Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw in The Blind Side (Ralph Nelson / Warner Bros.)
"… Far and away the biggest-grossing movie with a female as its sole main player, which is certainly a challenge to conventional Hollywood assumptions (men can star alone, while women need a costar of either sex)."
That's Sandra Bullock in the 2009 football drama The Blind Side, right? Wrong. Film commentator Stuart Byron was referring to Goldie Hawn in the 1980 army comedy Private Benjamin (right), which earned $69.8 million at the domestic box office (about $173m in 2010 dollars, as per Box Office Mojo's average ticket-price ratio). That same year, Hawn co-starred with Chevy Chase in the comedy Seems Like Old Times: $43.9m (or approx. $109m today).
With more than $200 million and counting, Bullock's The Blind Side did even better in 2009. Add the $163m for The Proposal (while ignoring the $34m for All About Steve) and Sandra Bullock's position as the top box-office star on the Quigley poll of US exhibitors is fully justifiable. She's only the eighth women to ever top the list since 1932, following Marie Dressler (1932, 1933), Shirley Temple (1935, 1936, 1937, 1938), Betty Grable (1943), Doris Day (1960, 1962, 1963, 1964), Elizabeth Taylor (1961), Julie Andrews (1966, 1967), and Julia Roberts (1999).
But despite Bullock's undeniable box-office appeal in 2009, those Quigley polls shouldn't be taken all that seriously. For instance, in 1980, the year Goldie Hawn was the star of "the biggest-grossing movie with a female as its sole main player," she wasn't included on the Quigley list of top-ten box-office stars. Barbra Streisand, who didn't have a 1980 release, was.