Walter Pidgeon Movies

pidgeon 111111Want to know the best Walter Pidgeon movies?  How about the worst Walter Pidgeon movies?  Curious about Walter Pidgeon box office grosses or which Walter Pidgeon movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Walter Pidgeon 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.

Walter Pidgeon (1897-1984)  was a Canadian American Oscar®-nominated actor.  His movie career spanned an incredible 52 years. His IMDb page shows 138 acting credits from 1926-1978. This page ranks 76 Walter Pidgeon movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, documentaries, shorts and his silent films were not included in the rankings.

Drivel part of the page:  This page comes from a subtle hint from Marcel.  Marcel recently commented on our Greer Garson page. He asked the question….”Why is Walter Pidgeon’s name not blue in the Co-Star column?”   Well the answer to that question…and an answer he knew….was we did not have a Walter Pidgeon page…..well we do now.  Thankfully, Pidgeon, spent many years working at MGM….so we were able to find lots of great box office information on his movies.

Walter Pidgeon in 1956's Forbidden Planet...maybe having a picture of movie will ease Steve's pain when he looks at rankings.
Walter Pidgeon in 1956’s Forbidden Planet…maybe having a picture of this movie will ease Steve’s pain when he looks at the overall rankings.

Walter Pidgeon 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 Walter Pidgeon movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Walter Pidgeon movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Walter Pidgeon movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Walter Pidgeon 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 Walter Pidgeon movie received.
  • Sort Walter Pidgeon 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.
  • *** If worldwide box office is the same as domestic box office then it means we could not find the worldwide box office gross

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Walter Pidgeon Table

  1. Twenty-six Walter Pidgeon movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 34.21% of his movies listed. Mrs. Miniver (1942) was his biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Walter Pidgeon movie grosses $94.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. That translates to a career adjusted box office of $7.15 billion.
  4. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  40 Walter Pidgeon movies are rated as good movies…or 52.63% of his movies.  The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is his highest rated movie while Sextette (1978) is his lowest rated movie.
  5. Fifteen Walter Pidgeon movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 19.73% of his movies.
  6. Five Walter Pidgeon movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.57% of his movies.
  7. An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 32 Walter Pidgeon movies scored higher that average….or 42.10% of his movies.  Mrs. Miniver (1942) got the the highest UMR Score while Sextette (1978) got the lowest UMR Score.
Walter Pidgeon in 1961's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Walter Pidgeon in 1961’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Possibly Interesting Facts About Walter Pidgeon

1. Walter Davis Pidgeon was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada in 1897.

2. Fred Astaire heard Walter Pidgeon singing at a party while appearing with an amateur company in Boston and got him an agent.  Pidgeon would first gain fame for his singing voice in some of the first sound musicals ever made.

3. Greer Garson played the wife of Walter Pidgeon a total of eight times; in 1941’s Blossoms in the Dust,1942’s Mrs. Miniver,1943’s Madame Curie, 1944’s Mrs. Parkington, 1948’s Julia Misbehaves , 1950’s The Miniver Story, 1949’s That Forsyte Woman and 1953’s  Scandal at Scourie.  They also both appeared in 1943’s The Youngest Profession.

4.  The Greer Garson/Walter Pidgeon duo was one of the most successful screen teams ever.  Their 9 movies earned $1.47 BILLION when looking at adjusted North America grosses.

5.  Walter Pidgeon was nominated for two Best Actor Oscars®:  1942’s Mrs. Miniver and 1943’s Madame Curie.

6. Walter Pidgen and Ryan Gosling are the only two Canadians to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar®. Pidgeon held the distinction alone for 64 years.

7. Walter Pidgeon starred in back to back Best Picture Oscar® winners. 1941’s How Green Was My Valley and 1942’s Mrs. Miniver.

8. Walter Pidgeon was married two times and had one child.  His first wife Edna died in 1926 while giving birth to their daughter, Edna.  His second wife, Ruth, was his secretary before they got married.  They were married from 1931 till his death in 1984.

9. Walter Pidgeon had a notoriously poor memory for names, referring to anyone whose name he could not remember as “Joe.” This became such a habit that, for his birthday one year, the cast and crew of the picture he was working on bought him a present: A director’s chair enscribed “Joe Pidgeon.”

10. Check out Walter Pidgeon ‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Collateral Damage Section:  While researching this page we discovered better box office information on the following movies: (1) Julia Misbehaves (1948) box office moved up….Elizabeth Taylor page updated.  (2) Executive Suite (1954) box office moved down….William Holden & Shelley Winters pages updated. (3) The Secret Heart (1946) box office moved down….Claudette Colbert & Lionel Barrymore pages updated. (4) That Forsyte Woman (1949) box office moved down….Errol Flynn page updated. (5) Funny Girl (1968) box office moved down….Barbra Streisand page updated.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

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73 thoughts on “Walter Pidgeon Movies”

    1. Hey Dan. I am not aware of Kenner Kemp, but 15 movies with Walter Pidgeon is an impressive amount.

      Reply

  2. bruce, I noticed walter pidgeon did not get credit for his 2 Oscar nomination under the names of mrs miniver and madame curie. we will observe his 121 birthday 9/23/1897 and his passing 9/25/1984 . 5 best picture nominations(3 with garson, one with ohara, one with streisand) with 2 wins . greer garsons best leading man. 9 movies together, some in support. great career

    Reply

    1. Hey bob cox….good eye….not sure why the database was not picking up his two nominations…but I unstuck it….and now he is getting his proper credit. Happy belated birthday to Walter…thanks for the headsup.

      Reply

  3. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating and comment, much appreciated.

    Glad you liked the stills and posters.

    Would you believe I was about to finish off the video when I decided to do one more check up just in case I’ve missed anything important and discovered to my horror I hadn’t included ‘How Green Was My Valley’ to Pidgeon’s list of highly rated movies! [cue gasps] That would have been embarrassing considering it’s ranking on the video.

    So for a while I was happy to see one of my favorite sci-fi films sitting comfortably at the top of Walter Pidgeon’s top 30 and than John Ford’s Oscar winning movie knocks it down to no.2, it just ain’t fair!

    Bruce ranks Forbidden Planet above How Green Was My Valley on his critics chart, good one Bruce. I wish I was that brave.

    As Bruce notes in the trivia box Walt and Greer Garson made 8 films together and they’re all included in the video. I haven’t seen any of them, he admitted smiling evilly.

    I think you can guess which film person is coming up next on video… no don’t worry I won’t repeat the same posters and stills, all new I promise.

    Reply

    1. STEVE:

      1 There was an episode of the sitcom Frasier where he travels around video libraries looking for a copy of How Green was My Valley. Frasier and his brother Niles considered themselves artistic intellectuals and they would never have put Forbidden Planet above How Green Was my Valley. Sorry Bruce!

      2 Greer Garson was a great actress and star [and indeed she self-identified as Northern Irish] but when I started watching movies in the 1950s her heyday had come and gone so her important movies were largely consigned to reruns in the smaller cinemas and TV. However we young boys of the 1950s saw Greer’s 1940s product as being ‘women’s pictures’ and of course we were more interested in the stalwart efforts of the likes of first Chuck and then the Duke, Peck, Widmark and Glenn Ford. Therefore the earliest movie that I can recall ever seeing Walter in was the B crime thriller The Sellout which I was pleased to see you included and in fact showcased with two excellent and saucy posters!

      Reply

    2. Hey Steve…yep leaving out his top movie would have been somewhat embarrising…..but it happens…..I know I did it once. Luckliy you figured it out in time. In my case…I found out when a commented asked where a movie was….heck it was probably you that did that…..lol.

      Reply

  4. STEVE

    1 In 1961 a friend of mine was sacked from a job and to lift his mind he and I went to see a rerun of How Green was My Valley. Accordingly every time Walter’s name comes up I think of that time. Bruce and you agree on 4 of the Top 5 of Walter’s movies

    2 Your posters show why we used to nickname Walter Mr Greer Garson as it was always Greer Garson/Walter Pigeon in that order and she would have any title role in their joint movies, eg Madam Curie, Mrs Miniver. Your poster for the latter film is top notch and others that I admired were The Rack, Voyage to Bottom of Sea, Blossoms in the Dust, and Calling Bulldog Drummond co-starring Walt with that long forgotten fine British actress Margaret Leighton who sadly died at just 53.

    3 The stills were all first class with the most pleasing being Walt with the beard, him with the robot and Walter and Gable with some bit actress or other whose name I didn’t quite pick up in Too Hot to Handle. Definitely 9.3/10 overall. Most enjoyable.

    Reply

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