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I just wanted to explain how box office reporting has changed over the last century and a bit.
The very first popular films report in Variety ocurred on 3 March in 1922, based on a sample of key cities like New York and Chicago. In 1946, they debuted a top 12 box office survey. This was different from the top 50 films chart introduced in the spring of 1969, that covered the top grossing cinema hits, published on a Wednesday.
Basically, even if a film grossed a high amount of earnings in the US and Canada, it was not allowed to chart on the box office survey if it was not included in at least 3 key markets, I believe. But that rule didn't apply in the charts used from 1969 up to 1990, when the theater sample charts were no longer issued. For example, boxofficestory.com reported The Giant Claw and I Was a Teenage Werewolf as being top ten hits in 1957, but the chart books on Amazon don't go by the gross. They use the format from the survey, so they are therefore omitted.
Around 1982/83, that's when the weekend box office took over from the weekly charts. Some of the number-one films mentioned in prior years may have not been chart toppers by today's standards, as those charts were technically just supposed to be around a quarter of the overall gross. If you know what I mean.
But I hope that helps...
The very first popular films report in Variety ocurred on 3 March in 1922, based on a sample of key cities like New York and Chicago. In 1946, they debuted a top 12 box office survey. This was different from the top 50 films chart introduced in the spring of 1969, that covered the top grossing cinema hits, published on a Wednesday.
Basically, even if a film grossed a high amount of earnings in the US and Canada, it was not allowed to chart on the box office survey if it was not included in at least 3 key markets, I believe. But that rule didn't apply in the charts used from 1969 up to 1990, when the theater sample charts were no longer issued. For example, boxofficestory.com reported The Giant Claw and I Was a Teenage Werewolf as being top ten hits in 1957, but the chart books on Amazon don't go by the gross. They use the format from the survey, so they are therefore omitted.
Around 1982/83, that's when the weekend box office took over from the weekly charts. Some of the number-one films mentioned in prior years may have not been chart toppers by today's standards, as those charts were technically just supposed to be around a quarter of the overall gross. If you know what I mean.
But I hope that helps...