Want to know the best Ronald Colman movies? How about the worst Ronald Colman movies? Curious about Ronald Colman’s box office grosses or which Ronald Colman movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Ronald Colman 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.
Ronald Colman (1891-1958) was an English Oscar® winning actor who was a major star from the 1920s to the 1940s. Colman was one of the few top silent actors to become an even bigger “talkie” star. His IMDb page shows 62 acting credits from 1917-1957. This page ranks 36 Ronald Colman movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos, and some of his silent movies were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: This Colman page was a fairly new request from Laurent. So how did it get to the top of the requests? Well….part of our movie research involves going to not so close libraries. Our last trip to the College of William and Mary’s library ended up with us borrowing 13 movie books. Well we are heading back there in a couple of weeks….so those books will be going back. Since we are about to lose those books…those book subjects need their UMR (Ultimate Movie Rankings) movie pages to be finished. So that meant we had to research and publish this Ronald Colman page. It also means Søren and Flora‘s request for Joan Fontaine will be coming soon.
Ronald Colman 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 Ronald Colman movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Ronald Colman movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Ronald Colman movies by domestic yearly box office rank
- Sort Ronald Colman 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 Ronald Colman movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Ronald Colman movie won.
- Sort Ronald Colman 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 Ronald Colmanl Table
- Nineteen Ronald Colman movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 52.78% of his movies listed. Random Harvest (1942) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Ronald Colman movie grossed $111.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 29 Ronald Colman movies are rated as good movies…or 80.55% of his movies. Random Harvest (1942) is his highest rated movie while The Story of Mankind (1957) is his lowest rated movie.
- Thirteen Ronald Colman movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 36.11% of his movies.
- Two Ronald Colman movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 5.55% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 39.86. 29 Ronald Colman movies scored higher that average….or 80.55 of his movies. Random Harvest (1942) got the the highest UMR Score while The Story of Mankind (1957) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Ronald Colman
1. Ronald Charles Colman was born in Richmond, Surrey, England in 1891.
2. Ronald Colman joined the London Scottish Regiment and was seriously wounded while serving at the Western Front during World War I. The injury to his ankle resulted in a life long limp that Colman tried hide throughout the rest of his acting career. Other actors that saw service with the London Scottish Regiment during World War 1 included: Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, Cedric Hardwicke and Basil Rathbone.
3. Ronald Colman’s path to stardom: 1. Made professional stage in 1914. 2. Appeared in a few English silent films from 1917 to 1919. 3. Headed to America in 1920. 4. Appeared in a few Hollywood silent films in 1920 and 1923. 5. Lillian Gish requested Colman for her 1923 movie The White Sister. 6. Colman became of the biggest silent movie stars from 1923 to 1928. 7. Talkies arrived…and Coleman’s voice helped him become an even bigger star in the 1930s and 1940s.
4. Ronald Colman was nominated for 4 Academy Awards®: 1929’s Bulldog Drummond, 1929’s Condemned, 1942’s Random Harvest and 1947’s A Double Life. He won the Best Actor Oscar® for A Double Life
5. Ronald Colman got nominated and won 1 Golden Globe® award: 1947’s A Double Life.
6. Ronald Colman was married 2 times. His first marriage was Thelma Raye from 1920 to 1934. His second marriage was to Benita Hume from 1938 until his death in 1958. They had one daughter, Juliet Benita Colman.
7. Ronald Colman appeared in dual roles many times throughout his career. The most famous: If I Were King (1938), Random Harvest (1942), A Double Life (1947) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).
8. Check out Ronald Colman‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Want more stats? Well here are adjusted worldwide box office grosses on 8 Ronald Colman Movies
- Bulldog Drummond (1929) $120.30 million adjusted worldwide gross
- Kismet (1944) $334.30 million adjusted worldwide gross
- Lucky Partners (1940) $119.70 million adjusted worldwide gross
- My Life With Caroline (1941) $81.50 million adjusted worldwide gross
- Random Harvest (1942) $678.50 million adjusted worldwide gross
- The Story of Mankind (1957) $17.50 million adjusted worldwide gross
- A Tale Of Two Cities, A (1935) $230.50 million adjusted worldwide gross
- The Talk of the Town, The (1942) $126.40 million adjusted worldwide gross
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
A popular actor in his time. Looking at the list I’m surprised at the amount of Ronald Colman films I haven’t seen. The Prisoner of Zenda is my favorite of his films, I own it on DVD along with the color remake starring Stewart Granger.
Lost Horizon was an interesting movie, directed by Frank Capra, taking ages to finish it was an expensive flop, Capra cut 30mins out and still no one was interested. 35 years later a big budget musical remake starring Peter Finch was even more disastrous.
I’ve seen just 6 Ronald Colman movies from your list. that I know for certain. I haven’t seen Random Harvest which tops your UMR chart or A Double Life which won Colman his only Oscar (and a Golden Globe).
Nice work as always. Voted Up.
Hey Steve.
1. I have seen Granger’s Prisoner of Zenda but not Colman’s. But I want to too.
2. Lost Horizon actually made some money….it just cost so much….that it was a disaster…pretty much like Costner’s Waterworld….which almost grossed a good amount….but cost so much it got labeled a bomb.
3. Tally counts….actually our tally count is catching on….and in this case we did not do too well. Chris is at 12, Flora is at 11, Lyle is at 8….and we finished as non-medalists….with you at 6 and me dead last at 4.
4. A Double Life is interesting….worth a view…while Random Harvest is one of the great chick flicks of all-time.
5. As always…thanks for your thoughts on Mr. Ronald Colman.
YES YES YES. A great thank you.I not expect to see this chart so fast. I also want to ask if you can do Ramon Novarro and, why not Rudolph Valentino ? Again, thank you very much.
Hey Laurent….yep I got to this one pretty quick. Glad you like your requested page. I will add Ramon Novarro and Rudolph Valentino to the list. They might require some major research since their peaks were during the silent movie era. Thanks for the suggestions.
Great job Bruce. I’ve only seen about eight of these films but I liked every one of them.
Random Harvest, The Prisoner of Zenda, A Tale of Two Cities and The Talk of the Town are my favorites. I like your Glenn Ford page as well. I agree that Ford’s best performance was in 3:10 to Yuma.
Hey Lyle….thanks for checking out my Colman and Ford pages…been cranking out these pages for the last few months. Of the three Colman movies you listed I have seen Random Harvest and Talk of the Town…..and want to see the others. As for Glenn Ford….his “good” bad guy was fun to watch in 3:10 to Yuman.
Among films not listed, I have a PVR recorded version of Night of Romance waiting for me. It was recently restored and it aired on TCM
Flora
Hey Flora….I did not even really give Her Night of Romance much of a look….but going back to the Ronald Colman:A Bio-Bibliography…it says: Her Night of Romance ‘s commercial success prompted Schenck to reteam the stars(Colman & Constance Talmadge) in Her Sister From Paris. So it sounds like it did well at the box office. Not enough information to get box office grosses. But I do see it got good reviews too. Hope you enjoy it.
Hi, Bruce.
Heads up: In regards to where the other movies are that were not included, you start with Ronald Colman and then you switch to Glenn Ford.
Colman’s costar in Raffles is Kay FRANCIS with an I, not an E. You have her name correct in other places.
I pleased to see this page Bruce. Always interested in the drivel comments you make about how and why and how long it takes for you to do pages on certain people. I’ve seen a lot of Colman’s movies and many of the ones I have not seen are on my to-see list.
Tops of my to-see list is Lost Horizon, which is the highest ranking movie I haven’t seen. It is not through lack of access to it, but I have to be sure I have lots of time and no interruptions because that movie has lost visual footage, but the sound recordings still exist for the lost footage. When it was restored the people who restored it put in stills of the actors. I need to be sure I watch it like I do a silent movie where my eyes never leave the screen. I think I will have to record it and watch the recording to be sure I don’t get lost if interruptions that always happen do happen during the still image portion.
The highest ranking movie I have seen is Random Harvest at Number 1.
The highest ranking film I have not seen is the aforementioned number 2 film Lost Horizon.
I have seen only 11 of his films. Again, I thought I had seen more than this.
Movies also on my to-see list which are likely to air on channels I get are A Tale of Two Cities, Beau Geste, and his other Kay Francis movies.
My favourites are Prisoner of Zenda, Random Harvest, and Raffles..only listing 3 top films because of my low total.
Flora
I have seen
Hey Flora.
1. Thanks for the headsup….those issues have been fixed. I blame that on doing two pages on the same day.
2. My wife and I debate about the drivel part…but I get a kick out reading it too….especially as the page gets older.
3. Hmmmm….interesting about Lost Horizon….I saw it a few years ago….now I am not sure if I saw an edited….thus not complete version.
4. I am at 4….so your 11 almost triples me. I have seen the Top 3 and #6…I actually just rewatched Talk of the Town a couple of days ago. I enjoyed that one more on the second viewing…..though it is very dated now.
5. A Tale Of Two Cities and Prisoner of Zenda are the two that made my list of movies to watch as I was doing this page.
6. So Raffles made your Top 3….very interesting…I will have to check that one out too.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your Ronald Coleman thoughts.