1952: The Greatest Show on Earth

“A fierce, primitive fighting force that smashes relentlessly forward against impossible odds: That is the circus — and this is the story of the biggest of the Big Tops — and of the men and women who fight to make it — The Greatest Show On Earth!” – Opening narration, The Greatest Show on Earth

1952’s Best Picture, The Greatest Show On Earth, is often cited as the worst, least deserving of all the Best Picture winners, a movie so bad it even made Razzie (aka the Golden Raspberries, the anti-Oscars) book covering the 100 worst movies ever made, the only Best Picture winner to “achieve” such acclaim (even though the Razzie’s were only started in 1980, the book covers the complete history of film). So that being said, and perhaps as a reflection of my own substandard taste, I actually enjoyed this movie. It is cheesy as all hell, with a couple of truly unintentionally laugh out loud moments and it runs too long, but it also packs a lot more entertainment than the pompous and boring Calvacade or How Green Was My Valley. And it unleashed Charlton Heston on an unsuspecting world and is the first best picture in my recollection to feature an attempted murder by elephant.

Charlton Heston and Jimmy Stewart, the latter in his ever-present clown makeup. Because he’s on the lam, you see.

Heston, in his breakout role, plays Brad, who dresses like Indiana Jones and is the travelling manager for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, aka the Greatest Show on Earth. Despite the billing, the circus is struggling to make ends meet, so Brad – who as many acharacter will remind us “has sawdust in his veins” such is his love for and commitment to the show – brings in daredevil trapeze man The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde). Like a Johnny Manziel of the high-wire, Sebastian is a party boy and womanizer off stage, an angel under the tent and a devil outside of it. Even worse, Sebastian’s entrée pushes Brad’s quasi-love interest and budding trapeze star Holly (Betty Hutton) down the card. Holly develops an in-circus rivalry with Sebastian to try and win her spot back as the two do increasingly dangerous stunts without a net and flirt outside the show, to Brad’s chagrin.

The Greatest Show on Earth show the sacrifices every circus performer makes, from endless travel and hard labor to murder by pachyderm.

Naturally the rivalry leads to Sebastian downfall – literally when he takes a spill off the trapeze, permanently crippling his arm. Betty leaves Brad to care for Sebastian. Meanwhile, Buttons, one of the circus’s star clowns – played by iconic the Jimmy Stewart – has a past. Buttons was a doctor who euthanized his wife and is now on the run from the law, which the viewer can glean because he literally never takes off his makeup!

Some poor child’s train set was ruined for this shot. Special effects in the 1950s, everyone.

The drama converges during an epic train accident when Betty proves she too has sawdust in her veins (not an actual medical ailment) rallying the troops to put on a show despite the carnage and Brad’s near death.

Filmed on location backstage and during actual circus performances, The Greatest Show on Earth is practically an infomercial for the circus with overly long scenes of real performers doing the real circus tricks. As noted, a lot of actual plot is pretty hokey. The gasp-inducing reveal of Sebastian’s crippled (and very fake) hand is particularly hilarious as is the Lionel train set that was demolished to create the epic train crash that is the film’s climax. This is pretty clearly not worthy of a Best Picture (against High Noon, one of the greatest westerns of all time) and yet I can’t be actively mad against a movie that is pretty entertaining, even if not in the way it intended.

Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde, moments before Wilde’s fateful fall. I wanted to show his hilarious deformed hand, but alas, no good shots were available.

The meteoric assault of television in the early 1950s hit Hollywood right in the pocketbook, leading studios to create bigger spectacles and gimmicks to lure back patrons (not unlike what’s going on today with the rise of 3-D movies to compete with high definition televisions). The spectacle strategy is really noticeable here with the sprawling , large shots of the circus, the attempts at epic visual effects (that don’t come off particularly well) and the big melodramatic stories replacing more personal, socially conscious arcs of the late 40s.

Trivia: The 1952 Oscars lost the funding of the studio, due to the aforementioned losses to television. Ironically, the Oscars’ savior was TV, which paid to air the ceremony for the first time, marking the current beginnings of the ceremony we know and (sometimes) love.

Other notable Movies of 1952: High Noon#, Ivanhoe#, Moulin Rouge#, The Quiet Man#, The Bad and the Beautiful, Singin’ in the Rain, Million Dollar Mermaid, The Merry Widow,

# Best Picture Nominee

$ Note: The Greatest Show on Earth was the Box Office Champion of 1952

1951: An American in Paris

    

     An American in Paris, 1951’s Best Picture, was the first musical to win Best Picture since 1944’s Going My Way, kicking off a two decade high water mark for the genre (in terms of awards). Unlike previous musical winners, however, An American in Paris was the first of what we in the Snooty English Film Studies Business would call a diegetic musical to win. Let me explain: There are, broadly speaking, two types of Movie Musicals. In “show musicals” like The Great Ziegfeld, all the song and dance numbers take place in the context of being part of one of Ziegfeld’s shows, a musical within the larger context of the realistic, non-musical movie. In diegetic musicals, which are what most people think of when they think of the Hollywood musical, characters can break into song and dance at any point in their world and it’s considered perfectly normal. Why yes, I did go to college to learn this.

Anyway, An American in Paris, with top shelf musical pedigree like Gene Kelly and director Vincent Minnelli (Mr. Judy Garland) is fondly remembered as part of the Golden Age of the Hollywood Musical, but aside from one tremendous musical sequence, I found it to be inferior to a lot of other (non-Best Picture winning ) musicals. (Sidenote: There are something like five more musicals to win between now and 1968 but I’ve only seen one of them, so I may reconsider this statement in the roughly five years it will take me to get to Oliver!).

 

Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in the great final dance sequence

Set in 1950s Paris, Kelly plays Jerry Mulligan, a former GI who stayed in Paris following World War II to pursue his dream of becoming a painter. Despite not selling any pictures, Mulligan lives an idyllic life with best friend, Adam Cook (Oscar Levant) a sarcastic and pessimistic concert pianist. One day Mulligan sells a painting to Milo Roberts, a lonely American heiress who decides to sponsor his painting ambitions. Whether Milo believes Jerry is a good artist or just wants to bed him is unclear, an ambiguity that becomes more complicated when Jerry falls head over heels in love at first site with Lise (Leslie Caron), a mysterious Parisian shop girl. Lise is actually seeing another man (who coincidentally is a good friend of Adam’s) but continues to let Jerry woo her with musical interludes.

My main problem with An American in Paris is that basically everyone in it is a jerk. Jerry in particular is extremely unlikable, constantly telling off Milo, flirting with other women right in front of her and basically ignoring her when all she is trying to do is help him succeed at his life’s ambitions. Never mind that Kelly is too old to be playing the character, he comes off as so ungrateful, when he’s not creepily stalking Lise that I could never root for him. Lise, for that matter, is also fairly terrible with her unrepentant two-timing. Adam is funny comedic relief but talks like he came out of a film noir, an affect that can be rather jarring at times.

 

A larger scene from the jaw dropping final dance number

Here is why the movie is well remembered, though, and probably why it won Best Picture. The movie closes with an utterly amazing 15-minute plus balletic dance sequence through several Parisian sets designed to resemble great French artists. Kelly is of course a tremendous dancer and flows with Caron through the sets with such grace and ease. The whole thing is astonishing and even though it has little to do with the actual plot of the movie (it all takes place in Kelly’s head) it’s so fantastic, I didn’t even notice how long it was. Hollywood was definitely entering a new age of spectacle in the 50s as it tried to compete with television and this is an early Best Picture to capitalize with this mind blowing sequence.

Ever since I watched Annie (the Carol Burnett version) on television when I was but a wee lad, I have had a soft spot for a good musical, like Singing in the Rain (widely considered the best musical of all, so naturally, it didn’t win Best Picture) or Hello Dolly, or even the newer entries like Cabaret (not a winner, but magnificent) and Chicago . So I am both pained and perplexed to say I found An American in Paris to be just ok. It has a fun, breezy score of Gershwin tunes (that weren’t originally written for this movie) and as noted has a tremendous climatic dance piece. But the actual story is pretty weak, even by musical standards, and the characters lack the charm of the best of these sorts of movies (For the record, I prefer Fred Astaire to Gene Kelly when comparing Hollywood hoofers).

Trivia: Besides being the first musical in seven years to win Best Picture, An American in Paris was only the second color film to win, following 1939’s Gone With the Wind. The struggle between black and white and color continues throughout the 50s.

Other Notable Movies of 1951: Decision Before Dawn*, A Place in the Sun*, Quo Vadis*$, A Streetcar Named Desire*, The African Queen, Alice in Wonderland, Bedtime for Bonzo, Show Boat, Strangers on a Train
* Nominated for Best Picture
$Top Grossing movie of the year