This is a very good movie!
I am surprised the TCM and other stations don't show it on tv more often. Red Buttons and Peter Lorre were great in it. Vincent Price was very good as the Ring Master. I hope they show it soon.
shareI taped The Big Circus about 10 years ago on either TCM or AMC (before they added commercials) and I still pull out the old VHS tape and watch it several times a year.
shareLittle I saw this movie when it first came out on tv. I remember Red Buttons was hilarious in it but the entire cast was great.
shareThe entire cast was indeed great with the standouts being Gilbert Roland, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Red. And with David Nelson playing a key role!
RIP David Nelson (1936-2011).
I ran this film in my summer movie program last year and everyone was surprised at the revelation of the real villain -- they all thought it would be Vincent Price!
David Nelson is the second cast member of The Big Circus to pass away in the past year: Adele Mara (Maria) died in May, 2010, at 87. Now only Rhonda Fleming (87) and Katharine Grant (77) remain. Hard to grasp that David was 74. Our lost youth.
Incidentally, two years later David was cast in yet another circus movie, The Big Show, a second remake of 1949's House of Strangers -- the first being Broken Lance (1954). Only so-so, and not as interesting a part for DN.
Happy New Year, Big-G!
I watched "The Big Circus" on tv recently because the tv mag reveiwer said it was better than "The Greatest Show on Earth". How terribly wrong he was! its not bad but its not even as good as "Trapeze" for crying out loud. The worst thing about it is Red Buttons, how the hell did he ever keep working in Hollywood? Its one of life's greatest mysteries for sure.
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
Was it more so the character he played or just Red himself?
And Happy New Year hobnob! Hope you have been doing well!
It was just surprising to learn of David Nelson's passing. You look at THE BIG CIRCUS and how young and athletic he looked; I would have thought he'd end up being the last remaining survivor from this major cast.
Ironically, I've met Rhonda Fleming and Kathryn Grant and both were grand ladies!
I always thought Rhonda was one of the most beautiful women ever to grace Hollywood. She had great undressed scenes in Queen of Babylon (a little Italian number) and Lang's While the City Sleeps. And, um, oh, yes, a very good actress to boot. Truly.
Kathy Grant was lucky to be Mrs. Bing Crosby number 2. She and her family fared a hell of a lot better than did Crosby's first wife and four sons. Even Kathy and her kids admit that Bing was a very different husband and father to them than he had been to the first family, where today he'd probably be brought up on child cruelty charges. He drove the first Mrs. C. to alcoholism and was cruel and vindictive to his sons, two of whom committed suicide. (He left money to his four sons in trusts none of them could touch until they were 65. But not to worry: three of them died before reaching that age.) Kathy must have been a strong as well as nice lady to have deflected such behavior after she married Der Bingle.
I think The Big Circus was her last film before retiring to give birth to the girl who'd end up shooting J.R. Ewing 22 years later. I believe she made this film before her other 1959 movie, Anatomy of a Murder, but maybe not. She certainly didn't look pregnant in that sexy trapeze costume!
Lucky you to have met them both!
But I still can't get over the fact that David Nelson is dead. That gives us, what, another six months?
I love circus movies and the Heston one is easily the best. "The Big Circus" is kind of flat, and Gilbert Roland threatening to kill Victor Mature was ludicrous.
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
I'm not especially a "circus movie" fan as such but happen to like both TGSOE and TBC. Most others don't particularly appeal to me, at least not as "circus" pictures per se. I do like Circus of Horrors, if that's any consolation.
I don't think Roland threatening to kill Mature is ludicrous at all. Unlike, say, a fugitive murderer dressed as a clown who hasn't taken his make-up off for ten years? But Greatest Show did have a much better train wreck. And the line, "Judas Priest! You've got nothing but sawdust in your veins!", amid other incisive, original dialogue.
Well, since I’ve only seen some segments of GREATEST SHOW, and not the whole thing (and I call myself a movie buff), I can’t really discuss the merit of the two movies.
Still, is there a reason to contrast and compare? THE BIG CIRCUS is not a remake and therefore, I don’t see any need to put side by side the two, eventhough it may deal with a similar subject matter. To me, it would be like comparing SAN FRANCISCO with Clark Gable and EARTHQUAKE (as long as we are talking Charlton Heston films!)
I think The Big Circus was her last film before retiring to give birth to the girl who'd end up shooting J.R. Ewing 22 years later.
When I met Kathyrn, it was at a 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD showing in Santa Monica in 2008 (Ray Harryhausen was also on hand). I saw Mary Crosby there as well, and can I say that she was smoking hot! (women seem to age better than most men it always seems!).
Mary C. would have been 49 then, and glad to hear she still looked good. She certainly had a great bikini shot [sic] in Dallas, as my not entirely faded memory recalls.
You definitely must see Greatest Show. Like most DeMilles, it's entertaining if over-huge. Not bad once you accept and get past Betty Hutton. Tons of cliches. Really great train wreck, as I said. A couple of funny guest cameos. None of it makes much sense. I think it may be the film with the greatest number of credits for a single person -- John Ringling North, the head of Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey. He gets separate credits as an actor [once again, sic], technical advisor, co-author of a song, and president of the circus. (That position does sound like the punchline to a joke, doesn't it?) I think his only rivals are Noel Coward for In Which We Serve and Cy Roth for Fire Maidens of Outer Space. These guys make Irwin Allen look like a piker.
Oh, a better quake comparison might be between San Francisco and John Wayne's Flame of the Barbary Coast. I like Leonard Maltin's description of the latter, which ends by saying, "...featuring Republic Pictures' version of the San Francisco earthquake." Needless to say, it isn't quite as meticulous as MGM's.
We have a FYE store that is moving to another location, and as a result every DVD & CD is 50% off! I thought I saw GREATEST there not too long ago, and if it is still available, I can get it and real cheap too (last week, I bought the John Wayne double-feature FLYING TIGERS / SANDS OF IWO JIMA, at a much lower price than what I was use to seeing!). But hobnob, I do agree with you about DeMille movies. They can be rather spectacular, but also quite clichéd (and that is why when I think of the greatest directors of all time, I think of Hitchcock, Chaplin, Kurosawa, David Lean, etc, but never really DeMille. One of the greatest showman, definitely, but director is another story. That is not to say though, that his movies are not entertaining. They are!).
shareYou still have FYE? They pulled out of NYS four or five years ago. If that particular store has such bargains, grab 'em -- FYE normally sells only at the top dollar price, with very few sales.
I believe most of Paramount's classic releases issued in the last decade are now out of print, so if you want TGSOE or any others, it's another reason to get them before they disappear.
Incidentally, Warner Archives is gradually replacing all its old, bland, dark blue covers with new ones featuring poster or other art from the films. They began doing this last March with new releases after customers complained about the dull sameness of the original cover style, which was terrible in and of itself without becoming even worse through monotony. But they've since been going back to the first year's DVDs and redoing those covers too. They've just put out a beautiful new cover for The Big Circus, very lively and bright.
Just came back from FYE and unfortunately, GREATEST SHOW is no longer there. I'll have to find it some other means (and I'm sure TCM will run it soon enough, when they have their annual 31 days of Oscar films).
Incidentally, Warner Archives is gradually replacing all its old, bland, dark blue covers with new ones featuring poster or other art from the films.
I just ordered CITY BENEATH THE SEA, with the poster art cover that they advertised, but when I received it, it was just the ordinary blue cover with the picture of Stuart Whitman in front. Needless to say, I was disappointed about that, but the movie was still in great quality.
Not sure if I would buy THE BIG CIRCUS again just for the new DVD cover. Wish Warner Archives had done the more colorful cover versions right from the beginning.
Greatest Show is not going to be shown on TCM during its 31 Days of Oscar. I have the Feb. guide and it's not listed.
Try Borders for the DVD, or else it's still easy to get through Amazon, though you may have to go the marketplace route.
I wish Warner Archives had done the nice covers from the start too, but I don't think they realized the success they'd have on their hands. Originally they intended to release new films only twice a month but now it's usually every Tuesday, except holidays. The new TBC cover has who I assume is Katharine Grant in the upper left, with I think David Nelson. They're a bit small as reproduced on the cover, but she looks to be wearing a considerably scantier trapeze costume than the one actually in the film.
TCM showing nothing but Oscar winning or Oscar nominated movies for an entire month, and yet NOT showing the 1952 Best Picture?!!! That baffles me a great deal!
I'll try Borders, but in our local branches, they have really downsized on their DVD inventory. The Borders I usually go at one time had the books section in the front and in the rear, it was the movie section with its own cash register. That is all gone now. Their DVD section nowadays just occupies a small portion of the store. Barnes & Noble, I think has a better selection, so I will try both (and if that fails, Amazon it will be).
I’ve looked at the new cover for THE BIG CIRCUS, and that is indeed Kathy Grant scantly dressed, which makes it a much more attractive looking cover than before! Perhaps I will buy it again!
Glad to see you and I have our priorities straight!
shareGee, OSK! You mean to tell us you think a Charlton Heston movie was better than a non-Heston one?!! OMG!
TGSOE was certainly a bigger-budget movie, a big studio production, made with the cooperation of the biggest circus in the world, so from that standpoint you'd expect it to be, well, big. But "great"? It's also one of the least-deserving Best Pictures ever -- preposterous to have been given that award -- and is more loaded with cliches than any other film of its ilk, The Big Cicus included. The latter was made on a much smaller budget and so is inevitably done on a more modest scale, but I think it has at least as good a cast, if not better, than Greatest Show, and a few more interesting touches, like the tightrope walk across Niagara Falls. Trapeze is a very different type of "circus" film but while it's good it's nowhere near as interesting or as much fun as either TBC or TGSOE.
Red Buttons? While he was never one of my favorite actors I liked him well enough, and as far as this film goes I thought he did quite well. He did win an Oscar himself for his performance in Sayonara (1957), and while I would have liked to see that year's award go to Sessue Hayakawa for The Bridge on the River Kwai, Buttons's turn is really quite moving and well-done, certainly not an undeserved Oscar.
Anyway, Greatest Show is weighed down with the unbearable, excruciating, strident, loud and bumptious Betty Hutton, a veritable affront to civilization, so you have no cause to complain about anyone in the cast of The Big Circus, or for that matter, Plan 9 From Outer Space. I'll take six Buttons to one Hutton any day!
Well, to get into this GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH vs. THE BIG CIRCUS debate, I finally saw GREATEST. Pretty good movie. It was far from perfect, but it entertained me enough.
Chuck Heston, I thought stood out over everyone else as the no-nonsense head of this traveling show. Cornel Wilde was OK as the playboy acrobat. Interesting James Stewart appearance (was that Jimmy singing!), but I think I missed the circumstances of WHY he did what he did, that eventually forced him to hide out at the circus. The women, Betty Hutton and Gloria Graham, performed well enough, but I thought their characters were less believable. And yes, I could spot several famous people in the audience such as Hope and Crosby (and ironically during Dorothy Lamour’s number).
As in some of his other movies, we have DeMille narrating portions of the film, though sometimes it was a bit overdramatic (they are putting on a show Cecil, not trying to free the Hebrew slaves!).
Clearly because this is DeMille, GREATEST is much more spectacular than TBC. (Great train crash, btw). Now is it as fun to watch? In my opinion, no. Irvin Allen’s feature, I thought had more interesting characters and the scenario of an unknown saboteur was much more intriguing.
Still, just because both features involve the circus, doesn’t mean they should be compared. As I said earlier, it is like comparing earthquake movies such SAN FRANCISCO and EARTHQUAKE.
In the end, both movies get my thumbs up.
I pretty much agree with your assessments, Big G, about both films. TGSOE is obviously bigger, but TBC may be greater. How's that for confusion?
Yes, Jimmy Stewart does sing. When he isn't being drowned out by Betty Hutton. Oh, he ran away to the circus to become a clown in order to hide from the cops, who were after him because, as a doctor ten years before, he'd iced his wife in a mercy killing, further details unknown. The detective who hops the train before the crash tells this to Heston, and there's an earlier scene where Stewart takes a scrap of newspaper from Betty, who sees an article about The Doctor Who Killed The Thing He Loved...the same words "Buttons" had himself just used! (More DeMille subtlety.) He sees his mother once a year when they play his hometown (the old lady he sidles up to in the grandstand). The cops seem to be hunting for him everywhere but have only now decided to look for him in the circus, after ten years. That's why he never takes off his make-up. I can only imagine what his skin looks like underneath all that, after a decade.
Bing and Bob in the stands during Dotty's song was clearly not a coincidence. And Edmond O'Brien as the barker at the end?!
But I have no problem comparing two similar films with one another. Why not? Earthquake pictures, circus pictures, what the heck. They're all fair game, like hunting pictures. Hey, remember The Lost World(s)!
So it was a mercy killing. It was never really made clear (or I just missed that point).
Regarding Betty Hutton, yes, I did find her character rather overbearing at times, however, believe it or not, I had more of a problem with Gloria Graham (rather her character Angel). To me, she was just cold-hearted throughout, especially with the elephant trainer, Klaus. No, she didn’t have to be his girlfriend, but there are better ways to handle situations like that, but she was just plain mean to him and always! (which makes me wonder, why he was still in love with her throughout). And of course, that eventually led Klaus to lose his mind and cause a great deal of harm. Yet, no consequences for Angel other than losing Brad at the end. Her own ending, I found not very believable at all.
By contrast, in THE BIG CIRCUS, you don’t find any equivalent to those two women (Rhonda Fleming & Kathy Grant – no way!). Heck, every one of those characters is quite likeable (and not to mention, more interesting).
Oh, you're absolutely right about the characters -- all the people in The Big Circus are not only nicer, but far more interesting, even as characters.
By contrast, the crew in The Greatest Show on Earth are pretty much one-dimensional caricatures. I've read criticisms of TBC that it packs a lot of circus cliches in its script, but my God, TGSOE never saw a cliche it didn't press-gang into its script. Not to mention DeMille's usual heavy-handed means of making his points ("So that's why you wore that coat over your arm! You're a claw hand!" or "So that's why you say these things to me! To get me to move my arm so I can see that there's hope for me to fly again!"), etc. (Yes, it is practically that bad!)
The other weird thing about the Hutton/Grahame combo is that they keep switching their allegiances back and forth between Heston and Wilde, which makes both of them seem women of no judgment and easy virtue. Personally I think Gloria should have stayed with Chuck and Betty with Cornel. But I've always assumed that since both Wilde and Grahame have "pasts" (i.e., they've each had sex), they have to end up with one another to keep their respectivie contaminations to themselves, while saving the virginal Hutton for the equally innocent Heston. Hollywood's idea of how to satisfy the audience's supposed moral code of 1952.
No such problems exist with the Mature/Fleming or Buttons/Grant relationships in TBC, of course. None is presented as either an innocent or a sex maniac, just normal, healthy people who stay their romantic courses, bumps and all.
Hey, I just realized a connection between characters in the two films: Red Buttons? Buttons the Clown? Coincidence?! I don't think so!
By the way, TGSOE was Betty Hutton's last film for Paramount, and almost her last film of all. When she signed for it she was on top of her game, a hugely (if, by today's reckoning, inexplicably) popular performer. Now she was cast as the lead in what became the Best Picture of the year as well as a huge box-office success. But fame had gone to her head (there was plenty of room for it), and after completing this film she demanded that her husband, some minor nobody in the business, be assigned to direct all her films, and threatened to walk out on her contract if this demand were refused. When the studio chiefs did indeed say no (qutie justifiably), she walked, and found that neither Paramount nor anyone else would hire her. She fell back to performing in clubs but did only one minor film, five years later, called Spring Reunion, and soon after disappeared from the business altogether. I heard she was supposed to do a B-western in 1965 but pulled out of that one, and wound up as the cook in the rectory of a Catholic church in Rhode Island, whose priests had no idea who she was. She eventually overcame alcoholism and emerged a bit into public view. I remember back around 2002 Robert Osborne interviewed her on TCM, where she gave a wholly false story of how her film career had come to such an abrupt end: she blamed it on executives at MGM, where she had been loaned out to do Annie Get Your Gun in 1950 -- not only untrue, but ridiculous, as Metro wasn't even her home studio, Paramount was (and, of course, she did several other films after Annie). She seemed nice but kind of loopy to me, but Osborne was obviously quite taken with her and has always made it clear he's a huge fan. To each his own, I guess.
By contrast, the crew in The Greatest Show on Earth are pretty much one-dimensional caricatures
Well, a good example is the ring master. Sure he was a minor character but quite one-dimensional nevertheless. Now compare that to Vincent Price!
Also, when I first saw THE BIG CIRCUS, I thought Price was the saboteur. It is freakin Vincent Price for goodness sakes, so obviously it’s him! Then to my surprise, wow! It is intrigues such as that, which makes THE BIG CIRCUS the better movie (at least for me). Plus, since Irwin Allen didn’t have the money DeMille had, it couldn’t have been as flashy, but then again, it made it focus more on substance rather than spectacle (Ironically, Allen would later fall into that trap with his 1970s disaster films such as THE TOWERING INFERNO, though I actually did like that movie).
Good points about the relationships in GREATEST, though Heston’s Brad, I thought deserved better than either one of them! Heck, go with Dorothy Lamour!
Hey, I just realized a connection between characters in the two films: Red Buttons? Buttons the Clown? Coincidence?! I don't think so!
Hah!! That never even crossed my mind!
In regards to Betty Hutton, and her demands and so forth, it almost mimics her character in GREATEST, except the fictionalized one had a happier ending or so it seems.
With all of this, one may think I did not like THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. But as I said in my initial review, it had enough to keep me interested. Using Leonard Maltin’s review scale, I would give it *** stars (Maltin himself give it a rating of ***1/2 stars!). It was Heston who was the best thing about the movie. In an ironic way, while Heston’s character was putting the whole circus on his shoulders, Heston himself, was doing the same thing with the movie!
I ran TBC as one of my Thursday night classic movies last summer, and everyone thought Vincent Price was the villain! Not only because, as you say, he's Vincent Price, but because there were a number of shots of him looking a bit suspicious littered throughout the movie, which I think was done deliberately to make the audience assume he was the bad guy. It made it doubly shocking when the true identity of the saboteur/killer was revealed, given who he was! (Details omitted in case anyone's gotten this far reading this thread and still hasn't seen the movie.)
I like The Towering Inferno too. At the time I said to several people that this was Irwin's Gone With the Wind, that he'd hit his apex and would never top it. That's one right guess out of a lifetime.
But yes, I like both circus films. TGSOE's triteness doesn't make it not enjoyable, just not the Best Picture of 1952, and, in my humble opinion, not as good as The Big Circus. But the kudos went to the earlier and, you'll pardon the expression, pricier (in the wrong sense!) pic.
I rented this from the library to show to my movie group. I remember it as being very enjoyable, more so than THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
I'm the kind of guy, when I move - watch my smoke. But I'm gonna need some good clothes though.