19th Academy Awards 1947
Academy Award Rankings

Ranking All The Movies Nominated At The 19th Academy Awards In 1947

“What are the best movies nominated for the 19th Academy Awards in 1947?” We looked at all 55 movies nominated for an Oscar in 1947 and ranked them again one another to answer that very question!

We took all 55 movies that were nominated for an Academy Award in 1947 and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked on our list below, with the full chart of rankings included at the bottom of the page. We did not use Metacritic scores because of the lack of data for older movies on that site. Metacritic scores will be included when we do rankings for other years in the future.

If you want to see the rankings for additional years you can visit our Academy Award Rankings page.

Happy Viewing!



The Top 1947 Academy Award Movie Rankings



51 (Tie) ) College Queen

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Two-reel

Tom Cannon, a tap-dancer senior at State University sets out to find a College Queen for the upcoming competition. He selects Cindy Harris, a girl who is working her way through college as a waitress and can sing and dance. They win and she is named College Queen. Songs include “I’m Learning a Lot in College” and “Down the Old Ox Road.”



51 (Tie) ) Dive-Hi Champs

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, One-reel

1946 Oscar nominated short film



51 (Tie) ) Golden Horses

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, One-reel

1946 Oscar nominated short film



51 (Tie) ) Life at the Zoo

Nominated For:

  • Best Documentary, Short Subjects

Oscar nominated 1946 short documentary



51 (Tie) ) Paramount News Issue #37

Nominated For:

  • Best Documentary, Short Subjects

Oscar nominated 1946 short documentary



50 ) Atomic Power

Nominated For:

  • Best Documentary, Short Subjects

A recreation of the making of the atomic bomb leading up to the Trinity test.



49 ) Smart as a Fox

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, One-reel

A fox cub experiences life in the forest.



48 ) Sure Cures

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, One-reel

In this comedic Pete Smith Specialty short film, examined is the folly of using “home remedies” for various ills.



46 (Tie) ) A Boy and His Dog

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Two-reel (Win)

One day while walking by, 11 year old Davy discovers that a chained gentle dog, Buck, is badly wounded around the neck because of the thick, tight collar he is made to constantly wear by his unfeeling owner. When Buck comes through the fence and becomes stuck, Davy removes the collar. Even though the boy tells him to stay in his owner’s yard, the dog follows him home.



46 (Tie) ) Traffic with the Devil

Nominated For:

  • Best Documentary, Short Subjects

This “Theater of Life” series short looks at traffic problems in Los Angeles, California, as described and experienced by Sgt. Charles Reineke, a traffic enforcement officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.



45 ) Night and Day

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture

Swellegant and elegant. Delux and delovely. Cole Porter was the most sophisticated name in 20th-century songwriting. And to play him on screen, Hollywood chose debonair icon Cary Grant. Grant stars for the first time in color in this fanciful biopic. Alexis Smith plays Linda, whose serendipitous meetings with Cole lead to a meeting at the alter. More than 20 Porter songs grace this tail of triumph and tragedy, with Grand lending is amiable voice to “You’re the Top”, “Night and Day” and more. Monty Wooley, a Yale contemporary of Porter, portrays himself. And Jane Wyman, Mary Martin, Eve Arden and others provide vocals and verve. Lights down. Curtain up. Standards embraced by generations are yours to enjoy in “Night and Day.”

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42 (Tie) ) Facing Your Danger

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, One-reel (Win)

Part of the Warner Brothers Sports Parade series, this short film chronicles the attempt by a group of men to navigate the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. Led by Norman D. Nevills, 9 men undertake a 19 day trip in three specialty built rowboats through the more than 200 rapids, some of which run at 30 m.p.h. Along the way, they see the remnants of previous expeditions including wrecked boats and even a skeleton. They also visit now abandoned Pueblo Indian cave dwellings.

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42 (Tie) ) Hiss and Yell

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Two-reel

Vera thinks she’s witnessed a man decapitating his wife. Actually, she’s only seen magician Bluebeard the Great rehearsing his act. Still convinced that the magician is a killer, Vera goes through all sorts of comic agony when she is forced to share the same train compartment with Bluebeard (who doesn’t help matters when he offers her a sandwich consisting of “scrambled brains and tongue”).



42 (Tie) ) Seeds of Destiny

Nominated For:

  • Best Documentary, Short Subjects (Win)

Oscar winning postwar propaganda film in support of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Strident but poignant, focusing on children. The film surveys the Nazi/Japanese atrocities, post-war devastation and the early relief efforts. This film was responsible for raising over $200,000,000, making it a top moneymaking film.

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41 ) Caesar and Cleopatra

Nominated For:

  • Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color

The aging Caesar finds himself intrigued by the young Egyptian queen. Adapted by George Bernard Shaw from his own play.

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40 ) Centennial Summer

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Original Song
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture

In 1876 Philadelphia, two sisters (Jeanne Crain and Linda Darnell) vie for the affections of a Frenchman (Cornel Wilde) who’s come to town to prepare the French pavilion for the Centennial exposition.

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39 ) Musical Moments from Chopin

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Cartoons

Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda give a piano performance for an audience of barnyard animals.



36 (Tie) ) Saratoga Trunk

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role

An opportunistic Texas gambler and the exiled Creole daughter of an aristocratic family join forces to achieve justice from the society that has ostracized them.

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36 (Tie) ) The Dolly Sisters

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Original Song

Two sisters from Hungary become famous entertainers in the early 1900s. Fictionalized biography with lots of songs.

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36 (Tie) ) The Luckiest Guy in the World

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Two-reel

This short is in the “Crime Does Not Pay” series. Charlie Vurn is always looking for the ‘big score.’ He bets on the horses and owes his bookie. At work, he ‘borrows’ from his accounts. After a terrible accident, he comes into a large sum of money and thinks he has it made…or does he?

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35 ) John Henry and the Inky-Poo

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Cartoons

In this Puppetoon animated short film (an Academy Award Best Short Subject, Cartoons nominee), legendary American folklore figure John Henry (voice of Rex Ingram) goes to work for the C&O Railroad, which shortly thereafter buys an automatic steel-driving engine, The Inky-Poo. John Henry matches his strength against the engine, saying that any man can beat a machine because a man has a mind. Can he prevail? In 2015 this film, deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

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34 ) Squatter’s Rights

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Cartoons

Two chipmunks have made a cozy little home for themselves in the wood-burning stove of an empty cabin. They sleep in a matchbox, wash up in an empty acorn shell filled with water and look at their reflections on the back of a spoon, which serves as their bathroom mirror. They even have a staircase made with a pocket comb. Invading their space are Mickey Mouse and his dog Pluto, who are all set for a swell vacation. They don’t reckon on the two squatters. Pluto immediately discovers the presence of these two pests, but Mickey never finds out. All he knows is that when he tries to light the stove, the matches go out; he doesn’t know the chipmunks are blowing them out. Soon, Mickey is outside chopping wood, while Pluto is alone with the chipmunks. Pluto wants blood, but he’ll end up with a bottle of ketchup.

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33 ) Duel in the Sun

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Leading Role
  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father’s first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.

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31 (Tie) ) Kitty

Nominated For:

  • Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White

London, 1783: Kitty, a saucy wench of the slums, meets the painter Gainsborough by stealing his shoes. He paints her as an “anonymous lady” who excites the interest of his noble friends, notably penniless Sir Hugh Marcy, who schemes to pass Kitty off as a genuine lady (a formidable task) and marry her off for financial gain.

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31 (Tie) ) The Green Years

Nominated For:

  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role
  • Best Cinematography, Black-and-White

An orphaned Irish boy is taken in by his mother’s Scottish relations.

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30 ) Blue Skies

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Original Song
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture

Jed Potter looks back on a love triangle conducted over the course of years and between musical numbers. Dancer Jed loves showgirl Mary, who loves compulsive nightclub-opener Johnny, who can’t stay committed to anything in life for very long.

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29 ) The Seventh Veil

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Screenplay (Win)

One dark summer night, Francesca Cunningham, a once world famed pianist, escapes from her hospital room and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a local bridge. She is rescued and taken back to the hospital and undergoes psychological treatment by Dr. Larsen. Larsen, desperately wants to know the events and persons who drove her to this state and help her. He makes Francesca talk about her past – a past with a controlling guardian, Nicholas, no friends, kept apart from the man she loved and forced to practice the piano 5-6 hours a day.

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28 ) Anna and the King of Siam

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role
  • Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White (Win)
  • Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Win)
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
  • Best Writing, Screenplay

In 1862, a young Englishwoman becomes royal tutor in Siam and befriends the King.

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27 ) The Dark Mirror

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Story

De Havilland plays two roles in this entertaining psychological drama. A sister and her disturbed twin are implicated in a Hollywood murder and a police detective must figure out which one’s the killer.

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26 ) Vacation from Marriage

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Story (Win)

Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr as a married couple whose relationship is shaken by their service in the Second World War.

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25 ) Sister Kenny

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Leading Role

True story of the Australian nurse who fought to gain acceptance for her polio-treatment methods.

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24 ) Walky Talky Hawky

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Cartoons

Young Henery Hawk’s father regretfully admits their family’s shame: they hunt and eat chickens. Henery set off to find one, and comes across Foghorn Leghorn, where the loudmouth rooster is engaged in his favorite pastime, playing tricks on a grumpy dog.

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23 ) The Jolson Story

Nominated For:

  • Best Actor in a Leading Role
  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role
  • Best Cinematography, Color
  • Best Film Editing
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Win)
  • Best Sound, Recording (Win)

The Jolson Story is a 1946 musical biography which purports to tell the life story of singer Al Jolson. It stars Larry Parks as Jolson, Evelyn Keyes as “Julie Benson” (approximating Jolson’s wife, Ruby Keeler), William Demarest as his manager, Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne as his parents, and Scotty Beckett as the young Jolson.

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22 ) A Stolen Life

Nominated For:

  • Best Effects, Special Effects

A twin takes her deceased sister’s place as wife of the man they both love.

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21 ) Blithe Spirit

Nominated For:

  • Best Effects, Special Effects (Win)

An English mystery novelist invites a medium to his home, so she may conduct a séance for a small gathering. The writer hopes to gather enough material for the book he’s working on, as well as to expose the medium as a charlatan. However, proceedings take an unexpected turn, resulting in a chain of supernatural events being set into motion that wreak havoc on the man’s present marriage.

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20 ) The Cat Concerto

Nominated For:

  • Best Short Subject, Cartoons (Win)

Tom enters from stage left in white tie and tails, sits at the piano, gets his focus as the orchestra in the pit beneath him warms up, and begins to play Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody.” Unbeknownst to Tom and the audience, Jerry is asleep across several of the high-note keys inside the instrument, so Tom’s playing eventually wakes him. Jerry is pummeled by hammers, bounced by wires, and squeezed by Tom as the cat tries to play the concerto while dispensing with Jerry. Jerry’s defensive antics add to the brio of the program and answer Tom with Jerry’s own skillful musical attack. By the concerto’s end, the duet leaves only one animal standing for the audience’s applause.



17 (Tie) ) Canyon Passage

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Original Song

Businessman Logan Stuart is torn between his love of two very different women in 1850s Oregon and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.

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17 (Tie) ) Rome, Open City

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Screenplay

ROME, OPEN CITY is a landmark in film history. Filmed in secrecy during the Nazi occupation of Italy, the film shows a realistic portrayal of the underground resistance in Italy in 1945. The film has strong impacting imagery with its mix of fiction and reality that strengthened Italian Neo-realism and the film industry.

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17 (Tie) ) The Razor’s Edge

Nominated For:

  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role
  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Win)
  • Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
  • Best Picture

A adventuresome young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married.

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15 ) Humoresque

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture

A classical musician from a working class background is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite.

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15 ) The Yearling

Nominated For:

  • Best Director
  • Best Actor in a Leading Role
  • Best Actress in a Leading Role
  • Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color (Win)
  • Best Cinematography, Color (Win)
  • Best Film Editing
  • Best Picture

Jody convinces his parents to allow him to adopt a young deer, but what will happen if the deer misbehaves?

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14 ) The Blue Dahlia

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Screenplay

This film noir stars Alan Ladd as a war veteran framed for the murder of his own wife and follows his search for the real murderer. Veronica Lake plays the sultry femme fatale who provides unexpected help.

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13 ) To Each His Own

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Leading Role (Win)
  • Best Writing, Original Story

During World War I, small-town girl Josephine Norris has an illegitimate son by an itinerant pilot. After a scheme to adopt him ends up giving him to another family, she devotes her life to loving him from afar.

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12 ) Henry V

Nominated For:

  • Best Actor in a Leading Role
  • Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
  • Best Picture

Olivier mustered out of the navy to film this adaptation of Shakespeare’s history. Embroiled in World War II, Britons took courage from this tale of a king who surmounts overwhelming odds and emerges victorious.

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11 ) The Spiral Staircase

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role

In 1916, beautiful young mute Helen is a domestic worker for elderly, ailing Mrs. Warren. Mrs. Warren’s two adult sons, Albert (a professor) and womanizing impudent Steven, also live in the Warren mansion. Mrs. Warren becomes concerned for Helen’s safety when a rash of murders involving ‘women with afflictions’ hits the neighborhood. She implores her physician, Dr. Parry, to take Helen away for her own safety. When another murder occurs inside the Warren mansion, it becomes obvious that Helen is in danger.

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10 ) The Stranger

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Story

Wilson of the War Crimes Commission is seeking Franz Kindler, mastermind of the Holocaust, who has effectively erased his identity. Wilson releases Kindler’s former comrade Meinike and follows him to Harper, Connecticut, where he is killed before he can identify Kindler. Now Wilson’s only clue is Kindler’s fascination with antique clocks; but, though Kindler seems secure in his new identity, he feels his past closing in.

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9 ) The Harvey Girls

Nominated For:

  • Best Music, Original Song (Win)
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture

Vittles, songs and dance are amply ladeled out when Judy Garland headlines The Harvey Girls, a joyous musical slice of Americana celebrating the restaurants that brought extra helpings of civilization to Old West rail passengers.

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7 (Tie) ) Road to Utopia

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Screenplay

Duke & Chester on a ship to Skagway, Alaska, find a map to a secret gold mine, which had been stolen by thugs, McGurk & Sperry. Meanwhile, Sal Van Hoyden is in Alaska to try and recover her fathers map. She falls in with Ace Larson, who wants to steal the gold mine for himself. Duke & Chester, McGurk & Sperry, Ace, his henchmen & Sal, chase each other all over the countryside, all after the map.

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7 (Tie) ) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Story

A ruthless, domineering woman is married to an alcoholic D.A., her childhood companion who is the only living witness to her murder of her rich aunt seventeen years earlier.

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6 ) Notorious

Nominated For:

  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role
  • Best Writing, Original Screenplay

In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.

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5 ) Brief Encounter

Nominated For:

  • Best Actress in a Leading Role
  • Best Writing, Screenplay
  • Best Director

Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.

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4 ) The Killers

Nominated For:

  • Best Director
  • Best Film Editing
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
  • Best Writing, Screenplay

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called “the Swede”. When the killers find the Swede, he’s expecting them and doesn’t put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede’s past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

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3 ) The Best Years of Our Lives

Nominated For:

  • Best Actor in a Leading Role (Win)
  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Win)
  • Best Film Editing (Win)
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Win)
  • Best Picture (Win)
  • Best Sound, Recording
  • Best Writing, Screenplay (Win)
  • Best Director (Win)

It’s the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare. Captain Fred Derry is returning to a loveless marriage; Sergeant Al Stephenson is a stranger to a family that’s grown up without him; and young sailor Homer Parrish is tormented by the loss of his hands. Can these three men find the courage to rebuild their world? Or are the best years of their lives a thing of the past?

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2 ) It’s a Wonderful Life

Nominated For:

  • Best Director
  • Best Actor in a Leading Role
  • Best Film Editing
  • Best Picture
  • Best Sound, Recording

A holiday favourite for generations… George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George’s modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business’s $8,000 is lost and George’s troubles begin.

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1 ) Children of Paradise

Nominated For:

  • Best Writing, Original Screenplay

Filmed during the German occupation, this French milestone centers around the theatrical life of a beautiful courtesan and the four men who love her. Voted the “Best French Film in History” by the French Film Academy in 1990.

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The Best 19th Academy Award Rankings



1947 Academy Award Rankings

Film RT Critic RT User IMDB Letterboxd Overal Rank
Children of Paradise 9 1 2 2 1
It’s a Wonderful Life 13 1 1 1 2
The Best Years of Our Lives 11 3 4 4 3
The Killers 1 6 8 8 4
Brief Encounter 14 4 4 2 5
Notorious 9 4 7 6 6
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 1 17 13 10 7
Road to Utopia 1 13 11 16 7
The Harvey Girls 1 8 21 16 9
The Stranger 12 9 16 10 10
The Spiral Staircase 16 10 13 10 11
Henry V 1 14 19 16 12
To Each His Own 22 7 8 14 13
The Blue Dahlia 1 18 21 16 14
Humoresque 21 20 11 10 15
The Yearling 1 14 19 28 16
Rome, Open City 22 34 4 4 17
Canyon Passage 1 25 31 7 17
The Razor’s Edge 17 18 13 16 17
The Cat Concerto 22 34 3 8 20
Blithe Spirit 20 14 21 16 21
A Stolen Life 22 12 16 24 22
The Jolson Story 22 10 16 28 23
Walky Talky Hawky 22 34 10 14 24
Sister Kenny 22 20 21 24 25
Vacation from Marriage 22 24 26 16 26
The Dark Mirror 22 28 26 16 27
Anna and the King of Siam 15 23 26 36 28
The Seventh Veil 22 25 31 24 29
Blue Skies 18 20 38 28 30
Kitty 22 34 21 28 31
The Green Years 22 29 26 28 31
Duel in the Sun 18 31 34 28 33
Squatter’s Rights 22 34 34 24 34
John Henry and the Inky-Poo 22 34 36 28 35
The Dolly Sisters 22 32 40 28 36
Saratoga Trunk 22 25 38 37 36
The Luckiest Guy in the World 22 34 26 40 36
Musical Moments from Chopin 22 34 31 40 39
Centennial Summer 22 34 36 40 40
Caesar and Cleopatra 22 30 44 37 41
Facing Your Danger 22 34 40 40 42
Hiss and Yell 22 34 40 40 42
Seeds of Destiny 22 34 40 40 42
Night and Day 22 33 47 37 45
A Boy and His Dog 22 34 45 40 46
Traffic with the Devil 22 34 45 40 47
Sure Cures 22 34 47 40 48
Smart as a Fox 22 34 49 40 49
Atomic Power 22 34 50 40 50
College Queen 22 34 51 40 51
Dive-Hi Champs 22 34 51 40 51
Golden Horses 22 34 51 40 51
Life at the Zoo 22 34 51 40 51
Paramount News Issue #37 22 34 51 40 51