being reviewed on the Net by Amazon? I wonder how often he was actually present in that ‘slum’ in which he claimed he was living.

        3 Ebert strikes me as having been a great character and in fact guy like yourself who lived, slept and dreamt movies and who had a W of E who joined in his enthusiasm. Would W of C get excited if Sir Maurice or the ex Mr Demi Moore phoned you?

        Reply

        1. Hey Bob.
          1. Got to admit….two of Brando’s greatest performances (Streetcar and Tango) have not been good movie going experiences. I have seen Streetcar 3 times and Tango twice…maybe viewings number 4 and 3 will turn the light on for me.
          2. You might think this is funny. Today at the bus stop…a neighborhood girl was walking a dog that she was dog sitting. Anyway….kids being kids….they started running around….and the girl with the dog fell down….and the leash fell out of her hand….and the dog took off. The girl bounced up …..and in horror…started chasing and screaming the dog’s name in hopes the dog would turn around and come back. The dog’s name? Stella. The girl’s line reading of “Steeeeeeeellllllllllaaaaaa was even more impressive than Brando’s…there was true emotion in her Steeeeellllllllaaaaaaaa….lol. Good news was we got Stella back safely. But that is my warped brain…..in that stressful situation….my mind went to a movie.
          3. I agree Russell might have cost him a second Oscar….seems Crowe should stay away from hotels…lol.
          4. I agree with you about Ebert….and yes indeed…WoC would be equally excited if Caine or Willis called me.
          Thanks for the input.

          Reply

          1. 1 Loved the Stella story and of course ‘Stella’ came into her own as even more primitive than Stanley in the later Planet of the Apes franchise and there the dots are again joined up with Bud in Streetcar and his pal Chuck in the 1st Planet of the Apes

            2 I forgot to mention that the courts imposed a strange limitation on Brando’s estate after he died by stipulating that they could continue to benefit from belated Godpop spin-offs such as DVD sales and video games for only 10 years However according to Wikipedia there were still lucrative claims that the estate could make in other eras such as sales even as late as 2001 from reprints of his popular Wild One garb for which he was entitled to ongoing ‘royalties’.

          2. Hey Bob…glad you like my Stella story….it all turned out well in the end. Good stuff on Brando’s royalties. As always…I appreciate the informative comment.

  2. Hey Bob on my return trip from Florida….I am re-reading the Roger Ebert 2005 Yearbook…..and he has a “In Memoriam” on your boy Brando…..this is the best part.

    “He (Brando) asked her for my number, but it was a more than a year later before the phone rang one night and it was Marlon Brando. I (Ebert) was astonished. We talked about 45 minutes, but it wasn’t an interview and I didn’t ask him about any of his movies. He set the agenda. He had a project he wanted us to work on together. I would like to tell you what it was, but I have no idea. It wasn’t that he was rambling or confused. He made perfect sense, but in a way that had no paraphrasable meaning. It was a performance in which he was playing a man who wanted a pitch a project; the man and the pitch were the content, not the project. When I got off the phone, my wife couldn’t wait to find out what Brando had wanted. “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I told her, “but he made it sound fascinating”.

    Just in case you had not read it before.

    Reply

  3. Updated box office numbers for Sayonara….domestic adjusted gross….is $369.90 million and for adjusted worldwide box office…..$552.90 million.

    Reply

    1. 1 Completely new story to me but I read that Bud was a minor inventor and he did invent quite a few small gadgets that got onto the market so maybe he was trying to interest Ebert in some new project or other or maybe he was practising what his pitch would be for another sale in the marketplace As he was speaking so clearly it’s a pity that he didn’t also ring Steve that night and have a chat with him.

      2 Thanks for sharing this interesting story.

      BOB

      Reply

  4. Actually now that I come to think of it Bruce has given us figures for probably all Granger’s major Hollywood hits but 2 only they are spread over the pages of many other actors who were his co-stars::

    (a)FILM(b) CO-STAR PAGE(c)ADJUSTED DOMESTIC GROSS
    (a) King Solomon’s Mines(b)Deborah Kerr(c)$254 million
    (a)Salome(b)Rita Hayworth(c)$203 million
    (a)North to Alaska(b) John Wayne(c) $175 million
    (a)Green Fire(b) Grace Kelly(c) $100 million
    (a)Bhowani Junction (b) Ava Gardner(c)$93 million
    (a)The Prisoner of Zenda(b)Deborah Kerr (c)$89 million
    (a)The Little Hut(b)Ava Gardner(c)$87 million
    (a)All the Brothers Were Valiant(b)Robert Taylor(c)$86 million
    (a)The Last Hunt(b) Robert Taylor (c) $71 million
    (a)Young Bess(b) Deborah Kerr (c)$70 million
    (a)Beau Brummell(b)Elizabeth Taylor(c)$55 million
    (a)Soldiers 3(b)Walter Pidgeon(c)$50 million

    All individual figures are the updated ones that Bruce has given us (rounded up to the nearest one million dollars) except the 2 for the Ava Gardner films though I have personally adjusted those 2 on the basis of Bruce’s calculations elsewhere but keep in mind about those 2 grosses that the Oracle has not yet spoken ! Overall total is roughly $1.4 billion averaging out at approx $110 mil per film. I think that whilst about half a dozen minor grossers from his Hollywood era are missing the only 2 major earners not in the table are The Wild North and Scaramouch both
    released in 1952. Hope this keeps you going until you get the real deal from the Boss.

    Reply

    1. Excellent work collecting that info Bob! King Solomon’s Mines was his biggest grosser and it was downhill from there. Salome was terrible, a good cast of actors looking embarrassed, worth watching only for Rita’s dance of the seven veils and yet it made over $200m in the US alone, the mind boggles.

      By comparison this years Ben-Hur remake flopped into theaters with about $89m worldwide and it cost $100m to make. My favorite Granger films are The Prisoner of Zenda and Scaramouche.

      Cheers,
      Steve.

      Reply

      1. Hey Steve…I agree….the database is becoming so big…I do not even remember putting some of these Granger movies into the database.

        Reply

    2. Hey Bob….very cool that you were able to find those Granger box office numbers already on the site. That is 12 and a quick IMDb search shows 77 total credits….with 21 being uncredited or tv roles….so that leaves 56 movies….so I am already 20% done…lol. Looks like he got to work with some legends for sure. The next movie page will be on John Barrymore….just in case you were wondering.

      Reply

  5. APOLOGY & CORRECTION

    Para 3 of my main post about your joint review of Brando movies should read “only 2 of Bruce’s Top 30 fall below the 62.5%” and not only 20 Had the latter been the case I would not be making this further post as my computer would have gone out the window !!

    Reply

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