The Greatest Show on Earth (released January 10, 1952)
Directed by: Cecil B. DeMille
Starring: Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, James Stewart, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame
Produced by: Cecil B. DeMille
Written by: Frederic M. Frank, Theodore
St. John, Frank Cavett, Barre Lyndon
Music by: Victor Young
Cinematography by: George Barnes
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
“THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH”
"WHAT WAS THE ACADEMY THINKING?!"
My wife says I have to compose an essay critiquing an Academy Award-winning movie that we’ve picked at random. She says we need to do this to ostensibly keep up our writing styles fresh between scripts and to better educate ourselves in the history of the cinema. All that is fine and good; even a noble endeavor perhaps, but our first randomly chosen film happened to be: The Greatest Show on Earth, voted Best Picture for 1952.
Ouch!
With unabashed delight, C.B. DeMille loaded his circus picture with enough ham and cheese to supply a corner deli. While there is no doubt there are some who still enjoy such things, I fear the majority of viewers nowadays would scoff at the simple, unsophisticated and terribly-dated storyline about a modern-day circus and the soap-operatic vicissitudes of its members. Between you and me, I’ve never really given much thought to what clowns do on their days off, or the love trysts between acrobats and elephant trainers, but apparently Cecil did, and more astonishingly, the Academy did too!
Wilde, Hutton, and Heston form a love triangle.
The show, sadly, has garnered the unenviable sobriquet of being one of the worst Best Picture picks in the history of the Academy Awards. Well, you don’t earn that title without a little effort. Taken as a whole, I really really have a hard time convincing myself that this picture was thought of as the best thing Hollywood Paramount
Doubt me? Watch and be amazed (and/or horrified) at the scripted lines: “…the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanized army on wheels, that rolls over any obstacle in its path…” Are we watching a show about a circus or Hitler’s invasion of Russia
Add to these immortal cinematic lines the sight of The Great Sebastian’s (Cornel Wilde) terrible fall from the high trapeze into a soft deep layer of sawdust doubling as the hard-packed circus ring floor. The stuntman’s body actually disappears into the sawdust! A little more judicious editing there would have saved that scene, C. B. The infamous dénouement scene involving Sebastian’s twisted claw of a hand (due to the accident) was unintentionally hilarious.
Buttons and Brad help the Great Sebastian after he falls. Nice pants.Maybe it’s just that I’m not a Betty Hutton fan, but her character, Holly, the two-timing lady aerialist rather grated on me after her first ten minutes of screen time. The great Jimmy Stewart (as Buttons, the Clown) took part, but thankfully managed to play it entirely in clown makeup. Although I still fail to see the need to continue to wear the greasepaint after he was indentified as the murderous doctor on the lam.
As the detective arrives to take Buttons away, he is still in his makeup. Creepy! And speaking of creepy, lest we forget the very bizarre scene with the dancing, flying midget-on-a-rope, his pony, and clowns midway through the picture. Yikes! This is the stuff of nightmares…
But C. B. DeMille, being the consummate showman that he was, saved the best for last: the great circus-car train wreck. (I found this very apropos for this train-wreck of a movie). I shall allow the first-time viewer to see for himself how this calamity occurs. I wouldn’t want to spoil that surprise for you. I did enjoy however the fact that with half the train laying across his legs crushing the life out of him, Brad (Charlton Heston) is game enough to keep issuing orders to his dazed crew and carnies who gather around him. His most memorable admonishment was to order them to round up the escaped lions and tigers before the smell of blood had them feeding on the trapped survivors(!)
After the train wreck, Brad receives a blood transfusion from Sebastian.
I could go on, but then I would be beating a dead circus elephant. As corny and goofy as this movie undoubtedly is, I can see why some would press it to their nostalgic hearts with fondness. However, best picture for 1952.
I think not.
--kak
“There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.”
P.T. Barnum is famous for saying this. Cecil B. Demille followed that philosophy by suckering the public into buying tickets to his circus movie.
Probably not the most auspicious movie with which to start this project, The Greatest Show on Earth didn’t exactly live up to its name. Twenty minutes into the movie I was wondering when it was going to be over. And almost three hours later it was. This movie ran for 2 hours and 53 minutes. Does the actual circus even last that long?
The main plot is a love triangle set up between two aerialists, Holly (Betty Hutton) and The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde), and the circus manager Brad (Charlton Heston). Brad brings Sebastian in to help boost flagging ticket sales, but that bumps his girlfriend Holly out of the center ring. Holly, not to be outdone by some suave Frenchy, does a nightly chicken fight with the Great Sebastian 60 feet above the ground, much to the delight of the audience. Naturally, Holly can’t help but be attracted to someone who shares her passion. She remarks they are both like “two streaks of light with wings” when they are up there. (Yack…who wrote that??) Inevitably, Sebastian falls with no net and he lands in a heap on the ground. He ends up with a pathetic claw for a hand. Good times.
Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde actually trained as aerialists for their roles.
There is also the subplot of Buttons the Clown. Buttons is played by Jimmy Stewart, and he is never once seen in the movie without his clown makeup, which is decidedly creepy. We learn early the reason why he never shows his face: he is on the run from the law. But it is not until almost the end that we find out he was a doctor who performed a mercy killing on his wife and was wanted for murder.
Jimmy Stewart as Buttons the Clown.
The third act of the movie begins with what I like to call a metaphor for the entire film – a train wreck. The jealous elephant tamer who can’t stand to see the woman he loves (Angel, another elephant tamer) throw herself at the newly single Brad, causes the two circus trains to collide, causing mayhem. (I would add that you just can’t make this shit up, but apparently, someone did.) Lions and tigers escape their cages. (I was kind of hoping for an all-you-can-eat clown buffet, but this is a Demille film, not a Tarantino.) Brad is caught in the wreckage. The big top is torn to shreds. How will they go on? This is when Holly decides that she doesn’t love Sebastian at all. She loves the newly injured Brad, and she will do anything to save the show. And Buttons steps in to save Brads life so he doesn’t bleed to death, even though he is later arrested.
Gloria Grahame as Angel, the elephant tamer.
I knew I was in trouble watching this movie in the first few minutes watching Brad walk across the grounds, talking to the circus folk, giving advice here and there. He came upon an animal handler who had a giraffe with a sore throat.
Think about that for a minute.
Did you catch it? How in the bloody hell did the giraffe convey it had a sore throat? What is the universal animal sign for, “Gosh, my throat hurts?”
Seriously.
The writing was painful. It made me cringe in quite a few places, and the actors really couldn’t do much with the lines. I really thought Jimmy Stewart was the only one who didn’t come off looking like a total loon. Even Cornel Wilde (who I know can act – having seen Naked Prey) looked ridiculous. But maybe that had a lot to do with the costumes. Edith Head was the costumer, and they were pretty spectacular, but they were circus costumes, so of course they were spangly and skintight.
This plot I have described could have been done in a regular 120 minute movie, but Demille put in all these extra circus acts. And this is sort of like watching fireworks on TV – the effect is ruined because it isn’t live. But the circus acts are genuine with real Ringling performers, adding to the hokeyness of the production.
I am willing to bet that a lot of people who saw this movie when they were kids have fond memories and love the picture even to this day. I have big love for the Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson. I got it on VHS when I was about 8 years old and watched it until the tape broke. So I get loving bad movies because they were great to you as a kid. However, even as an 8 year-old kid, I probably would have had the presence of mind to know that it was a movie for kids, and not the “best movie of the year.”
I did do some reading about the Oscars for 1952. This was at the height of the Red Scare, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities had investigated Carl Foreman, the producer of High Noon (which was undoubtedly the favorite to win). Therefore, it is thought that Demille’s picture won by default, although there were three other pictures up for the honor including The Quiet Man, Ivanhoe, and Moulin Rouge. Many consider this the worst film ever to win Best Picture.
High Noon was robbed.
I do want to end with the one moment in the movie that made me shriek with laughter. It wasn’t supposed to make me laugh, but it did. Dorothy Lamour had an act in the circus where she comes out with a large group of girls dressed as hula dancers, and she sings “Lovely Luawana Lady.” The girls shed their blue and green shiny grass skirts, and ascend ropes to twirl about as the music plays. Then all of a sudden they pull out mallets and begin to play little xylophones attached to the tops of their ropes! How random!
Dorothy Lamour shakes her grass skirt for Emmett Kelly.
I guess you had to be there.
Up next: The English Patient (1996)
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