This is a list of films which placed number one at the weekly box office in the United States during 1959 per Variety's weekly National Boxoffice Survey. The results are based on a sample of 20-25 key cities and therefore, any box office amounts quoted may not be the total that the film grossed nationally in the week.
# | Week ending | Film | Notes | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | January 7, 1959 | N/A | No survey published | |
2 | January 14, 1959 | Auntie Mame | Auntie Mame grossed $380,000 from 19 key cities sampled | [1] |
3 | January 21, 1959 | Auntie Mame grossed $355,000 from the cities sampled | [2] | |
4 | January 28, 1959 | Some Came Running | [3] | |
5 | February 4, 1959 | Auntie Mame | [4] | |
6 | February 11, 1959 | [5] | ||
7 | February 18, 1959 | Separate Tables | [6] | |
8 | February 25, 1959 | Sleeping Beauty | [7] | |
9 | March 4, 1959 | Separate Tables | [8] | |
10 | March 11, 1959 | Sleeping Beauty | [9] | |
11 | March 18, 1959 | [10] | ||
12 | March 25, 1959 | Rio Bravo | [11] | |
13 | April 1, 1959 | Some Like It Hot | Some Like It Hot reached number one in its second week of release | [12] |
14 | April 8, 1959 | [13] | ||
15 | April 15, 1959 | [14] | ||
16 | April 22, 1959 | Imitation of Life | Imitation of Life reached number one in its fifth week of release | [15] |
17 | April 29, 1959 | [16] | ||
18 | May 6, 1959 | Some Like It Hot | Some Like It Hot returned to number one in its seventh week of release with a gross of around $280,000 | [17] |
19 | May 13, 1959 | [18] | ||
20 | May 20, 1959 | [19] | ||
21 | May 27, 1959 | [20] | ||
22 | June 3, 1959 | Pork Chop Hill | [21] | |
23 | June 10, 1959 | The Young Philadelphians | [22] | |
24 | June 17, 1959 | Ask Any Girl | Ask Any Girl reached number one in its second week of release | [23] |
25 | June 24, 1959 | Say One for Me | [24] | |
26 | July 1, 1959 | The Horse Soldiers | [25] | |
27 | July 8, 1959 | The Nun's Story | [26] | |
28 | July 15, 1959 | [27] | ||
29 | July 22, 1959 | A Hole in the Head | [27] | |
30 | July 29, 1959 | The Nun's Story | The Nun's Story grossed more than $300,000 in the cities sampled | [28] |
31 | August 5, 1959 | Anatomy of a Murder | [29] | |
32 | August 12, 1959 | North by Northwest | [30] | |
33 | August 19, 1959 | [31] | ||
34 | August 26, 1959 | [32] | ||
35 | September 2, 1959 | [33] | ||
36 | September 9, 1959 | [34] | ||
37 | September 16, 1959 | [35] | ||
38 | September 23, 1959 | [36] | ||
39 | September 30, 1959 | That Kind of Woman | [37] | |
40 | October 7, 1959 | But Not for Me | [38] | |
41 | October 14, 1959 | The FBI Story | [39] | |
42 | October 21, 1959 | Pillow Talk | Pillow Talk reached number one in its second week of release | [40] |
43 | October 28, 1959 | [41] | ||
44 | November 4, 1959 | Pillow Talk grossed more than $275,000 in the key cities sampled | [42] | |
45 | November 11, 1959 | [43] | ||
46 | November 18, 1959 | [44] | ||
47 | November 25, 1959 | [45] | ||
48 | December 2, 1959 | A Summer Place | [46] | |
49 | December 9, 1959 | [47] | ||
50 | December 16, 1959 | Pillow Talk | Pillow Talk returned to number one in its tenth week of release | [48] |
51 | December 23, 1959 | On the Beach | On the Beach grossed over $200,000 from five key cities sampled | [49] |
52 | December 30, 1959 | N/A | No survey published. Solomon and Sheba was the December champion based on grosses from its release in the last week of the year | [50] |
The highest-grossing films during the calendar year based on theatrical rentals were as follows:
Rank | Title | Distributor | Rental [51] |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Auntie Mame | Warner Bros. | $8,800,000 |
2 | The Shaggy Dog | Buena Vista | $7,800,000 |
3 | Some Like It Hot | United Artists | $7,000,000 |
4 | Imitation of Life | Universal Pictures | $6,200,000 |
5 | The Nun's Story | Warner Bros. | $6,000,000 |
6 | Anatomy of a Murder | Columbia Pictures | $5,250,000 |
North by Northwest | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | ||
8 | Rio Bravo | Warner Bros. | $5,100,000 |
9 | Around the World in 80 Days | United Artists | $4,400,000 [52] [53] |
10 | Sleeping Beauty | Buena Vista | $4,300,000 |
Some Like It Hot is a 1959 American crime comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Billy Wilder. It stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, with George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, Grace Lee Whitney and Nehemiah Persoff in supporting roles. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the 1935 French film Fanfare of Love. The film is about two musicians who disguise themselves by dressing as women to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime.
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a synonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an arena or a stadium.
South Pacific is a 1958 American romantic musical film based on the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, which in turn is loosely based on James A. Michener's 1947 short-story collection Tales of the South Pacific. The film, directed by Joshua Logan, stars Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr and Ray Walston in the leading roles with Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary, the part that she had played in the original stage production. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning the Academy Award for Best Sound for Fred Hynes. It is set in 1943, during World War II, on an island in the South Pacific.
$22,000,000
$17,600,000