Step right up, step right up! This week’s Best Picture, The Greatest Show on Earth (1952, Paramount), is part high-flying adventure, part love story, and part disaster film with a little sliver of comedy mixed in. It’s a circus of a film—and it’s spectacular! Directed by Cecil B. DeMille (who wowed a younger me with the parting of the Red Sea in his epic The Ten Commandments), The Greatest Show on Earth was nominated for five Academy Awards (including Film Editing, Costume Design [Color], and Directing) and won two: Best Motion Picture and Writing (Motion Picture Story)—in addition to DeMille being awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. The film features the ever-masculine Charlton Heston (dressed in what appears to be Indiana Jones’s fedora and jacket), the bouncy Betty Hutton (whose voice takes a little getting used to), the always lovable James Stewart (nearly unrecognizable at times in full clown make-up), and a whole plethora of real performers from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Plus, stars like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope make appearances as circus spectators, and who doesn’t love a good cameo!?

Charlton Heston and James Stewart (he’s under all the clown make-up) in The Greatest Show on Earth.

I don’t know about you, but I have some pretty fond and still vivid memories of going to see the circus as a small child. It didn’t roll into town on a train, nor was it held in the Big Top. But I remember not being able to take my eyes off the aerialists dangling from such heights, worrying that the large cats were going to escape their enclosure’s net and eat me, and being slightly traumatized when a woman was impaled on a sword (it was part of the act, and she was fine). Don’t get me wrong—it sounds like my circus experience was horrific, but it was in fact simply wonderful. Magical, even.

P. T. Barnum

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—who trademarked themselves as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” hence the title of this film about this circus—existed for over 100 years, nearly 150 to be exact. Back in 1841, P. T. Barnum purchased Scudder’s American Museum, an eclectic place located in New York City. Renaming it Barnum’s American Museum, P. T. took his part-zoo, part-museum, part-freak show spectacle on the road in 1871 after the museum itself burned down, later partnering with James A. Bailey and James L. Hutchinson (who got jipped out of having his name as part of the circus’s title).

On the Ringling side of things, 1882 was the year in which five brothers (incidentally with the last name of Ringling) began their vaudeville show in Wisconsin, taking it on the road and adding trained animal acts within a few years. As the two circuses grew in popularity, they agreed to divide the United States between them, so they wouldn’t have to compete for business, the Ringlings based out of Chicago, Barnum in New York (this was a few years after P. T.’s death in 1891). After James Bailey died in 1906, the Ringling Bros. purchased Barnum & Bailey, keeping the two circuses touring separately until combining them as one show in 1919.

Admittedly, the circus wasn’t always glorious. There was a horribly tragic fire in 1944, just a few years before the release of our BP film. Almost 170 people were killed and several hundreds more wounded. And, yes, just within the past few years, there’s been all the controversy regarding animal rights. (Thank you to the documentary Blackfish for ruining all my childhood memories of happy trained captive animals.) Only last year, Ringling announced that it would be retiring its elephant acts and moved the pachyderms to its Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida. The next year—this year, 2017—Ringling gave its very last performance and disbanded its legendary Greatest Show on Earth (check out this page for clips of that final performance: https://www.ringling.com/).

Elephants exultant during a performance of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Let’s be controversial for just a moment. For lack of a better name, let’s just say Dumbo the elephant cannot live in the wild for some reason. He cannot fend for himself; he would just die. Now let’s say some group like the circus takes him in, feeds him, gives him all the medical attention he needs, trains him to do fun things like march in a line of elephants and cradle a person in his trunk. Dumbo loves his new life—he has nourishment, health, stimulation, and the love of millions. Is that animal cruelty? I think not. Is the exodus of the elephants the cause of the circus’s expiration? Quite possibly one of the causes.

I think it is safe to say that the demise of the circus is a commentary on the condition of our times. Decline in circus attendance is noted throughout The Greatest Show on Earth—and this film is from 1952! The circus wallowed on for another 65 years before it closed. But new technology such as the television (entertainment which can be had more cheaply and within one’s own home) was already helping to decrease interest in the circus in the 1950s—as was the film industry. It’s ironic, then, that a movie pays tribute to the waning of the circus. In our own age, yes, there is the controversy about the treatment of animals in captivity. But we also seem to not allow ourselves to be entertained as easily with what is, for the most part, wholesome entertainment. And I for one wish The Greatest Show on Earth had not closed its doors.

For more thoughts on The Greatest Show on Earth and its significance, check out the full post tomorrow!