The Old West. Modern society’s image of what the American frontier in the 1800s was truly like is as much derived from movie-making as from written accounts of that time and sepia-toned photographs in which people tend to look markedly uncomfortable (due to the fact that people had to hold perfectly still for long periods of time in order for the picture not to come out blurred by movement). Westerns have their roots in the silent film era, where the myth of the cowboy and the code of the Wild West were well-suited to the medium—brusque, rough, violent, saying little, letting action speak for itself.

As the 20th century evolved, so did film and audiences’ appetites for spectacle. Once the silent era was over, the Western’s popularity continued, in large part because it was a type of film that could be made on a shoestring budget and allowed for the recycling of sets, and even story points from film to film. Thus every movie studio, from giants like Universal to smaller upstart studios like Fox Film Corp. and Republic Pictures, was in the business of bringing the Wild West to life. From the 1920s through the 1960s, Westerns were among the most successful films in the U.S. Stars like Tom Mix and Buck Jones ruled the black and white era, until in 1939, legendary director John Ford’s “Stagecoach” introduced the world to Marion “Duke” Morrison, more widely known as John Wayne. Wayne had by that time been in dozens of films that made little impact, but “Stagecoach” set a new standard for what a Western could be.

In the decades that followed, the Western has retained its air of grandeur and its role in American mythopoetics as a lens on a distant past, even as the form and function of the Western has evolved along with changing social mores and trends toward grittier, more realistically violent stories. The popularity of Westerns has weathered ebbs and flows at the box office, still producing its legends such as Clint Eastwood, and to this day these films are still being produced and finding their audience.

Stacker looked into box office data at The Numbers and ranked the top 50 highest-grossing Westerns by worldwide box office gross. Domestic box office is provided for context. While earnings are not the only measure of the success of a Western, they are indicative of the worldwide reach this genre has and the distinctly American stamp they have put on film history.

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