Editing Box office (section)

====Golden era of film====
In 1946, ''Variety'' started to publish a weekly National Box Office survey on page 3 indicating the performance of the week's hits and flops based on the box office results of 25 key U.S. cities.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/stream/variety162-1946-04#page/n2/mode/1up|title=Lent and Weather Easing Some B.O.s But 'Trunk,' 'Adventure,' 'Utopia' 'Big'|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|date=April 3, 1946|page=3|via=[[Archive.org]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030810225548/http://www.simesite.net/muggs.asp?articleid=313|title=How Box Office Reporting Was Built|website=Simesite|url=http://www.simesite.net:80/muggs.asp?articleid=313|archive-date=August 10, 2003|date=June 19, 2003|last=Golden|first=Herb|access-date=July 5, 2020|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Later in 1946, ''Variety'' published a list of All-Time Top Grossers with a list of films that had achieved or gave promise of earning $4,000,000 or more in domestic (U.S. and Canada) [[#Distributor rentals|theatrical rental]]s.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/stream/variety163-1946-09#page/n180/mode/1up|title=All-Time Top Grossers|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|date=September 25, 1946|page=5|via=[[Archive.org]]}}</ref> This became a leading source of data for a film's performance.<ref name=finler>{{citation|last=Finler|first=Joel W.|date=April 2, 1992|title=The Hollywood Story|edition=Second|publisher=Mandarin|page=[https://archive.org/details/hollywoodstory00joel/page/483 483]|isbn=0-7493-0637-8|url=https://archive.org/details/hollywoodstory00joel/page/483}}</ref> ''Variety'' would publish an updated all-time list annually for over 50 years, normally in their anniversary edition each January.<ref name=finler/><ref>{{cite magazine|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19991007042514/http://www.variety.com/numbers/video.asp|title=All-Time Top Film Rentals|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|date=1998|archive-date=October 7, 1999|url=http://www.variety.com:80/numbers/video.asp|access-date=July 5, 2020|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://variety.com/1997/digital/features/rental-champs-rate-of-return-1116680329/|title=Rental Champs Rate of Return|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|date=December 15, 1997|access-date=March 11, 2018|archive-date=June 7, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190607025242/https://variety.com/1997/digital/features/rental-champs-rate-of-return-1116680329/|url-status=live}}</ref> The anniversary edition would also normally contain the list of the top performing films of the year.