Top-earning actor
Fred MacMurray
$420,000
Salary listReported
About $7.8 million in 2025 dollars
The highest-paid actor in Hollywood and the fourth-highest-paid person in the country.
War and the Big Lists · 1940s
1943
Top-earning actress
Bette Davis
≈ $271,083
Repeats her 1941 salaryEstimate
About $5 million in 2025 dollars
Deanna Durbin was reported as the second-highest-paid woman in America, just behind Davis.
The pictures that paid
Box office champions of 1943
By U.S. theatrical rentals, the studios' share of ticket sales
- 1
This Is the Army
$8.3 million
- 2
For Whom the Bell Tolls
$6.3 million
- 3
The Song of Bernadette
$4.7 million
Neither top earner was in one of the year's three biggest films.