Product Details

• Actors: Charlton Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Antoinette Concello, Cucciola
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Paramount
• VHS Release Date: February 13, 1998
• Run Time: 152 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300215938
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,432 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

The Greatest Show on Earth is a heaping helping of flapdoodle served up by one of Hollywood's canniest entertainers: producer-director Cecil B. DeMille. This overripe melodrama purports to be life inside the Ringling Brothers Circus; maybe it's not, but the circus ought to be like this. The actors wrestling with the purple dialogue are: early-career Charlton Heston, as the tough-as-nails circus manager; Cornel Wilde and Betty Hutton as trapeze artistes; and Gloria Grahame (who won an Oscar), dangling from elephants. Best of all, James Stewart plays a clown who--for mysterious reasons--never removes his makeup. (Stewart took the supporting role simply because he'd always wanted to play a clown.) This is a fried-baloney sandwich of a movie: it ain't sophisticated, and probably isn't good for you, but once you start you can't stop. It was the box-office champ of 1952, and it shocked everybody by winning the best picture Oscar. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Show On Earth - But Not The Best Picture, May 4, 2004

By 

Roy Jaruk (Patterson, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Greatest Show on Earth (DVD)

As a circus buff, I can't imagine anybody BUT C.B. De Mille having the scope of vision to do justice to a show deliberately created to be so big that one person simply can't take it all in, and the stories and subplots that abound under the biggest of the Big Tops. That said, I do have to wonder what on earth the Academy was thinking when they voted TGSOE the Oscar as Best Picture of 1952. That year saw the release of High Noon, Ivanhoe, The Quiet Man and Singin' In The Rain, any one of which could lay better claim to the title of Best Picture in terms of writing, plot and cinematography. Why did TGSOE win the Oscar?

I believe it is because the film was seen as a "last chance" vote for De Mille; particularly ironic given that C.B. received the Thalberg that year as well, and for the same reason: for creating and producing consistently high-quality movies. De Mille's best work was decades behind him when he filmed the 1951 edition of the Ringling Brothers - Barnum & Bailey Circus. The subplots, purple prose and some of the situations have more in common with the silent cinema spectacles for which De Mille is justly famed than they do with the realities of running a three-ring railroad circus plus midway under canvas on the road for an 8-month season.

One subplot almost derailed the production, in fact. From its beginnings, Ringling Brothers was renowned for running a totally honest show. Considering that at one point Ringling had been nicknamed 'the Sunday-School Show' for its total intolerance of grifters, pickpockets and thieves, the subplot involving a dishonest rival circus owner planting a team of con men on the show to run the midway's games of chance was about as welcome to the circus's management as a skunk at a picnic. There were rows between De Mille, Art Concello (Ringling's Director of Performance) and John Ringling North, the show's owner, over this plot until C.B. convinced them he needed the plot line to set up the climactic train wreck at the end of the movie. (Ringling's management didn't like THAT much either, because RB&BB hadn't had a train wreck since 1892!) However, the show extended itself even beyond their usual standard to accommodate the filming (Concello, a famous aerialist in his time, even gaffed The Great Sebastian's fall for De Mille) and despite the tensions engendered by the needs of two different forms of entertainment (there is a legend that C.B. got a royal chewing-out from Concello for moving the lighting around without asking so he could film better, which movement nearly caused a trapeze artist to fall because he couldn't see his catcher), the principal photgraphy was a marvelous chronicle of circus life, in and out of the ring.

The photography, in fact, is what makes The Greatest Show On Earth such an important picture. De Mille succeeded in capturing on film a way of life that even then was starting to die; John Ringling North would strike the Big Top for good midway through the 1956 season and convert his circus into an 'arena show.' Forget the corny subplots involving Brad Braden, Holly, Buttons the Clown and The Great Sebastian. Watch this movie in a documentary frame of mind and you will realize not just how important the circus used to be back before television brought the world into your living room, but the sense of wonder that has been lost from our faster-paced, wider-ranging lives. Glory in the music as well, much of it written for the movie or the 1951 Edition; Victor Young's "The Greatest Show On Earth March" instantly sets the circus scene just as well as Fucik's "Entry of the Gladiators" ever has. Remember that all the acts are doing their thing in real time, not with the help of a green screen and CGI; those are real people really risking their necks out there! (Oh yes: and that really IS Betty Hutton working on the single bar above Ring One. She was doubled for the sequences on the flying trapeze, but she learned and performed her own routines on the single bar. There is even an extant film clip of her being presented with an award from Photoplay Magazine by C.B. De Mille, who had to ride up on a camera crane to give it to her while she was rehearsing under the Big Top!)

We owe the great Cecil B. De Mille many thanks for the documenting of The Greatest Show On Earth at its peak. I personally believe this movie should rank high on the AFI 100 Greatest Movies List. However, as I've said, the best picture of 1952 it isn't, not by a long shot.

Even so, buy the DVD anyway and go to the circus again... and again... and again! "Bring the young'uns! Bring the old folks! Come again!"

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best? Great? Whatever ... It's Marvelous Entertainment!, January 1, 2005

By 

J. Michael Click (Fort Worth, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Greatest Show on Earth (DVD)

Movie: **** DVD Quality: ***** DVD Extras: N/A

It almost seems that "The Greatest Show on Earth" would be more highly respected today if it had not won the Best Picture Oscar in 1952; reviewers often tend to compare its value to that of other films released the same year (especially "The Quiet Man", which won Best Director for John Ford and "Singin' in the Rain" which failed to secure a Best Picture nomination at all), and find TGSOE lacking. Such criticism is patently unfair. After all, whether it won as a fluke because the other nominees split the vote, or whether the Academy voters simply went for it in a big way, it isn't TGSOE's fault that it emerged the big winner - blame the Academy! And Oscar considerations aside, it's undeniable that TGSOE is exactly what its producers and director Cecil B. DeMille intended it to be: a great big, gaudy, colorful, lavish example of traditional storytelling and old-fashioned entertainment that would delight and thrill audiences while raking in piles of money at the box-office. On those terms, the film was - and still is - a stupendous success.

Certainly the movie features the cast of a lifetime interacting with actual circus personnel in this early "Circus of the Stars". In addition to top-billed Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde (who actually performed many of their own acrobatic stunts), the players include Charlton Heston; Gloria Grahame; Dorothy Lamour; legendary clown Emmett Kelly; DeMille regulars Henry Wilcoxon and Julia Faye; Lyle Bettger; Lawrence Tierney; and, in a meaty supporting role, James Stewart. Countless big names also make cameo appearances or pop up in crowd scenes: watch for Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the stands while "Road" series co-star Dorothy Lamour is singing; Edmond O'Brien; Hopalong Cassidy; and many more. The slim plot, concerning the behind-the-scenes operations of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, is secondary to the spectacle of the performers, animals, and roustabouts, but DeMille nonetheless throws in some torrid romance, a dash of mystery, a touch of tragedy ... and a mammoth train wreck! And all this was filmed in eye-popping three-strip Technicolor, making it a visual feast for the eyes.

The Paramount DVD offers a gorgeous film-to-video transfer that is wonderful to behold. The film is presented in its original "full-screen" aspect ratio (the widescreen CinemaScope process wouldn't make its debut for another year), and looks and sounds terrific. Highly recommended to those who enjoy star-filled extravaganzas and "old-fashioned" epic storytelling; anyone who ever dreamed of running away from home and joining the circus (and didn't most of us?) will especially enjoy this rousing entertainment.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DEMILLE AT HIS BARNUM BEST!, April 10, 2002

By 

Darryl M. Haase "dothehucklebuck" (Cleveland, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Greatest Show on Earth [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"The Greatest Show on Earth" is probably Cecil B. DeMille's best sound film (sans the 1956 perennial "The Ten Commandments") since it is a film about showmanship. DeMille was cinema's greatest showman, whether his movie plots were historical, religious, dramatic, or just plain American 1950's hokum, such as this one. "The Greatest Show on Earth" succeeds at glorifying the lost art of the world's traveling circus when the circus was performed in tents, vs. the great arenas of today. DeMille's narration adds an air of authenticity to the proceedings, but the audience knows full well that this movie is a big show itself, which is low on the acting quality but big on the spectacle. Some of the matte shots and special effects show their age, especially the model train wreck which climaxes the film. Most fun of all is seeing Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the circus audience watching their Paramount co-star Dorothy Lamour perform.