Top-earning actor
Fred MacMurray
$439,000
Salary listReported
About $8 million in 2025 dollars
The highest-paid actor again, the year he played the insurance man in Double Indemnity.
War and the Big Lists · 1940s
1944
Top-earning actress
Barbara Stanwyck
≈ $400,000
Reported, about $400,000Estimate
About $7.3 million in 2025 dollars
The federal government listed her as the highest-paid woman in the United States, reportedly at nearly $400,000. She was MacMurray's co-star in Double Indemnity.
The pictures that paid
Box office champions of 1944
By U.S. theatrical rentals, the studios' share of ticket sales
- 1
Going My Way
$6.5 million
- 2
Meet Me in St. Louis
$5 million
- 3
Since You Went Away
$5 million
Neither top earner was in one of the year's three biggest films.