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Gone With the Wind (1939) Box Office:20 million Tickets Sold in the First Year.

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Don't like these comparisons when you're talking about a movie that could only be seen at a theater for most of its life.  Think of all of the movies that you've watched more than once at home.  Imagine if you had to hit up a theater instead of Netflix, Vudu or a Blu Ray everytime you wanted to see your favorite movie. 

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9 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

 

Yes it was an era where 80m tickets were sold a week and 4+ billion tickets were sold a year in the U.S> But it was also an era when a new film came out every day (and in 1939 that quality was extremely high) they were not lacking for film choice.   If we look at the era pre TV (1950) only 10 movies are on all the all time list and four of the others were the oft released Disney Animation movies and none are near the business GWTW did.  Even for it's time, and even with the re-releases GWTW was an extreme outlier.

 

Astoundingly,  according to BOM  it also made as much O/S during a time when several large European markets were closed to it, or heavily impacted because of WWII

 

191 77 The Best Years of Our Lives RKO $473,550,000 $23,650,000 1946
192 96 Duel in the Sun Selz. $439,285,700 $20,408,163 1946
193 53 The Bells of St. Mary's RKO $540,235,300 $21,333,333 1945
194 50 Bambi RKO $548,564,200 $102,247,150 1942^
195 23 Fantasia Dis. $715,004,300 $76,408,097 1941^
196 108 Sergeant York WB $414,340,700 $16,361,885 1941
197 41 Pinocchio Dis. $580,342,700 $84,254,167 1940^
198 1 Gone with the Wind MGM $1,739,604,200 $198,676,459 1939^
199 10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Dis. $938,490,000 $184,925,486 1937^
200 119 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse MPC $395,357,100 $9,183,673 1921
 

 

OS in 1939/40 was pretty much Europe and Australia/New Zealand and even Australia wouldn't have had made a huge impact because the population was smaller than it was today, they didn't get the huge influx of Europeans and Asian immigrants until the 1950s. 

 

The overall cost for GWTW was $7.9m which was huge back then, The Wizard of Oz made a loss in 1939 because it had a $2.7m budget and only made $3m WW. It was only rereleases that made it profitable. 

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Here's an old post at HSX with more info from old news articles on this topic. Only problem is it might be confusing rentals for box office gross but that's hard not to do when the media did it like crazy for more than half a century. 

 

One of the very few in the media who dared to question Box Office Mojo was Dave Poland of Movie City News. He actually cited the research that was being done by posters on the old BOM message board:

 

Actual Research Brings Asterisk To GWTW Numbers

I have pointed out repeatedly that the assumptions we make about old numbers can be very iffy. Box Office Mojo, in particular, is operating with a very narrow set of numbers from before its opening a few years ago, none of which it compiled on its own.

Some guy from Australia did some research - what a concept! - and found some issues with Mojo's much repeated Adjusted Gross chart. He use the NY Times search and found news stories from each time Gone With The Wind was in release and found that the estimates of ticket sales were iffy. You can read that here

Me being me, I am researching his research. And he's a little off base in some areas. But not all.

Still, if you want to understand why adjusted gross games and ticket sales guessing is a fool's errand, read the thread. And I'll offer more when I have gotten closer to real numbers.

You might also want to read this Time Magazine piece from 1940. While Mojo is estimating tickets sold at 23¢, the matinee price for the Avatar of 1939 was 75¢.

And I have to say, I am getting more and more angry about Box Office Mojo infecting a lot of smart people with sometimes bad, unsubstantiated information.

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2 hours ago, TalismanRing said:

I really wish we could edit posts again.

for me the change of the backgrounds work

 

The BOT Chameleon e.g. doesn't allow edit for me, but helps with other details. To edit I have to pick one of the Star Wars themes

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11 minutes ago, arlo said:

You might also want to read this Time Magazine piece from 1940. While Mojo is estimating tickets sold at 23¢, the matinee price for the Avatar of 1939 was 75¢.

And I have to say, I am getting more and more angry about Box Office Mojo infecting a lot of smart people with sometimes bad, unsubstantiated information.

As someone here reported, even his mom, who was a teen in the '30, paid the cent prize. My Father and my Father-in-Law where both old fathers as we got 'made (hubby and me) = Father-in-Law was born 1898 and fought in WW I, mine fought in WW II

For some reasons (English speakers...) both worked for the winning nations, got invited a lot, spoke a lot about differences. My Husbands uncle moved to the US bewteen the wars = the price for a ticket was as listed for a lot of viewings. I think new movies and or at better places (there were big differences!), or in non-big-city regions... made some major impact on the average prices.

I guess the problem is still: people imagine a cinema visit then like it is today...

(But I am also not happy with those BOM numbers)

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Wow, I'd forgotten about this. More from Dave Poland:

 

"Only 12 years ago, here was the NYT standard on this issue:

 

"'Titanic'' has already taken in more at the box office than any other movie. But this method does not account for the effect of inflation. For example, the average price of a movie ticket in the United States in 1948 was 36 cents. Today, it is $4.59, nearly 13 times as much. Among movies for which complete historical data are available, here are the films with the largest domestic box-office grosses, adjusted for inflation. The list excludes some high-grossing older films, like ''Gone With the Wind'' and ''The Ten Commandments'' because historical data were not available. Variety estimates, using a different method, that ''Gone With the Wind'' has earned more at the box office than any other movie, taking in more than $1 billion since it was first released in 1939."

 

So even Variety, the keeper of the books, was unable or unwilling to tally these things on pre-1989 movies. And NYT tipped its hat to that. But nowadays, seeing it on Mojo is enough for NYT... without digging an inch deeper."

 

Here's the article Poland was quoting: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/23/business/box-office-top-gauge-for-films.html

 

Shortly after that is when Exhibitor Relations concocted this fraudulent all-time adjusted list that BOM then parroted. It was all about trying to keep Titanic from being seen as a bigger success than Gone with the Wind.

 

Edited by arlo
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1 hour ago, kswiston said:

 

Adjusting for US population makes no sense when you consider the fact that we are talking about an era where home television didn't even exist outside being a novelty owned by a few people. 

 

Films are on home video 3-8 months after their theatrical release now. 

 

I can see it both ways...people went to the movies way more often, but the domestic population now is nearly 3x as big. We adjust expectations from market to market due to population differences in the present day. It's just another thing to consider, comparing the past and present.

 

 There was no post-theatrical market but the big studios released many more films per year, back then. If audiences rejected a movie, it was very easily replaced by the next thing. For GWTW to sell 20m tickets at 3-4x the average price for its day is beyond impressive. There was no TV, sure, but people still could have stayed away at those prices. It's not like life wasn't in color, even if most movies weren't.

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21 minutes ago, terrestrial said:

As someone here reported, even his mom, who was a teen in the '30, paid the cent prize. My Father and my Father-in-Law where both old fathers as we got 'made (hubby and me) = Father-in-Law was born 1898 and fought in WW I, mine fought in WW II

For some reasons (English speakers...) both worked for the winning nations, got invited a lot, spoke a lot about differences. My Husbands uncle moved to the US bewteen the wars = the price for a ticket was as listed for a lot of viewings. I think new movies and or at better places (there were big differences!), or in non-big-city regions... made some major impact on the average prices.

I guess the problem is still: people imagine a cinema visit then like it is today...

(But I am also not happy with those BOM numbers)

 

He just stated that his mom's siblings used to watch films in the late 30s or so for 25 cents. Not that they watched Gone with the Wind during its road show tour for 25 cents. I don't doubt that Mojo's annual average ticket prices are in the right range. It's just their blanket use of them to calculate adjusted totals/estimated admissions without taking any other factors into consideration that is an issue. 

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18 minutes ago, kswiston said:

He just stated that his mom's siblings used to watch films in the late 30s or so for 25 cents. Not that they watched Gone with the Wind during its road show tour for 25 cents. I don't doubt that Mojo's annual average ticket prices are in the right range. It's just their blanket use of them to calculate adjusted totals/estimated admissions without taking any other factors into consideration that is an issue. 

I speak never about GWTW details, only about general times. As in typical for the time. If you look up the '30, then the average was even higher = some cheaper, some more expensive. I meant only, that BPMs numbers have at least some basis, but IMHO not for cases like GWTW.

I do think BOM is using the average prices blindly / too much

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1 hour ago, arlo said:

Here's an old post at HSX with more info from old news articles on this topic. Only problem is it might be confusing rentals for box office gross but that's hard not to do when the media did it like crazy for more than half a century. 

 

One of the very few in the media who dared to question Box Office Mojo was Dave Poland of Movie City News. He actually cited the research that was being done by posters on the old BOM message board:

 

Actual Research Brings Asterisk To GWTW Numbers

I have pointed out repeatedly that the assumptions we make about old numbers can be very iffy. Box Office Mojo, in particular, is operating with a very narrow set of numbers from before its opening a few years ago, none of which it compiled on its own.

Some guy from Australia did some research - what a concept! - and found some issues with Mojo's much repeated Adjusted Gross chart. He use the NY Times search and found news stories from each time Gone With The Wind was in release and found that the estimates of ticket sales were iffy. You can read that here

Me being me, I am researching his research. And he's a little off base in some areas. But not all.

Still, if you want to understand why adjusted gross games and ticket sales guessing is a fool's errand, read the thread. And I'll offer more when I have gotten closer to real numbers.

You might also want to read this Time Magazine piece from 1940. While Mojo is estimating tickets sold at 23¢, the matinee price for the Avatar of 1939 was 75¢.

And I have to say, I am getting more and more angry about Box Office Mojo infecting a lot of smart people with sometimes bad, unsubstantiated information.

It was I. The random guy from Australia. 

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14 minutes ago, terrestrial said:

I do think BOM is using the average prices blindly / too much

 

Agree. Avatar's adjusted total based on the average 2009/2010 ticket prices without taking ticket premiums into account is a good modern example (as is almost every major film since 2011 to some extent). 

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6 minutes ago, kswiston said:

Agree. Avatar's adjusted total based on the average 2009/2010 ticket prices without taking ticket premiums into account is a good modern example (as is almost every major film since 2011 to some extent). 

I speak about old times = matching to the times of this thread.

I haven't looked into Avatar's details, as I have no interest in that discussion

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5 minutes ago, DeeCee said:

It was I. The random guy from Australia. 

 

Cool. Yeah I remember now, you posted as DC2010 or something like that.

 

It's actually gotten a lot more difficult to research this than in 2010, because Google has almost completely destroyed its news archives. Now the best sources I can find are Google Books, and of course its free previews are more restrictive than ever. How naive I was to think 10-15 years ago that information would be a lot more freely available now. Things have gotten so much worse. 

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3 hours ago, Jessie said:

 

No. It needed numerous amounts of re-releases to sell the amount t of tickets they did 

 

"Warranted" numerous re-releases is a better way to put it.   That didn't happen to most other movies released during that time period.  GWTW was special in that regard.   Lots of all time great movies came out, but they didn't do what GWTW did.   It didn't even happen to Casablanca.

 

2 hours ago, DMan7 said:

Does anyone think a GWTW movie in today's society will do similar business as in 1939?

 

It would not.

 

But that's true in reverse as well.   A movie about dinosaurs would not make a fraction of what what JW made last year if released in 1939.   A space opera like SW7 released in 1939 would be a serial shown before the main feature.   They called it "Buck Rogers" back then.

 

So any time travel comparisons have to work both ways.   All the box office phenoms rose above the fray of their respective times.

 

1 hour ago, TalismanRing said:

 

Yes it was an era where 80m tickets were sold a week and 4+ billion tickets were sold a year in the U.S> But it was also an era when a new film came out every day (and in 1939 that quality was extremely high) they were not lacking for film choice.   If we look at the era pre TV (1950) only 10 movies are on all the all time list and four of the others were the oft released Disney Animation movies and none are near the business GWTW did.  Even for it's time, and even with the re-releases GWTW was an extreme outlier.

 

That's why I don't think the older films have any advantage.    If it's so much easier for them, why isn't the adjusted list dominated by older films?

In fact, the opposite is true.   More films pop up on the top 200 adjusted list each decade.   If you want a movie to appear on the adjusted list, your odds increase every decade.   The older films appear to be at a clear disadvantage.   The oft-cited disadvantages of newer films (home video) do not balance out the disadvantages the older films had. (fewer screens, fewer showtimes, lower population, more rural society, more competition)

 

20s-1

30s-2

40s-7

50s-12

60s-19

70s-27

80s-28

90s-34

00s-45

10s-25 

 

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6 minutes ago, Harpospoke said:

That's why I don't think the older films have any advantage.    If it's so much easier for them, why isn't the adjusted list dominated by older films?

In fact, the opposite is true.   More films pop up on the top 200 adjusted list each decade.  

 

 

This is because studios have focused more each decade on producing spectacles that have to make a ton of money just to be profitable. In Gone with the Wind's day studios were much more focused on churning out very low budget movies that would quickly exit theaters. Spectacles like Gone with the Wind were incredibly rare. Now we're inundated with them, not to mention some video games that are massive blockbusters.

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2 hours ago, arlo said:

No old movies should even be on any all-time adjusted list until their releases are thoroughly documented, but the media has been too lazy to do it.

 

I don't think it's a question of laziness, it's that the data wasn't tracked in the ways we now expect, and in many cases the original source documents (if any) are probably lost or destroyed as well.

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17 minutes ago, arlo said:

This is because studios have focused more each decade on producing spectacles that have to make a ton of money just to be profitable. In Gone with the Wind's day studios were much more focused on churning out very low budget movies that would quickly exit theaters. Spectacles like Gone with the Wind were incredibly rare. Now we're inundated with them, not to mention some video games that are massive blockbusters.

 

I do agree that GWTW was unique for its time and changed cinema.  The studio was actually mocked when it was being filmed.   Its nickname was "Selznick's folly".   It was a risky endeavor.  Selznick was proven right though.   In retrospect, I wonder why those pundits didn't notice that every actress in Hollywood wanted to star in the movie and the public was obsessed with casting news.   I guess hindsight is 20/20 for every movie though.   SW7 is "obvious" now.   :D 

 

 But then again, it had staying power too so it wasn't just about 1939.   It continued to be popular for decades which of course is the reason it was released so many times.   People still wanted to see it and the studio was more than happy to take that money.   It even set the all time ratings record in the 70s when it was first shown on TV.    That was 37 years after its release.   GWTW towers above its era in a unique way.

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12 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

I don't think it's a question of laziness, it's that the data wasn't tracked in the ways we now expect, and in many cases the original source documents (if any) are probably lost or destroyed as well.

 

The information available has changed drastically. It feels like ANH was a bit of a change in that people tracked the box office directly rather than the rentals the studio got. (I've often wondered how the on-the-dot 260m number for Jaws was figured.) When were dailies first tracked in a big way? It seems like that information came out haphazardly over the course of the 90s, but once Titanic hit, people started looking into it a lot more. And this is often the case: information may have been lacking until someone cared enough to specifically look into it and start collecting it.

 

We're living in an age of information, so we need to take into account what was provided in the past. In some ways, we probably can't come up with an accounting for older films that can be usefully compared to more recent movies. The best we can do is look at the films in the context of the time they were released. So things like GWTW, ANH, ET, Titanic, Avatar, and TFA all exist in very different environments, but they all stood significantly ahead of other films in their respective eras.

 

You can put things into a chart and come up with reasons for why one film was bigger than another or had a more impressive run or whatnot. But in spite of our focus on numbers, there are no absolutes here. Best or most impressive or even biggest are all value judgements. If someone is predisposed to believe that one film's run was more impressive than another's, they can probably come up with perfectly valid numbers to support it. But someone else could come up with numbers that refute it.

 

 

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