Movie with the most Actor/Acting Potential

If you were to take the principal cast of a movie (i.e. discounting actors who are simply walk-ons or in moinor parts before they were “found”) and add together their relative acting levels as shown over the course of their career, what movie has the most acting potential of all?

For instance, Red Dragon itself wasn’t particularly good, but it did have two (to me) 10 point actors (on a scale of one to ten), Ralph Fiennes is probably at least an 8, Philip Seymour Hoffman another 8, and Emily Watson and Mary-Louise Parker probably add at least a 5 each. I don’t believe that Harvey Keitel does anything in the movie except a walk-in at the beginning, so we’re ignoring him. Overall we get a total of 46 for Red Dragon.

What would probably be the highest movie of them all?

That’s Entertainment!

June Allyson
Fred Astaire
Ray Bolger
Jack Buchanan
Leslie Caron
Cyd Charisse
Maurice Chevalier
Joan Crawford
Bing Crosby
Deanna Durbin
Buddy Ebsen
Nelson Eddy
Clark Gable
Ava Gardner
Judy Garland
Cary Grant
Kathryn Grayson
Jack Haley
Jean Harlow
Lena Horne
Van Johnson
Howard Keel
Bert Lahr
Mario Lanza
Peter Lawford
Jeanette MacDonald
Ann Miller
Liza Minnelli
Margaret O’Brien
Donald O’Connor
Eleanor Powell
Jane Powell
Debbie Reynolds
Ginger Rogers
Mickey Rooney
Frank Sinatra
James Stewart
Elizabeth Taylor
William Warfield
Esther Williams

Several hundred points, and that’s only Part 1.

Heck, I’ll take just the ones who were the hosts.
Fred Astaire
Bing Crosby
Gene Kelly
Peter Lawford
Liza Minnelli
Donald O’Connor
Debbie Reynolds
Mickey Rooney
Frank Sinatra
James Stewart
Elizabeth Taylor

Kenneth Branaugh usually rounded up a pretty good cast when he did Shakespeare. Take a look at who showed up for Much Ado About Nothing.

Does it lose points for have Keanu doing Shakespeare?

Wendy Wasserstein’s 1st play Uncommon Women and Others was filmed to TV with the following cast:

Meryl Streep - Leilah
Swoosie Kurtz - Rita Altabel
Jill Eikenberry - Kate Quin
Ellen Parker - Muffet DiNicola
Ann McDonough - Samantha Stewart
Alma Cuervo - Holly Kaplan
Josephine Nicholas - Mrs. Plumm
Cynthia Herman - Susie Friend
Anna Levine - Carter
Alexander Scourby - Narrator (voice)

The “All-Star Extravaganzas” of the 50s and 60s have the sheer quanitity:

How the West was Won:
Carroll Baker
Lee J. Cobb
Henry Fonda
Carolyn Jones
Karl Malden
Gregory Peck
George Peppard
Robert Preston .
Debbie Reynolds
James Stewart
Eli Wallach
John Wayne
Richard Widmark
Walter Brennan
Andy Devine
Raymond Massey
Agnes Moorehead
Harry Morgan
Thelma Ritter
Russ Tamblyn
Spencer Tracy
Ken Curtis
Jay C. Flippen
Jack Lambert
Harry Dean Stanton
Lee Van Cleef

The Longest Day
Eddie Albert
Paul Anka
Arletty …
Richard Burton
Red Buttons
Sean Connery
Mel Ferrer
Henry Fonda
Gert Fröbe
Jeffrey Hunter
Peter Lawford
Roddy McDowall
Sal Mineo
Robert Mitchum
Kenneth More
Edmond O’Brien
Robert Ryan
George Segal
Rod Steiger
Robert Wagner
John Wayne
Richard Dawson
Frank Finlay .
Bernard Fox

Around the World in 80 Days
David Niven
Cantinflas
Robert Morley
Noel Coward
John Gielgud
Trevor Howard
Fernandel
Charles Boyer
Evelyn Keyes
Cesar Romero
Robert Newton
Cedric Hardwicke
Reginald Denny
Ronald Colman
Shirley MacLaine
Charles Coburn
Peter Lorre
George Raft
Red Skelton
Marlene Dietrich
John Carradine .
Frank Sinatra .
Buster Keaton .
Joe E. Brown .
Andy Devine .
Edmund Lowe .
Victor McLaglen
Jack Oakie
Beatrice Lillie
John Mills
Glynis Johns
Hermione Gingold
Edward R. Murrow

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
Spencer Tracy
Milton Berle
Sid Caesar
Buddy Hackett
Ethel Merman
Mickey Rooney
Dick Shawn
Phil Silvers
Terry-Thomas
Jonathan Winters
Edie Adams
Dorothy Provine
Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson
Jim Backus
Joe E. Brown
William Demarest
Andy Devine
Selma Diamond
Peter Falk
Norman Fell
Paul Ford
Stan Freberg
Leo Gorcey
Sterling Holloway
Edward Everett Horton
Buster Keaton
Don Knotts
Charles Lane
Mike Mazurki
Zasu Pitts
Carl Reiner
Arnold Stang
Joe DeRita
Larry Fine
Moe Howard
Jesse White
Jimmy Durante
Jack Benny
Howard Da Silva
Jerry Lewis

Not that the films were all that good . . .

I’ve not seen the things you guys are listing (except Kenneth Branagh’s stuff), but again, please note that we’re talking about the main cast, not narrators, single-sceners, nor walk-ons. And similarly, a sequence of shorts is a sequence of shorts, not really a movie.

Granted it’s a fairly small cast, but the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross was pretty loaded with acting potential all the way down the cast.

–Al Pacino

–Jack Lemmon

–Ed Harris

–Alan Arkin

–Kevin Spacey

–Alec Baldwin

–Jonathan Pryce

Would the first two Godfather movies count or were too many of the cast members still not well-known enough at the time the films were released?