From 1915 to 2013, an astonishing 98 year run, the Quigley Publishing Company, publisher of Exhibitors Herald, a film industry trade journal, published a poll. The poll was of motion picture theater owners and was called the “Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll”. It asked theater owners to list the top ten stars who made them the most money. It was generally regarded as the most reliable gauge of a star’s “bankability”.
I’ve found the results interesting and have been studying them. For example, as should surprise no one, the most bankable star of all time was John Wayne, closely followed by Clint Eastwood. John Wayne was ranked in the top ten for 25 years; Eastwood for 21. The star ranked #1 the most years, a bit surprising to me, was Tom Cruise. As will probably surprise most (but not me) the star who ranked #1 for the most consecutive years was Bing Crosby.
Hollywood’s “Golden Age” is usually reckoned as starting in 1930 (some would say it started with Birth of a Nation in 1915 but I would say that was more the beginning of the classic Hollywood movie). When you review the Top Ten lists of the Golden Age there is little doubt why Clark Gable was called “the King of Hollywood”. He ranked in the top ten every year from 1932 to 1943.
One of the things most interesting to me is how relatively few of the #1 rated stars of the Golden Age worked for Warner Brothers or MGM. Here are the #1 rated stars from 1930 to 1945:
| Year | Star | Studio |
| 1930 | Joan Crawford | MGM |
| 1931 | Janet Gaynor | Fox |
| 1932 | Marie Dressler | MGM |
| 1933 | Marie Dressler | MGM |
| 1934 | Will Rogers | Fox |
| 1935 | Shirley Temple | Fox |
| 1936 | Shirley Temple | Fox |
| 1937 | Shirley Temple | Fox |
| 1938 | Shirley Temple | Fox |
| 1939 | Mickey Rooney | MGM |
| 1940 | Mickey Rooney | MGM |
| 1941 | Mickey Rooney | MGM |
| 1942 | Abbott and Costello | Universal |
| 1943 | Betty Grable | Fox |
| 1944 | Bing Crosby | Paramount |
| 1945 | Bing Crosby | Paramount |
In case you’re curious Humphrey Bogart was never rated the #1 box office star and only broke into the top ten in 1943. Nowadays Betty Grable to the extent that she’s known at all is known for her famous pin-up but during the 1940s she was the highest paid woman in America and probably Hollywood’s most reliably bankable star. Bette Davis was only in the top ten 1939-1941 and Katharine Hepburn didn’t make the top ten until 1969.
Why do people, to the extent that they have any idea of who the big stars were, tend of think of Warner Brothers or MGM players? MGM did have a lot of stars—”more stars than there are in the heavens” was an advertising slogan they used at one point. But that characterization fits Fox or Paramount at least as well.
My theory is that the reason that people are more familiar with Warner Brothers stars now than they were during Hollywood’s Golden Age has to do with television syndication. In other words Ted Turner probably had more to do with the fame of Warners and MGM stars than Jack Warner or Louis B. Mayer did.
