media Fun with IMDB

Posted May 28, 2005 • Comments Off on Fun with IMDB

I noticed recently that the link to Tom Cruise’s page on www.imdb.com had a very low number. Namely, 129. Now, considering every production assistant, film cutter, and craft services bagel slicer is in there, I figure you have to be a pretty early addition to the database to have such a low number. And you have to be pretty famous to be an early addition. Right? Right. So I figured, if Tom Cruise is #129, who’s #1? For that matter, who’s #128?

This is the url:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000129
#128 is Russell Crowe, and #127 is Wes Craven, giving the distinct impression that Mr. Cruise was added as part of a whole bunch of people added alphabetically. In lower numbers, too, there are alphabetical chunks. But if you go back farther, my theory holds out.
#50 is Groucho Marx.
#40 is Stanley Kubrick.
#30 is Audrey Hepburn.
#20 is Henry Fonda.
#19 is Federico Fellini.
#18 is Kirk Douglas.
#17 is Marlene Dietrich.
#16 is Georges Delerue, who I’ve never heard of, but he was in three hundred and thirty-two movies between 1927 and 2004, despite his death in 1992, including most of the works of Francois Truffaut. I figure he was in something with Marlene Dietrich and added at the same time.
#15 is James Dean.
#14 is Olivia de Havilland.
#13 is Doris Day. (You see what I mean about alphabetical chunks.)
#12 is Bette Davis.
#11 is Gary Cooper.
#10 is James Cagney.
#9 is Richard Burton.
#8 is Marlon Brando.
#7 is Humphrey Bogart. (You see what they did. They thought of a ton of people and put them in, and then they did that many more times before it all became automated.)
#6 is Ingrid Bergman.
#5 is Ingmar Bergman. (Ha!)
#4 is John Belushi. (Double ha. You see the demographic of imdb’s creators.)
#3 is Brigitte Bardot. (Triple ha. You see the gender of imdb’s creators.)
#2 is Lauren Bacall.
Any ideas? Any thoughts? Any guesses?
Fred Astaire.