Most Movies
Yesterday we were clowning around at the Reference desk. It's Christmas and we're short staffed while people are on vacation. Normal Library traffic patterns are all whacked out so I was joking around about my Henry Wilcoxon Film Festival and how this guy almost nobody ever heard of made all these movies. We got to wondering which actor made the most movies. Google was no good. Guinness was a washout, but considering the history of Movies in America it seemed a good question. So we ended up randomly looking up different actors on IMDB.com For a while John Wayne held the record at 172. But that got me to thinking. The Three Stooges made over 200 shorts so we looked up Moe Howard and he had 220. That led us to Edgar Kennedy. Edgar Kennedy also made one reel shorts but I mainly remember him for doing a scene with Harpo Marx in Duck Soup. He's the Lemonade Vendor. He made 408 movies. From there we looked up several of the Keystone Cops and 'Snub' Pollard has 462 credits to his name. Of course this isn't definitive. What's a movie? How many of these credits were actually television. Should we be counting one-reel shorts? Or only Feature length movies. Still 462! Way to go Snub!
posted by Rob Finch at 6:07 AM
2 Comments:
Hey Robert, I did some research of my own and came up with this from Ask Yahoo:
Dear Yahoo!:
What actor has appeared in the most movies? I heard it was Gene Hackman.
Brooks
White Lake, Michigan
Dear Brooks:
To find your answer, we headed straight to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), a huge and comprehensive film resource we've consulted many times.
First, we looked up Gene Hackman to see if your suspicion was correct. This venerable actor has completed 73 films (not including TV movies) plus one currently in post-production and two uncredited film appearances. That's a respectable number, but it didn't sound record-breaking.
If you're looking for the actor who had the most leading roles in films, Guinness World Records lists John Wayne as tops. The Duke was the leading man in 142 movies.
However, film roles can take many forms, and a voice may be just as important as a face on the screen. The man behind Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig had more movie actor credits to his name than anyone. Mel Blanc performed in 709 films, not including over 100 TV movies and video productions. He also had 81 uncredited voice parts in films.
Of course, these stats only focus on American and European movies. There's a great, big world of filmmaking out there, and India's Bollywood film industry is the most productive on the planet. India made a record of 948 movies in just one year, 1990, and Indian actors regularly make more movies than Hollywood actors.
Right behind Mel Blanc on the IMDB's list of most prolific actors is Adoor Bhasi. Before his death in 1990, Bhasi was featured in 549 films. It's possible that other Indian film actors have been in upwards of 1,000 films, and with Bollywood production steaming along, Bhasi's ranking may be easily surpassed.
That was from three years ago. IMDB's list of most prolific actors has Johnny Carson at around 1987 titles. Which I guess includes all his TV programs, not really what we're thinking of.
Mel Blanc seems to still be the highest non-TV/radio personality on IMDB.com with an astounding 1104 titles!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Post a Comment
<< Home