Melvyn Douglas Movies

Want to know the best Melvyn Douglas movies?  How about the worst Melvyn Douglas movies?  Curious about Melvyn Douglas box office grosses or which Melvyn Douglas movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Melvyn Douglas 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.

Melvyn Douglas (1901-1981) was a two-time Oscar® winning American actor.  Douglas went straight from being a Broadway star to be a leading man in theaters.  He would make movies from his debut in 1931’s Tonight or Never to 1981’s Ghost Story which was released after his death.  His IMDb page shows 112 acting credits from 1931-1981. This page will rank 67 Melvyn Douglas movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, 3 movies (The Wiser Sex, The Broken Wing & Our Wife) and one movie (The Hot Touch) not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings

Melvyn Douglas and Peter Sellers in 1979’s Being There

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

Melvyn Douglas 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 Melvyn Douglas movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Melvyn Douglas movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Melvyn Douglas movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Melvyn Douglas 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 Melvyn Douglas movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Melvyn Douglas movie won.
  • Sort Melvyn Douglas 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.

Melvyn Douglas was Great Garbo’s leading man in three movies

Possibly Interesting Facts About Melvyn Douglas

1. Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg was born in Macon, Georgia in 1902.  He would drop “Hesselberg” and start using his grandmother’s maiden name, Douglas, when he started acting professionally.

2. Melvyn Douglas developed his acting skills in Shakespearean repertory while in his teens and with stock companies in different parts of the country.

3.  Melvyn Douglas served in the United States Army during World War I and World War II.

4.  Melvyn Douglas was married two times and had three children.  His second marriage was to actress Helen “She” Gahagan.  Gahagan would eventually become a politician.  She was Richard Nixon’s opponent for the United States Senate seat from California in 1950.  It was Gahagan who popularized Nixon’s epithet “Tricky Dick”.

5.  One of Melvyn Douglas’ grandchildren is actress Illeana Douglas.  If you look at Illeana and Melvyn’s IMDb pages…..they both have 112 acting credits.  I like that stat a lot!

Illeana Douglas in 1990’s Good Fellas

6.  Melvyn Douglas used to jokingly apologize for ending the acting careers of Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer.  Douglas was Garbo’s last leading man in 1941’s Two-Faced Woman and Shearer last leading man in 1942’s We Were Dancing.

7.  Melvyn Douglas was borrowed by MGM from Columbia so much…..that they eventually just bought Douglas’ Columbia contract….because it was cheaper than paying the fees to borrow him.  MGM viewed Douglas as the replacement for William Powell.  Whenever Powell was not available for a role….Douglas got the part.

8.  Melvyn Douglas and billing.  Douglas – “Well, Freddie Bartholomew had first billing in Captains Courageous and that drove Spencer Tracy mad.  I was billed fourth – and couldn’t have cared less.  Joan Crawford once explained to me she was over Clark Gable and William Powell but under Norma Shearer.  Powell was under Jean Harlow but above Bob Montgomery and Myrna Loy.  Are you still with me?”  JFB (Just for Bob)

9.  Melvyn Douglas’ movies from 1930 to 1939 earned $2.71 billion in adjusted domestic gross.  That puts him in 24th place when looking at all the stars of that decade. 1930’s Top Box Office Stars.

10. Melvyn Douglas’ movies from 1940 to 1949 earned $1.39 billion in adjusted domestic gross.  That puts him in 96th place when looking at all the stars of that decade. 1940’s Top Box Office Stars.

11.  While serving during World War II, Douglas ended up in Burma.  He would met future co-star Peter Sellers there.  Years later they would star in 1979’s Being There.

12.  Melvyn Douglas was nominated for three Oscars®:  He won twice: 1963’s Hud and 1979’s Being There.  His third nomination was for 1970’s I Never Sang For My Father.

13.  Melvyn Douglas’ prank on Joan Crawford. Douglas – “I was very naughty one day.  I’d watch in amazement as Joan would arrive with a long retinue of servants, hairdressers, maids, personal assistants, even her chauffeur.  So next day I asked my brother, my chauffeur and whoever else I could dig up, and we went in a single line.  Joan was not amused and I got chewed out by director Clarence Brown, who told me he was having enough problems with Joan before this calumny!”  Sounds funny to me!

14. Melvyn Douglas was the fifth performer to win an Oscar®, an Emmy® and a Tony®.

15. Check out Melvyn Douglas’ career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time

Facts #8 and #13 come from a James Bawden interview found in the book Classic Film Stars – Interviews from Hollywood’s Golden Era.

Check out Steve’s Melvyn Douglas YouTube Video

 

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

(Visited 2,516 times)

43 thoughts on “Melvyn Douglas Movies”

  1. STEVE’s MELVYN VIDEO BEST POSTERS

    1/A Woman’s Secret
    2/foreign language one for My Forbidden Past
    3/first one for Advance to the Rear
    4/And so They Were Married
    5/Good Girls go to Manchester [but don’t remain good!]
    6/two for We Were dancing especially first superb one
    7/The Sea of Grass
    8/The Great Sinner
    9/1st one for Two Faced Woman
    10/3rd one for As I Desire You
    11/Angel
    12/Always a Woman
    13/two for A Woman’s Face
    14/3rd one for Mr Blandings
    15/Theodora Goes Wild
    16/first one for Captains Courageous
    17/foreign Language one for Hud
    18/I Never Sang for My Father
    19/first two for Old Dark House
    20/Twilight’s Last Gleaming
    21/The Vampire Bat***

    ***Steve’s old Monster Queen Fay Wray surfaced in a Perry Mason 1959 episode rerun that I watched last night. She had the virtual walk-on role of the murder victim and disappeared early on in the episode. She appeared in two other Mason episodes as well -in 1958/1965. Thus are the mighty fallen! However although in her mid to late fifties in those 3 episode she was still a fine-looking woman.

    Reply

  2. “Melvyn Douglas and billing. Douglas – “Well, Freddie Bartholomew had first billing in Captains Courageous and that drove Spencer Tracy mad. I was billed fourth – and couldn’t have cared less. Joan Crawford once explained to me she was over Clark Gable and William Powell but under Norma Shearer. Powell was under Jean Harlow but above Bob Montgomery and Myrna Loy.” Paragraph 8 of Possibly Interesting Facts above. It will be seen that The generous Work Horse dedicated that piece of trivia to ME – I can’t think why!

    Melvyn was in a long line of major or at least reasonably important classic era stars who seemed to think it manly and/or sexy to hide their faces behind a mustache: Bill Powell/Ronald Colman/Don Ameche/Douglas Fairbanks Junior/James Craig/George Brent etc and of course Gable. Obviously it did not detract from their capacity for success; but Joan Crawford once remarked that audiences would never realize how truly handsome Clark was until they saw him without the mustache.

    I have seen Melvyn in the following 9 m ovies; but the only two in which I can remember him are Hud and Hotel when he was in his sixties and well past his heyday [as Steve’s chosen Hud photo cruelly exposes] though still compelling to watch:

    Billy Budd
    Captains Courageous
    The Sea of Grass
    Hud
    The Americanization 0f Emily
    The Old Dark House
    Hotel
    My Forbidden Past
    The Candidate.

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, much appreciated.

      Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.

      Melvyn Douglas was a busy actor this could easily have been a top 50 video.
      Bruce lists 68 films on his chart along with stats.

      But as is usual with classic era Hollywood actors, he aged fast. In that photo from Hud (1963) you mention in your first post Melvyn is 62 years old and looks 82, was it make up? I don’t know.. Alec Baldwin is 62. Tom Cruise will be 62 in 4 years time.

      Four films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Hud, Captains Courageous, Ninotchka and The Old Dark House.

      Four more films scored 9 out of 10 – Being There, I Never Sang for my Father, Theodora Goes Wild and The Americanization of Emily.

      Being There and Captains Courageous are tied at the top at IMDB. No.1 at Rotten Tomatoes is The Old Dark House.

      Ninotchka is no.1 on my chart followed by The Old Dark House, Bruce has Being There at the top followed by Ninotchka, The Old Dark House didn’t make his top 10.

      “The Hollywood roles I did were boring; I was soon fed up with them. It’s true they gave me a worldwide reputation I could trade on, but they also typed me as a one-dimensional, non-serious actor.”

      Bob, I need a youtube break. But I’ll be back in a week or so with more classic videos. Take care, keep safe and say hi to the chief for me. I’ll pop in again tomorrow.

      Reply

  3. Hello!

    I must admit that Melvyn Douglas never really was one of my favorite actors- though I don’t dislike him, only a few of his movies are among my fav’s. Of the 29 films I’ve seen, I would single out Mary Burns, Fugitive and The shining Hour, though both more for his leading ladies than for Mr. Douglas. I am not a big fan of either Angel with Dietrich, nor his 2 Garbo comedies, although Ninotchka at least is a decent film. They all kissed the Bride was intended for Lombard, and it might have been a better movie had she not died before filming began (sorry, Bob). Even his teamings with Stanwyck, Colbert and Jean Arthur are not among those ladies best outings imo.
    Still, an interesting look at the career of Mr. Douglas, who seemed to have possessed a certain kind of humor and irony (his quote about being responsible for ending the careers of Garbo and Shearer) but whose movie roles were just not in the kind of films I enjoy. BTW, I always thought that Ghost Story was a Made for TV picture! Thank you for setting that record straight. Also, I didn’t know he was the Grandfather of Illeana Douglas (shadows of Maria and Maximilian Schell lol). So, after all, a great and enlightening addition to this site!

    Reply

    1. Hey Lupino
      1. Tally counts and winners.
      Gold Medal – Germany’s Lupino 29,
      Silver Medal – Canada’s Flora 21
      Bronze Medal – USA’s John
      Honorable Mentions….Steve 14, Cogerson 13 and Pierre 6.
      2. I appreciate the comment even more, considering you are not a huge Douglas fan.
      3. I have not seen either Mary Burns or The Shining Hour…..pretty sure I can get a copy of The Shining Hour pretty easily…so I will check that one out pretty soon.
      4. Glad you learned some stuff from this page….I still like the fact that Melvyn and Illeana both have exactly 112 IMDb credits…..not sure how long that stat will remain true.
      Good feedback.

      Reply

  4. Hi

    I’ve always enjoyed watching Melvyn Douglas on screen. He was a perfect leading man to some of the biggest female stars ever. He was able to shine and yet not outshine them. You can see why MGM thought he was a perfect replacement for William Powell.
    My 2 favourite films would be Ninotchka and Hud. I’m surprised Hud isn’t higher in the list. He gave a wonderful performance and I’m glad he got the Oscar. I remember going to the cinema to see Ghost Story and I really enjoyed it.

    Reply

    1. Hey Chris…..I agree….the first part of Melvyn’s career was a perfect leading man in the 1930s and 1940s. When I think about William Powell and Melvyn Douglas……they almost seem interchangeable. I can easily see Douglas with Loy in the Thin Man movies….and easily see Powell with Garbo in Ninochtka. When you sort by UMR score….Hud moves all the way to 2nd on the list…..so I agree with you about Hud. Ghost Story is a fun movie to watch….all of those legends together….sadly Douglas was the first one to pass away of that quartet. Good comment.

      Reply

  5. Cogerson

    Your reply caused me to think of Ninotchka versus Hud. Hud seems to have edged Ninotchka in the UMR because it won three Oscars out of seven nominations to Ninotchka’s no wins out of four nominations. It occurred to me, though, that the level of competition at the Oscars was quite a bit different. Ninotchka came in one of Hollywood’s best years, often cited as the best of all, and was competing with a lot of great films. 1963 might have been Hollywood’s all time worst year, in my judgment.
    Oh well, any kind of history does play tricks.

    Reply

    1. Hey John
      The UMR formula….gives points for individual award nominations and wins. So Douglas got 8.75 points for Hud…..while 0.00 points for Ninotchka. When just looking at the two movies….Ninotchka actually easily beats Hud…..75.21 to 66.11.

      Actually…this is a great example of Joel Hirschhorn’s influence on our website. When we noticed he gave a different score of different actors for the same movie…we decided it was a good idea. For example…..Spencer Tracy won the Oscar for Captains Courageous….while Douglas got no award recognition for Captains Courageous……so Tracy has a much higher score for that movie than Douglas does….Tracy 86.38 to Douglas 76.38 score.

      Sadly, due to the subjective nature, we have never figured out a way to do this with lead actors and supporting actors.

      But back to Ninotchka and Hud….when looking at the overall rankings (all the movies in my database)….here is how they rank….Ninotchka 275th and Hud 794th.

      Thanks for the return comment.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.