This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher. I mean, I understand the appeal of a spectacle. Plenty of unapologetically large movies were produced around 1952, but I have trouble grasping why this one snagged the top prize. It’s a popcorn flick. Drive-in fare. Harmless enough, and perhaps that’s exactly why it crossed the finish line first, in a nutshell—or rather a peanut shell. The world was still recovering from WWII, and the Cold War was in full swing. This movie was an antidote to controversy, beating out worthy competition that pushed audiences’ comfort level in one way or another. The Greatest Show on Earth is not horrible, but there is nothing “best” about it, either. Sort of like honoring The Golden Voyage of Sinbad or War of the Worlds with the Oscar. Enjoyable and fun with a few “wow” moments, sure. But Best Picture?

After a lengthy string of black-and-white dramas, An American in Paris was a refreshing departure from the norm when it picked up the award a year earlier, but it also took risks in structure (the extended ballet finale) and content (the plot and premise). It was a unique experience even among frothy MGM musicals. The Greatest Show on Earth, by contrast, is pure escapism, nothing more. It departs even further from those hard-hitting realistic dramas but does so in such an ordinary, expected way.

James Stewart as Buttons, Betty Hutton as Holly, and Charlton Heston as Brad.

The last 25 minutes is where the “wow” factor happens, in the form of a colossal train collision and its bloody aftermath. The film shifts at that point from three-ring soap opera to disaster movie, making an effective transition. I imagine it persuaded Oscar voters to forget the two hours of hokum and ho-hum that preceded it. The Greatest Show on Earth spends half of that running time presenting extended circus performances, pageantry, and even a few songs. The plot, with one or two exceptions, grinds to a halt so we can ogle and admire animal acts, clown antics, daredevils, shiny costumes, drill-team choreography, and thematic parades. We even see celebrity cameos peppered throughout, several of whom oooh and aaah while sitting in the bleachers, chomping on popcorn, peanuts, and ice cream cones. Others have bit parts. All told, they include Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Noel Neill, Danny Thomas, Van Heflin, Edmund O’Brien, Kathleen Freeman, and Mona Freeman.

Another major distraction for me was the overuse of process shots known as “blue screen” or “green screen,” where actors are filmed in front of a solid color which is then “keyed” over separate footage for a background. This technique is used today in many big-budget films, but technology has improved to the point where it’s often hard to tell the difference. Not so, back in 1952. It isn’t just employed for isolated effects shots, either. Director Cecil B. DeMille uses it all through this movie, even in quieter moments. We constantly see hard cutouts around actors’ bodies, hair, and faces, often in thick, black or green outlines, and the backgrounds don’t match with similar lighting, tint, or focus. In one particularly awful shot during a parade scene at the end of the film, Betty Hutton is transparent as she swings and sings on a rig fastened to a moving truck. We actually see right through her as if she were a ghost. This gives the movie a low-budget, cheap look, to say the least.

Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde.

The cast is made up of popular stars in the leading roles, but none of them give notable performances. Hutton was one of Paramount’s biggest draws. She gets top billing as trapeze artist Holly, and I’m a fan of hers, but she overacts here, from start to finish, particularly in scenes with Charlton Heston, who matches her exaggerated dynamic at times. Speaking of Heston, this is the film that made him an A-list star, although his voice sounds like a caricature of “Charlton Heston doing Cecil B. DeMille.” It was only his third role at the studio, and he pitches his lines into the lower register with such purposefulness it seems as though he were trying hard to sound manlier and more mature. He hadn’t quite figured out how to make it work as a persona yet. Also, his cadences are identical to those of DeMille, who narrates the film. I hadn’t noticed that before in other movies, but it’s somewhat humorous when you compare how they pronounce or emphasize certain words in the same overblown fashion. By contrast, Cornel Wilde gives us a meandering Pepé Le Pew accent as rival Parisian aerialist Sebastian. Gloria Grahame and Dorothy Lamour both have one-note roles with no acting challenges, and James Stewart is hidden behind clown makeup for the duration. While his character Buttons has an intriguing past, he is given nothing in the way of meaty scenes or dialogue to go with it. The cast still manages to be appealing, which is a credit to them, not the material.

Perhaps it’s the subject matter itself that is the major draw and the reason I’m distanced from the film today. It served as a smokescreen of sweet nostalgia in 1952, covering many flaws simply by dazzling and reminding older audiences of a simpler era, but for me circuses are off-putting in general. From trained animal acts that border on animal cruelty to classic clowns, which I find frightening to various degrees even without the help of Stephen King and It. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was nearing the end of its heyday when this movie was released, but it was still in vogue. By the time I attended it myself around the mid-1980s at Madison Square Garden in New York City, it was already more of a curiosity from a bygone era than a thriving entertainment. Now it is no more, replaced by Cirque du Soleil and the like, with refined theatrics, thematic storylines, artistic concepts, and no animal acts.

Perhaps it is DeMille himself, the cinematic equivalent of P.T. Barnum, the greatest showman who put over the circus as if it were the grandest entertainment you’d see in your lifetime. Suckers are born every minute, as Barnum famously said, and sometimes enough people get bamboozled into picking a clunker as the finest of the year.

The Greatest Show on Earth