So jump in the Cogerson Time Machine and let’s go back to January 1966. If you were a film buff back then and interested in knowing box office grosses you were pretty much out of luck. USA Today and their weekend box office report was still 16 years away. Box Office Mojo and their daily reporting was still 32 years away and Ultimate Movie Rankings was still 45 years away from existing.
Nope…back then your main source of information was Variety magazine. Now….granted you could see how a movie was doing in big cities like New York and Los Angeles on a weekly basis…that is…. if you could find a copy of Variety back then. That might have scratched the itch a little bit…but it had to be frustrating trying to keep track of how a movie was doing by only knowing how it did in a few select cities.
So with the lack of information out there…..Variety’s yearly anniversary issues had to be the highlight of the year for box office treasure hunters. Usually published in the first week of January….the anniversary issue listed the Top Box Office Rental movies of the year and an All Time Box Office Rental Champ list. Well over the years we have collected almost all of the Variety anniversary issues from 1940 to 1980. There is lots of box office gold in those magazines. Since we have fun looking at those yearly lists….we thought it would be a good idea to do a page that showed the Top 100 Rental movies of all-time. The following table was from Variety’s January 6th, 1966 issue.
Top 100 All Time Box Office 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 movies by the studios that made the movies
- Sort movies by the stars of he movies
- Sort movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort 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 movie received.
- Sort 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.
| Rank | Movie (Year) | Studio | UMR Co-Star Link | Box Office Rentals | Critic Audience Rating | Oscar Nom / Win | UMR Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gone with the Wind (1939) | MGM | Clark Gable & Vivien Leigh | 41,200,000 | 90.00% | 13 / 08 | 95.30 | |
| Ben-Hur (1959) | MGM | Charlton Heston | 38,600,000 | 88.67% | 12 / 11 | 94.67 | |
| Ten Commandments, The (1956) | Paramount | Charlton Heston & Vincent Price | 34,200,000 | 85.00% | 07 / 01 | 81.10 | |
| Mary Poppins (1964) | Disney | Julie Andrews & Dick Van Dyke | 28,500,000 | 81.00% | 13 / 05 | 84.70 | |
| Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | United Artists | David Niven & Shirley MacLaine | 23,500,000 | 70.50% | 08 / 05 | 85.34 | |
| Cleopatra (1963) | 20th Century Fox | Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton | 23,000,000 | 47.33% | 09 / 04 | 67.88 | |
| How the West Was Won (1963) | MGM | Gregory Peck & Debbie Reynolds | 22,000,000 | 76.00% | 08 / 03 | 78.47 | |
| Sound of Music, The (1965) | 20th Century Fox | Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer | 20,000,000 | 82.33% | 10 / 05 | 91.70 | |
| Goldfinger (1964) | United Artists | Sean Connery | 19,700,000 | 81.00% | 00 / 00 | 69.07 | |
| My Fair Lady (1964) | Warner Brothers | Rex Harrison & Audrey Hepburn | 19,000,000 | 83.00% | 12 / 08 | 92.01 | |
| West Side Story (1961) | United Artists | Natalie Wood & Rita Moreno | 19,000,000 | 80.00% | 11 / 10 | 90.60 | |
| It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) | United Artists | Spencer Tracy & Mickey Rooney | 17,500,000 | 76.00% | 06 / 01 | 71.59 | |
| Robe, The (1953) | 20th Century Fox | Richard Burton & Jean Simmons | 17,500,000 | 62.50% | 05 / 02 | 74.08 | |
| South Pacific (1958) | 20th Century Fox | Mitzi Gaynor & Ray Walston | 17,500,000 | 73.00% | 03 / 01 | 68.98 | |
| Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957) | Columbia | William Holden & Alec Guinness | 17,193,000 | 88.00% | 08 / 07 | 93.56 | |
| Tom Jones (1963) | United Artists | Albert Finney | 16,150,000 | 69.50% | 10 / 04 | 85.06 | |
| Longest Day, The (1962) | 20th Century Fox | John Wayne & Robert Mitchum | 15,100,000 | 82.50% | 05 / 02 | 81.61 | |
| Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Columbia | Peter O'Toole & Anthony Quinn | 15,000,000 | 91.50% | 10 / 07 | 96.00 | |
| This is Cinerama (1952) | Cinerama | Lowell Thomas | 15,000,000 | 72.50% | 01 / 00 | 65.47 | |
| Carpetbaggers, The (1964) | Paramount | Alan Ladd | 14,500,000 | 61.00% | 00 / 00 | 59.67 | |
| Greatest Show on Earth, The (1952) | Paramount | Charlton Heston & James Stewart | 14,000,000 | 64.00% | 05 / 02 | 79.28 | |
| Spartacus (1960) | Universal Studios | Kirk Douglas & Laurence Olivier | 14,000,000 | 88.00% | 06 / 04 | 80.91 | |
| Guns of Navarone, The (1961) | Columbia | Gregory Peck & Anthony Quinn | 12,500,000 | 84.33% | 07 / 01 | 80.79 | |
| Seven Wonders of the World (1956) | Cinerama | Lowell Thomas | 12,500,000 | 75.00% | 00 / 00 | 66.25 | |
| From Here to Eternity (1953) | Columbia | Burt Lancaster & Montgomery Clift | 12,200,000 | 81.50% | 13 / 08 | 87.55 | |
| Cinerama Holiday (1955) | Cinerama | John Marsh | 12,000,000 | 75.00% | 00 / 00 | 66.25 | |
| El Cid (1961) | AA | Charlton Heston & Sophia Loren | 12,000,000 | 82.00% | 03 / 00 | 72.61 | |
| Giant (1956) | Warner Brothers | Elizabeth Taylor & James Dean | 12,000,000 | 86.00% | 10 / 01 | 84.65 | |
| White Christmas (1954) | Paramount | Bing Crosby & Danny Kaye | 12,000,000 | 78.00% | 01 / 00 | 68.06 | |
| Quo Vadis (1951) | MGM | Robert Taylor & Deborah Kerr | 11,750,000 | 75.00% | 08 / 00 | 78.08 | |
| Samson and Delilah (1950) | Paramount | Victor Mature & Directed by Cecil B. DeMille | 11,500,000 | 63.50% | 05 / 02 | 64.04 | |
| Duel in the Sun (1946) | Selznick | Gregory Peck & Jennifer Jones | 11,300,000 | 70.00% | 02 / 00 | 64.70 | |
| Irma La Douce (1963) | United Artists | Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine | 11,250,000 | 79.00% | 03 / 01 | 71.80 | |
| Best Years of Our Lives, The (1946) | RKO | Fredric March & Myna Loy | 11,200,000 | 86.00% | 08 / 07 | 92.62 | |
| Peyton Place (1957) | 20th Century Fox | Lana Turner & Lloyd Nolan | 11,050,000 | 65.50% | 09 / 00 | 72.13 | |
| Psycho (1960) | Paramount | Anthony Perkins & Directed by Alfred Hitchcock | 11,000,000 | 92.00% | 04 / 00 | 75.84 | |
| Sayonara (1957) | Warner Brothers | Marlon Brando & James Garner | 10,500,000 | 83.33% | 10 / 04 | 83.32 | |
| Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) | Disney | Walt Disney | 10,400,000 | 90.00% | 01 / 00 | 73.70 | |
| Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) | MGM | Marlon Brando & Trevor Howard | 9,800,000 | 70.67% | 07 / 00 | 75.64 | |
| Shaggy Dog, The (1959) | Disney | Fred MacMurray & Jean Hagen | 9,600,000 | 66.00% | 00 / 00 | 62.02 | |
| Operation Petticoat (1959) | Universal Studios | Cary Grant & Tony Curtis | 9,500,000 | 77.33% | 01 / 00 | 67.75 | |
| Parent Trap (1961) | Disney | Maureen O'Hara & Hayley Mills | 9,400,000 | 79.00% | 02 / 00 | 69.55 | |
| Apartment, The (1960) | United Artists | Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine | 9,300,000 | 87.50% | 10 / 05 | 94.12 | |
| Cinderella (1950) | Disney | Walt Disney | 9,250,000 | 85.00% | 03 / 00 | 72.15 | |
| Absent Minded Professor (1961) | Disney | Fred MacMurray | 9,100,000 | 70.00% | 03 / 00 | 65.10 | |
| 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) | Disney | Kirk Douglas & James Mason | 9,000,000 | 82.00% | 03 / 02 | 71.94 | |
| Auntie Mame (1958) | Warner Brothers | Rosalind Russell | 9,000,000 | 85.00% | 06 / 00 | 83.85 | |
| Caine Mutiny, The (1954) | Columbia | Humphrey Bogart & Fred MacMurray | 8,700,000 | 85.50% | 07 / 00 | 80.73 | |
| Exodus (1960) | United Artists | Paul Newman | 8,700,000 | 67.50% | 03 / 01 | 64.52 | |
| King and I, The (1956) | 20th Century Fox | Yul Brynner & Deborah Kerr | 8,500,000 | 77.00% | 09 / 05 | 84.29 | |
| Lover Come Back (1961) | Universal Studios | Rock Hudson & Doris Day | 8,500,000 | 79.00% | 01 / 00 | 68.53 | |
| This Is The Army (1943) | Warner Brothers | Ronald Reagan | 8,500,000 | 60.50% | 03 / 01 | 61.24 | |
| Mister Roberts (1955) | Warner Brothers | Henry Fonda & James Cagney | 8,500,000 | 88.00% | 03 / 01 | 80.91 | |
| That Touch of Mink (1962) | Universal Studios | Cary Grant & Doris Day | 8,500,000 | 69.33% | 03 / 00 | 64.79 | |
| From Russia With Love (1964) | United Artists | Sean Connery | 8,400,000 | 83.33% | 00 / 00 | 70.17 | |
| Lady and the Tramp (1955) | Disney | Walt Disney | 8,300,000 | 81.00% | 00 / 00 | 69.07 | |
| Swiss Family Robinson (1960) | Disney | John Mills | 8,100,000 | 81.50% | 00 / 00 | 69.30 | |
| Battle Cry (1955) | Warner Brothers | Van Heflin & Aldo Ray | 8,000,000 | 59.50% | 01 / 00 | 59.36 | |
| Bells of St. Mary's, The (1945) | RKO | Bing Crosby & Ingrid Bergman | 8,000,000 | 87.00% | 08 / 01 | 82.44 | |
| Guys and Dolls (1956) | MGM | Marlon Brando & Frank Sinatra | 8,000,000 | 77.00% | 04 / 00 | 70.66 | |
| Jolson Story, The (1946) | Columbia | Larry Parks | 8,000,000 | 75.50% | 06 / 02 | 70.08 | |
| King of Kings (1961) | MGM | Jeffrey Hunter & Robert Ryan | 8,000,000 | 75.00% | 00 / 00 | 66.25 | |
| Music Man, The (1962) | Warner Brothers | Robert Preston & Ron Howard | 8,000,000 | 79.50% | 06 / 01 | 81.86 | |
| Old Yeller (1958) | Disney | Dorothy McGuire | 8,000,000 | 81.50% | 00 / 00 | 69.30 | |
| Shane (1953) | Paramount | Alan Ladd & Van Heflin | 8,000,000 | 87.50% | 06 / 01 | 81.87 | |
| Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) | MGM | Paul Newman & Elizabeth Taylor | 7,950,000 | 85.00% | 06 / 00 | 81.98 | |
| Some Like It Hot (1959) | United Artists | Marilyn Monroe & Jack Lemmon & Tony Curtis | 7,800,000 | 91.67% | 06 / 01 | 80.83 | |
| Pinocchio (1940) | Disney | Walt Disney | 7,700,000 | 90.50% | 02 / 02 | 75.54 | |
| Pillow Talk (1959) | Universal Studios | Rock Hudson & Doris Day | 7,500,000 | 83.67% | 05 / 01 | 74.79 | |
| Trapeze (1956) | United Artists | Burt Lancaster & Tony Curtis | 7,500,000 | 63.50% | 00 / 00 | 60.84 | |
| Unsinkable Molly Brown, The (1964) | MGM | Debbie Reynolds | 7,500,000 | 69.00% | 06 / 00 | 60.69 | |
| V.I.P.s, The (1963) | MGM | Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton | 7,500,000 | 53.00% | 01 / 01 | 46.26 | |
| World of Suzie Wong, The (1960) | Paramount | William Holden | 7,500,000 | 68.50% | 00 / 00 | 63.20 | |
| How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) | 20th Century Fox | Marilyn Monroe & Lauren Bacall | 7,300,000 | 80.33% | 01 / 00 | 69.16 | |
| Alamo, The (1960) | United Artists | John Wayne & Richard Widmark | 7,200,000 | 63.67% | 07 / 01 | 71.07 | |
| No Time for Seargeants (1958) | Warner Brothers | Andy Griffith | 7,200,000 | 78.50% | 00 / 00 | 67.89 | |
| Peter Pan (1953) | Disney | Walt Disney | 7,200,000 | 78.00% | 00 / 00 | 67.66 | |
| To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) | Universal Studios | Gregory Peck & Robert Duvall | 7,200,000 | 90.33% | 08 / 03 | 87.09 | |
| What's New, Pussycat (1965) | United Artists | Peter O'Toole & Woody Allen | 7,150,000 | 46.50% | 01 / 00 | 51.51 | |
| David and Bathsheba (1951) | 20th Century Fox | Gregory Peck & Susan Hayward | 7,100,000 | 50.67% | 05 / 00 | 56.81 | |
| For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) | Paramount | Gary Cooper & Ingrid Bergman | 7,100,000 | 76.50% | 09 / 01 | 77.91 | |
| Hatari! (1962) | Paramount | John Wayn & Directed by Howard Hawks | 7,100,000 | 71.67% | 01 / 00 | 65.08 | |
| Not as a Stranger (1955) | United Artists | Frank Sinatra & Robert Mitchum | 7,100,000 | 56.00% | 01 / 00 | 57.72 | |
| Oklahoma! (1955) | RKO | Gordon MacRae & Shirley Jones | 7,100,000 | 77.50% | 04 / 02 | 70.22 | |
| Son of Flubber (1963) | Disney | Fred MacMurray | 7,100,000 | 73.00% | 00 / 00 | 65.31 | |
| Shenandoah (1965) | Universal Studios | James Stewart | 7,000,000 | 75.33% | 01 / 00 | 60.39 | |
| Gigi (1958) | MGM | Leslie Caron & Directed by Vincent Minnelli | 6,750,000 | 68.00% | 09 / 09 | 84.56 | |
| Come September (1961) | Universal Studios | Rock Hudson & Gina Lollobrigida | 6,500,000 | 74.50% | 00 / 00 | 66.02 | |
| Country Girl, The (1954) | Paramount | Bing Crosby & Grace Kelly & William Holden< | 6,500,000 | 77.00% | 07 / 02 | 77.94 | |
| Going My Way (1944) | Paramount | Bing Crosby | 6,500,000 | 75.00% | 10 / 07 | 88.25 | |
| High Society (1956) | MGM | Bing Crosby & Frank Sinatra & Grace Kelly | 6,500,000 | 74.00% | 02 / 00 | 66.58 | |
| I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) | MGM | Susan Hayward | 6,500,000 | 77.50% | 04 / 01 | 69.62 | |
| Imitation of Life (1959) | Universal Studios | Lana Turner | 6,500,000 | 80.00% | 02 / 00 | 69.40 | |
| Snows of Kilimanjaro, The (1952) | 20th Century Fox | Gregory Peck & Susan Hayward | 6,500,000 | 64.33% | 02 / 00 | 62.04 | |
| 101 Dalmatians (1961) | Disney | Walt Disney | 6,400,000 | 84.50% | 00 / 00 | 70.71 | |
| Sandpiper, The (1965) | MGM | Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor | 6,400,000 | 35.00% | 01 / 01 | 38.78 | |
| Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) | Columbia | Katharine Hepburn & Elizabeth Taylor | 6,375,000 | 72.50% | 03 / 00 | 66.27 | |
| Nun's Story, The (1959) | Warner Brothers | Audrey Hepburn | 6,300,000 | 84.50% | 08 / 00 | 82.54 | |
| War and Peace (1956) | Paramount | Audrey Hepburn & Henry Fonda | 6,250,000 | 58.50% | 03 / 00 | 61.56 | |
| Picnic (1955) | Columbia | William Holden | 6,200,000 | 65.00% | 06 / 02 | 71.90 |
We resisted the temptation to turn these rental numbers into adjusted gross numbers. It took a lot of effort…plus it would have messed up all the grosses already in our database.
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Hey Brett. These are the rental numbers that Variety was reporting in their annual January issue. It is not box office totals. I figured it is interesting to see what they were reporting back then. I am sure some movie nut like myself had this list mesmerized back then. Thanks for the question.
Hi Bruce, I just wanted to clarify: Are these numbers box office or rentals? Rentals would only include the amount that goes to the distributor/producer, and exclude the exhibitors’ share? Is that right?