#s 1-10 in the movies in each year from 1 January 1935 through 31 December 1943

The general public had very little access to or awareness of that kind of information at the time, because the "chart" mentality that became common from the fifties and sixties forward was nowhere near as developed then. Box-office grosses were an important metric to producers and exhibitors, but they meant nothing to Joe and Sally Seatwarmer, who tended to see whatever was playing at their neighborhood house whether it was an MGM super-deluxe masterpiece or a Poverty Row potboiler. They tended to be more interested in Dish Night or Screeno than in whether Errol Flynn was empirically more popular than Clark Gable.

Such titles as "King/Queen of Hollywood" were cooked up by press agents, based on who the studio wanted to push that month, and no real statistical substance. You'd find them in "Photoplay" or "Silver Screen," but they meant nothing to the industry professionals who read "Boxoffice" or "The Hollywood Reporter." Lists of top box office draws did appear in such publications, but minus the hype. Press agents did publicize the rise of some new star or other by quoting such lists, but the evidience is that these statistics meant nothing to filmgoers, who'd be more likely to call the big name of the moment a "big hunk of cheese" or a "baked ham" than "King of Hollywood."

A rather deep streak of cynicism developed early among moviegoers over what the Boys From Marketing were telling them. And exhibitors were even more caustic -- in 1938, they responded to press-agent hype by publishing their own list of performers they considered "Box Office Poison," a list which included some of the biggest stars in the business.

In short, you should take all sorts of movie rankings and lists with a barrel of salt. The phrase "Figures don't lie, but liars figure" was never more aptly applied than to the movie business in the Era: no matter what the statistic, the press agents could cook it to indicate whatever they wanted it to indicate. There were no Hooperratings for movieland.