Frankly, my dear . . .

I read in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette last weekend that, all hype about The Dark Knight and Titanic aside, if adjusted for inflation, the largest grossing movie of all time is actually Gone With the Wind. In adjusted dollars, ticket sales for GWTW total $1.4 billion dollars as compared to The Dark Knight’s $504 million and Titanic’s $908 million. Wow.

And even more interesting is author Tom Long’s analysis of population and ticket sales. In 1940, America’s population totaled less than 140 million. Today’s population comes in at more than 300 million. Long explains that average ticket prices in 1939 ranged from twenty-three cents to one dollar each. So, for GWTW to earn that much money, ticket sales must have been phenomenal:

“Movies today bring in a lot less while charging a lot more and play to more than twice as many people. . . . It’s hard now for people to even conceive what a huge cultural tidal wave Gone With the Wind must have been. A lot of people have seen the latest Batman movie. In 1939, virtually everybody went to see Gone With the Wind. And then they went back and saw it again,” Long explains. “And over the years it would be re-released into theaters and people would go see it again.”

The movie that came closest to GWTW and its impact on society is the phenomenon of Star Wars in 1977. “It wasn’t just a movie, it was a way of life, it became part of our language, a constant reference point,” Long asserts. This type of cultural impact is less and less likely as we become a more technological world. Today, movies compete with so many other movies—current release and on DVD, with video games, with TV, with radio, and ipods, and cell phones, and the internet. “Movies,” Long notes, “are no longer as central to American life as they once were. Probably nothing is.”

So, you want to know the top-ten box office hits, adjusted for inflation? Here you go:

1. Gone With the Wind (1939)
2. Star Wars (1977)
3. The Sound of Music (1965)
4. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
5. The Ten Commandments (1956)
6. Titanic (1997)
7. Jaws (1975)
8. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
9. The Exorcist (1973)
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Oh, The Dark Knight comes in at #30.

(For more information, see "Gone With the Wind blows away Dark Night earnings" by Tom Long in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Sunday, September 7, 2008, 4E)