I wonder why Nick Cravat wasn't in this?

When I started watching this movie, I fully expected to see Nick Cravat in some role or another. I knew that he had worked with Burt Lancaster in the circus, before Lancaster became a film actor, so it only seemed natural that Lancaster (who also produced the film) to have his old circus friend in a film about circus performers. Cravat had appeared in other films with Lancaster, so why not this one?

Cravat spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent, so he certainly wouldn't have seemed out of place in a film with Tony Curtis, whose character was from Brooklyn.