26 thoughts on “William Demarest Movies”

1. Not really familiar with this actor, didn’t even know what he looked like until I saw the photos on the page. But I did see 14 of the 76 films on the chart.

   Favorites include- Viva Las Vegas, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

   I see he has appeared in a few Preston Sturges classics, I’ve seen them but I can’t remember him. Maybe because I’ve only watched them a few times over the decades.

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   1. Hey Steve…..he was one of the best character actors working back then….I have only seen 9 of his movies….so your tally has we beat. In the United States….his television My Three Sons show made him a household name. I am not surprised that show has not left a footprint in England. I liked and enjoyed your 3 favorites. Yep….he and Sturges got along great……he has some funny lines in his Sturges’ movies. Thanks for checking out this new old page……it has been sitting collecting dust for a very long time.

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2. ” Is there something wrong with his comment? It looks pretty straight forward to me. Just can’t figure out the anti comment comments. What am I missing?”

   “THE ROLLING STONES ALBUM 1965 – DECEMBER’S CHILDREN
   The same old places and the same old songs
   We’ve been going there for much too long
   There’s something wrong
   And it gives me that feeling inside
   That I know I must be right
   It’s the singer not the song

   Which is more important? The singer or the song? The Stones say that it’s the singer, not the song. Dirk Bogarde said the same thing as he and John Mills lay dying at the end of the 1961 British movie, The Singer Not the Song. I have to think that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards must have seen that movie, and that it inspired this song.”

   In the Hirschhorn Review above the “song” is being sung by a “singer” who was a failure as a vocal artist and yet became a “carpetbagger” who sought to pontificate about artists in movies who WERE enormous successes.

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   1. 🙂

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3. “It’s not the critic who counts, not the one who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood, and who strives valiantly,”

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   1. Gee Ma. I WAS right all along. You can “fool some of the people all of the time.”!

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   2. Without Joel Hirschhorn’s Rating The Movie Stars book….there would be no UMR.com. You always have to remember the people that helped you develop an idea.

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      1. Good Morning Mr. Hirschhorn. Or may I call you Joel? because it could mean a lot, to you at least, if we are regarded as fellow-professionals of the critics’ trade though you may address me as Mr Shipman if you wish. I have been speaking to a Mr. Roy who comments regularly on the site and I put it to him that as a critic myself I though he was perhaps being a bit hard on you.

         I think that Mr Roy’s main difficulty is that he has so much respect for the moderator of this site Mr Cogerson’s insight into all aspects of film making that Mr Roy cannot understand why Mr Cogerson is so addicted to parroting your opinions.

         Mr Roy argues that anything accurate you have ever said about movies had probably already occurred to Mr Cogerson himself and the latter’s viewers may attach more weight to it if they knew that it was also their own moderator’s opinion which of course makes you superfluous to the equation. Mr Roy feels that it is refreshing albeit false modesty on Mr C’s part to suggest that he could not have created this site without you. Talent will out explained Sir Stanley Baker as he savaged a critic who said that Sir Stan had “made” Sir Michael Caine by putting him in Zulu.

         Accordingly what alarms Mr Roy most is that it may be a very strange obsession with YOU and not your critiques that seem to be enslaving Mr C in the same way that Mr DeCaprio had an obsession with meeting Mr Brando and Mr Jean-Paul Belmondo developed a fixation for Mr Bogart. “All his life he really wanted to be Burt Lancaster.” said Kirk Douglas’ biographer. Do you think Mr Roy is right in believing that secretly Mr Cogerson wants to be you, Joel? Best Wishes from MR SHIPMAN

         Everywhere you want I always go
         I always give in because, babe, you know
         You just say so cause you give me that
         Feeling inside that I know must be right
         It’s the singer not the song
         It’s not the way you give in willingly
         Others do it without thrilling me
         Giving me that same old feeling inside that I
         Know I must be right
         It’s the singer not the song
         The same old places and the same old songs
         We’ve been going there for much too long
         There’s something wrong and it gives me that feeling
         Inside that I know I must be right
         It’s the singer not the song
         It’s the singer not the song
         It’s the singer not the song

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         1. Hey Mr. Shipman…..maybe the correct way to say it….is the version of this website is strongly influenced by Joel’s Rating The Movie Stars Book. In that book…..which…..even though is now 30 plus years old is the only one that rated each individual movie of a performer.

            When reading how to get a successful blog/website going…..it said find a niche and stick to it…..so we decided to follow Joel’s approach of doing every single movie of a performer….or at least to the best of our ability. There are a few websites do this….us…..Ranker…..and now Box Office Madness. UMR was one of the first to do that…..it was because of Joel’s book.

            As for why we keep including his Top Rated Performances…..mainly as a shout out to Joel…but also because his four star system is easy to represent….and even when he downgrades an actor he still lists gives credit to the great movies. Brando has 10 or 11 4 star performances…John Wayne has close to 20 4 star performances……generally his 4 star performances are rarely disagreed with.

            Thanks for the comment and the kind words. They are appreciated….even if they had to go to comment hell to finally appear on the website….sorry about that.

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            1. HELLO Mr Cogerson

               1 I would like to call you Bruce if I may and hope that you will address me as David. Anyway I appreciate you contacting me personally .Let’s cut out these “middle men”!

               2 I see that you have a system that you stick to. Have you ever read Jean-Paul Sartre first novel Nausea written in 1938 and a Nobel prizewinner? In that story there is a character nicknamed the Autodidact [meaning did act automatically or mechanically] and HE too had a system from which he wouldn’t depart which was to sit in a public library day after day and read EVERY book in the library regardless of subject or quality from start to finish from A – Z. When the novel’s central character caomes across him he had been there for many years and has just gotten as far as D if I recall correctly.

               3 Anyway Bruce I think that Mr Roy will no more change his opinion of Mr Hirschhorn than you will modify your systems. However I am heartened that Mr Roy admires YOUR work and wouldn’t want him to change THAT attitude so all I can say is keep up your excellent work

               YOURS DAVID

4. When I’ve seen the colossal billions that the Cogerson site attributes to many supporting players it has always reminded me of the character actor Milliard Mitchell and until now I could never figure out why.

   However when I saw this new page on William Demarest the mystery suddenly lifted because Demarest and Mitchell have always in some way reminded me of each other in certain kinds of roles and in Singin in the Rain Milliard along with O’Conner and Kelly lift the screen at the end of the movie to reveal that it has been Debbie Reynolds’ and not the miming Jean Hagen’s voice that the audiences in the plot have been hearing all along.

   So when I see Demarest being accorded all those grosses for the films of for example Bob Hope, Henry Fonda, James Stewart Abbott & Costello, and Alan Ladd it occurs to me that maybe Demarest was been behind a screen somewhere on set carrying the films concerned and all of those supposed great stars have merely been William’s puppets.

   If so the cinema owners too were fooled because on the marquees not only did William never get billed above John Wayne but he was not even listed before John PAYNE [in 1952’s The Blazing Forest].

   This site does a great job in adjusting for inflation but in the back of my mind is the old cliché about giving someone enough rope to hang him/her self. Possibly the site is now so awash with inflated monies that it feels that it can throw them at just about anybody.

   When the 1978 Superman the Movie was reviewed way back then it received generally positive reviews but one critic opined that there was a bit TOO MUCH repetitive flying about and suggested that every now and again someone should have taken a pair of scissors and shouted “Cut!”

   This site seems to have an OCD with the views of one particular critic but it could do worse than have occasional regard to the opinion of that long-ago 1978 critic. However the 1978 Superman was one movie – and there are a few others – where the two actors billed alone above the title were in supporting roles and deserved credit for the grosses of the movie though BOTH of them getting FULL credit does suggest that Cogerson is a disciple of that school of economics that believes 2 and 2 make 5.

   Normally the Cogerson site strangely does not believe that a performer’s reputation should benefit from a success that he/she knows nothing about [and by that KIND of logic there is a case for denying for example Peter Finch the posthumous Oscar for his wonderful performance in Network]. However certainly the site has built a magical monument to also-rans that not just inflates grosses but would probably inflate their egos as well if they were aware of the fantastical edifice.

   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
   A stately pleasure-dome decree:
   Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
   Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea.

   [From A vision in a Dream by Samuel Taylor Coleridge]

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   1. Apologies to Mr O’Connor for initially spelling his surname as O’Conner.

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      1. Sorry Assistant Editor of Variety…one of website problems is finding our 5 minute edit button for comments…hopefully that will be found soon.

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   2. Hey Assistant Editor of Variety…Demarest was one of the good character actors during the Golden Era of Hollywood. He was a well respected thespian…..but I agree he was not the star of many of his movies…..but he was one of the best supporting actors out there.

      The trivia…that I have found interesting revolves around My Three Sons……growing up…I had no idea he and MacMurray had been such big stars in the day….and then I think it is interesting….that Demarest had an Oscar nomination…while MacMurray was shut out.

      As for the critic we mention all the time….with the exception of our website…..it is the only source that gives a rating for every movie a star made…..though in this case Joel left off countless movies in his breakdown.

      Good thoughts and trivia as always….it is greatly appreciated.

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5. A salty, engaging character actor, William Demarest is most closely identified with his role as Al Jolson’s manager in The Jolson Story. Demarest added spice to a good chiller, Night Has A Thousand Eyes, and Stanley Kramer’s zany comedy It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Younger generations may remember his as Uncle Charlie on the “My Three Sons” television series”.

   Our 4 Star William Demarest Performances According to Our Rating The Movie Stars book.
   1937’s Easy Living
   1939’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
   1940’s The Farmer’s Daughter
   1940’s Tin Pan Alley
   1940’s The Great McGinty
   1941’s The Lady Eve
   1941’s Sullivan’s Travels
   1944’s Hail The Conquering Hero
   1944’s The Miracle of Morgan Creek
   1946’s The Jolson Story
   1951’s The First Legion

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   1. Hey Joel….thanks for having some thoughts on the movie career of William Demarest…..what a long successful career he had.

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   2. Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual.
      Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet,” Essays, Second Series (1883), p. 9

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   3. Loved watching William Demarest as Uncle Charlie on Nick At Night. Grumpy but loving. This is a truly impressive movie career. As for the Joel comment, I think I am missing something. Is there something wrong with his comment? It looks pretty straight forward to me. Just can’t figure out the anti comment comments. What am I missing?

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      1. Hey Helakoski…..glad you were able to discover Demarest on Nick at Night. As for Joel…..he has some negative things to say about Marlon Brando…..and it has really irked some of Marlon’s fans. But you are right….Joel’s thoughts on Demarest are pretty tame…and based on some of those 4 star performances….are right on the mark.

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