Top-earning actor
Roscoe Arbuckle
≈ $1,000,000
$1 million a year, ParamountEstimate
About $16.1 million in 2025 dollars
Arbuckle moved from two-reel shorts into Paramount features, still on the $1-million-a-year contract.
The Jazz Age · 1920s
1920
Top-earning actress
Mary Pickford
≈ $1,050,000
Repeats her last documented dealEstimate
About $16.9 million in 2025 dollars
Pickford now produced her own films through United Artists; what they paid her isn't documented. The figure repeats her last recorded deal.
The pictures that paid
Box office champions of 1920
By U.S. theatrical rentals, the studios' share of ticket sales
- 1
Way Down East
$2 million
- 2
Why Change Your Wife?
$1 million
- 3
Madame DuBarry
$1 million
Neither top earner was in one of the year's three biggest films.