The Greatest Show on Earth
Short description
Brad Braden runs a travelling circus that is struggling to turn a profit, and to guarantee a successful season he hires The Great Sebastian, a celebrated trapeze artist, as the show's new headlining attraction. The decision pushes Holly, Brad's girlfriend and the troupe's leading aerialist, out of the centre ring and into a supporting spot. Resentful of being displaced, Holly challenges Sebastian night after night, and the two acrobats try to outdo each other with increasingly daring routines under the big top, while a romance develops between them away from the ring. The film follows the wider company as well, including a clown with a secret past, as the circus moves from town to town by train.
Cecil B. DeMille directed and produced the film, working from a screenplay by Fredric M. Frank, Theodore St. John and Barré Lyndon. It comes after Samson and Delilah in his filmography and before his 1956 version of The Ten Commandments. Betty Hutton plays Holly, Cornel Wilde is Sebastian and Charlton Heston is Brad, with Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame and James Stewart among a credited cast of fifty-one. Made for about four million dollars, it took roughly thirty-six million worldwide.
Audience response has been middling: on IMDb it holds 6.5/10 from around 17,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.4/10 from about 287 votes. A critics' rating of 5.9/10 from forty-two reviews places it slightly below those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- "The Greatest Show on Earth" was the first film seen by director and producer Steven Spielberg, and he cites it as one of the main inspirations that led him to work in the film industry.
- Lucille Ball was supposed to play the role of Angel, but she left the project when she found out she was pregnant with her first child.
- The music for the song Lovely Luawana Lady was written by John Ringling North, who appeared as Brad's boss during a phone call. North was the nephew of the founders of the Ringling Brothers circus.
- The film is included in the book “The Official Razzie Guide: Watching the Best of the Worst Hollywood Films.” The general attitude towards the film is expressed by the opinion that it was a mistake on the part of the Academy to give it the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year.
- There were opinions that “The Greatest Show on Earth” became the best film of the year due to the political situation in the United States in 1952. Cecil B. DeMille was one of the supporters of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was persecuting communists at the time, while Carl Foreman, who was soon blacklisted in Hollywood, was the producer and screenwriter of “High Noon,” which was also nominated in the Best Picture category.
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