61 thoughts on “Richard Attenborough Movies”

1. i saw 11 of his acting efforts including 7 of top 8. 10 and favorite the great excape. 10s not favorites: the sand pebbles, flight of the phoenix. 9s not favorites: elizabeth, a bridge too far, Jurassic park. i saw 5 of his directorial efforts. 10 and favorite , gandhi. 9s not favorites: a bridge too far, shadowlands. great director, an actor who seemed to always make a movie better. hidden gems: cry freedom. i wish there was some way to easily separate on UMR directing from acting. attenborough, eastwood, beatty, woody allen,etc.

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   1. Hey bob cox….thanks for checking out our Richard Attenborough page. Tally counts: Flora 19, 15 for you and 14 for me. We agree on The Great Escape, slightly disagree on A Bridge Too Far…as that is one of my favorites…but I can live with a 9 rating. As for director and actor pages…so far WoC has not been able to figure out a way to do that in one table, and when we create two tables that look the same, so weird tables get created….so I try and include some “director” markers….in this case…his 12 directed movies say – & “directed by Attenborough”. Good feedback as always.

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2. The low rating for the classic film noir Brighton Rock while Hirshhorn gave Attenborough a 4 star rating is a perfect example of how non-North American films don’t get the esteem that is their due on UMR.

   I have seen 17 Richard Attenborough movies.

   The HIGHEST rated movie I have seen is Ghandi.

   The highest rated movie I have NOT seen is Jurassic Park.

   The LOWEST rated movie I have Seen is Brannigan.

   Favourite Richard Attenborough Movies:

   The Great Escape
   A Matter of Life and Death
   A Bridge Too Far
   Flight of the Pheonix
   Brighton Rock
   Shadowlands
   A Chorus Line

   Other Richard Attenborough Movies I Have Seen:

   Ghandi
   The Sand Pebbles
   Doctor Doolittle
   Oh! What a Lovely War
   10 Rillington Place
   Young Winston
   Chaplin
   Seance on a Wet Afternoon
   Grey Owl
   Brannigan

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   1. I just checked your list of ratings of Richard Attenborough movies with no NA box office. I have seen two of them –
      The League of Gentlemen and All Night Long. They are both favourites.

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      1. Hey Flora….well…you have me beat 2-0 on the second list. I have not even heard of any of these movies. Revised tally count: 19 to 14.

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   2. Hey Flora…..thanks for checking out our Sir Richard page. Tally counts: 17 for you and 14 for me. Almost all of mine are his latter movies. As for Brighton Rock’s low rating….that is an issue with our overall scoring system. If you sort the movies by reviews…..Brighton Rock does go from it’s overall rank of 20th to 11th by reviews. I have seen 3 of your favorites. With A Bridge Too Far and The Great Escape being two of my all-time favorites. The third movie is The Flight of the Phoenix….a good movie, but not one I have seen recently. As for your other list, surprised Ghandi did not make your favorites list. Good stuff as always.

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3. Bruce has done well to provide grosses for a number of Dickie’s British movies. Dunkirk for example whilst a massive hit over here did not hold a lot of interest for American audiences as WH’s figures above illustrate. Indeed the standing joke in this country was that American moviemakers were interested in only wars that they could “pretend John Wayne and Errol Flynn won”.

   Our local Ex-servicemen such as my father loathed Errol in particular because of the way they perceived his Hollywood movies to hype up his war roles which had him winning battles whose success our local guys felt that THEY had been responsible for and which they claimed the Yanks had little to do with. Ironically though Flynn’s father lived here for some time having moved to Northern Ireland where he served as the Chair of Zoology at Queen’s University of Belfast from 1931-1948.

   Despite his great prestige which culminated in his being knighted in Britain and then given a peerage Dickie never lost touch with the “common man” demographic which was a great part of his audiences in the 1940s and 1950s.

   The British Labour Party has long been perceived as the party of the working man and Dickie was a staunch supporter of it by for example actively campaigning for it in the 2005 general election even though he morally disapproved of the Iraq War which Tony Blair’s then Labour government had championed in support of George W Bush’s American administration. [Clearly Dickie’s at times strong association with war movies and his own patriotic military service mentioned above by WH never turned Lord Richard into a real-life military” hawk”!].

   It’s good to see an ultimately prestigious Brit legend like Dickie who may in his early years have been an obscure entertainer outside British films receive his own Cogerson page which I warmly welcome. Spoiler [for me- I “tell it as it is”]: Sir Maurice not being given credit for his debut movie Morning Departure. Whilst the role is small other sites credit it to him [SEE CAST LIST ON wIKI’S 1950 MmORNING DEPARTURE PAGE]and it was certainly equal to Mr Gimmer More’s Split contribution and as it was a debut roIe and in view of Sir M’s future greatness I feel it deserves a mention at least on this page – eg “debut of Michael Caine”

   IMDB credits Dickie with 28 awards and 22 noms as an actor/director/best picture producer; and Celebrity Net Worth currently quotes his net worth on his death in 2014 as $23 million in 2019 prices which is excellent for someone who had his origins in the British cinema.

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   1. Hey Bob…..Dunkirk’s domestic to worldwide gross is one of the biggest differences I have seen so far….earning around $13 million in adjusted gross here….but around $75 million in adjusted world wide gross. So many British 1940s and 1950s movies did not make the table. I am efforting finding those grosses. It looks like here in the United States….most played in New York and Los Angeles…..but did not travel the country. For future UMR pages on John Mills, Trevor Howard and Michael Redgrave I hope to have more box office results from their British movies on the 1940s and 1950s.

      Thanks for the net worth and awards information. Good to know “Dickie” keep his feet on the ground. I like when actors and actresses can do that when they become stars. Good stuff as always.

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4. In saying that the other cinematic achievements of “Dickie” as he liked his friends to call him did not obscure his achievements as an actor The Master for once is right. “Somebody should be making a note of that for history. Those things are important.” [Richard Milhous Nixon on being addressed as ‘Mr President’ for the first time after his election in 1968.]

   Dickie was not just an exceptionally memorable performer in specific roles but had an overall fine acting range as well. For example he played respected establishment figures in the likes of The Great Escape and Jurassic Park and loathsome/murderous spivs in films such as Brighton Rock and SOS Pacific; and indeed could even use his spiv persona to do comedy in movies like The Boulting Brothers’ “Privates Progress”.

   He was in fact fond of comedy and gave us movies such as the 1952 Father’s Doing Fine’. IN SOS Pacific he played in all seriousness a nasty and menacing low-life character; but nevertheless had audiences laughing when panicking as the aircraft starts to crash dive he grabs a security axe and tries to break out of the plunging plane and has to be restrained. Nobody could do unsavoury and cowardly Brit low-life quite like our Dickie in his early years!

   Dickie was indeed one of the most prestigious actors of the 1940s/50s British cinema and formed a memorable partnership with Sir John Mills in 3 movies: Dunkirk/Morning Departure/and 1956’s The Baby and the Battleship in which Dickie again used his spiv character to enhance the comedy. In all 3 movies Sir John was the topped billed star; and in 1950’s Morning Departure the 17 year-old future Sir Maurice Micklewhite had a small role as a tea-boy in his film debut – a future British Great supporting two other then-contemporary Brit Greats!

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   1. Hey Bob. Thanks for the thoughts on Sir Richard Attenborough. Always a good day when Joel and Bob agree on things. For almost 40 years…every movie he starred or directed is in the page. Sadly things get bad pre 1960….so like the Bogarde page I just put the reviews at the bottom of the page for his British movies.

      Interesting look at his “spiv persona”…not a term used here. As for Mills…they made 2 more movies for a toal of 5. That was almost a trivia nugget, but went with Anthony Hopkins instead. As for Sir Michael. Hmmmm….I have read all of his biographies and I do not remember him writing about appearing in Operation Disaster/Morning Departure. He did work as a file clerk for a film company around that age…so maybe they threw him on the set for a day. Good stuff as always.

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      1. HI BRUCE: Thanks for the two-part response. Thanks also for informing me that Johnnie and Dickie made 5 movies together; I am familiar with just the 3 that I mentioned. YOU are the only source that I know of that provides a co-star links column so it can be difficult to get a ready overview of all of a thespian’s films at times.

         A $75 million adjusted gross in the 1950s for Dunkirk was massive but it figures because the queues in Belfast for it for example were massive and it was retained here for many weeks. I appreciate that stat as I have never before seen ANY gross at all quoted for Dunkirk.

         I suspect that if Mr Gimme More had just MADE the tea and had not even appeared on set that would have been enough to earn him a Cogerson credit for the movie!!

         I look forward to your pages on Brits Johnnie etc and of course to any stats you can provide for Brit movies of yesteryear – a rare find indeed; but I don’t think even Joel could compete with you as a movie statistician. Meanwhile Keep safe.Team Cogerson.

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         1. Hey Bob. From Dan’s lists. The five Mills/Attenborough movies….though I imagine they only worked together in the three you are thinking about.

            55 JOHN MILLS Dunkirk (1958)
            55 JOHN MILLS Hamlet (1996)
            55 JOHN MILLS In Which We Serve (1942)
            55 JOHN MILLS Morning Departure (1950)
            55 JOHN MILLS The Baby and the Battleship (1956)

            Dunkirk was sitting on the Dunkirk Wiki page for awhile, Mike alerted me to that one a few weeks ago….it just finally got into the database last night.

            Mills is one of those “two listers”…Joel subject and an Oscar winner…so he is coming soon. Good stuff.

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5. “After a lifetime of acting, Richard Attenborough took home an Oscar for Best Director in 1982 for Gandhi. The award is richly deserved, but Attenborough’s directorial achievement does not obscure his excellent contributions as a performer” – 1983 Rating The Movie Stars book

   Rating The Movie Stars 4 Star Richard Attenborough Performances
   1947’s Brighton Rock
   1950’s Operation Disaster
   1951’s The Magic Box
   1954’s Eight O’Clock Walk
   1960’s The Angry Silence
   1963’s The Great Escape
   1964’s Seance on a Wet Afternoon
   1965’s The Flight of the Phoenix
   1971’s Ten Rillington Place

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   1. 341 Joel subjects have UMR pages, meaning 69 more to go. Under 70…..finally.

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