Just to say I have just received my copy of the "Where Eagles Dare" special edition and have to say what a fantastic Magazine you have all produced .  It covers everything you always wanted to know about WED . Absolutely brilliant !!!  The amount of detail and the great pics are all you could ask for.

Now to dig out the DVD !

My congratulations to all involved .
Regards,

Mike Davis
Gravesend, Kent
England
RETRO RESPONDS: Many thanks, Mike...Looks like this issue is going over far beyond our expectations. We greatly appreciate the extraordinary support from our readers for this first Cinema Retro Movie Classics edition...the best is yet to come!

The chart that adjusts grosses for inflation is indeed a valuable tool to rank box office success. However, it  still ignores several factors. For one, the US population is twice what it was in 1939. On the other hand, films from that era had no competition from television.

I like the Hollywood Reporter approach which ranks the top five films in a year.
When people talk about how the James Bond films are more popular than ever I point out the facts regarding Thunderball that you mentioned and this bit of info:
The last 007 flic to be ranked in the top five films for the year was Diamonds Are Forever. The others are from From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball.
So Sean is still the king. Sorry, Daniel

Bruce Marshall

(Bruce Marshall wrote the article about the restoration of Lee Van Cleef's The Big Gundown in Cinema Retro issue #13. Look for his interview with Escape From Alcatraz screenwriter Richard Tuggle in issue #15) 

Retro Responds: All valid points, Bruce, but I think you have to also factor that in the early days of the Bond movies, the series was new and ground-breaking in many ways. Bond has had to endure decades of competition from countless films that wouldn't exist if it weren't for the 007 franchise. They've also had to survive their own artistic missteps (remember two appearances by Sheriff Pepper???), six different actors in the role and the challenge of remaining relevant to young audiences. The fact that the Bond films even exist almost fifty years later is remarkable, not to mention that they still pull in over a half billion dollars in worldwide grosses each - and that doesn't count home video sales. 

Thanks for the story about all time boxoffice champs.  As a former theatre manager, I've always said that you don't rank movies from different eras by their boxoffice gross, you rank them by the number of paid admissions.  Inflation may inflate the gross, but an admission is still an admission - and that levels the playing field. The $2.00 admission price of 1968 can't compete with the $10 admission price of 2009.  Considering today's ticket prices, what current movie wouldn't out-gross a picture from 40 years ago?  They could do it with just 20% to 25% of the admissions of the earlier movies.
One could argue that older movies like Gone With The Wind had several re-issues to bolster their all time gross and that's true.  But by the same token, older movies did not have alternative markets like home video or pay per view for the first several decades of their existence. - Bob Collins

 Retro responds: You're right, Bob...adjusting for inflation greatly alters our perception of what films are the most popular. As you point out, perhaps the best way to judge is to compare the number of tickets sold. For example, while Casino Royale is the highest grossing James Bond film with well over $500 million worldwide gross, in fact the 1965 release Thunderball is still by far the king of the series in terms of the numbers of tickets sold. Comparable statistics can be run on any classic film and the results would certainly surprise today's movie-goers. - Lee Pfeiffer