The Big Show is a 1961 DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope drama film directed by James B. Clark, starring Esther Williams and Cliff Robertson.
The cast also includes Robert Vaughn, Margia Dean, Nehemiah Persoff and David Nelson,[3][4] who was best known to audiences of the time for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet television show.
Josef, meantime, has fallen in love with a wealthy American woman, Hillary Allen (Williams), who wants him to quit the circus and begin a new life.
Teresa, distraught at learning why Klaus married her, commits suicide at the circus, stepping into the cage of man-eating bear.
[15] Howard Thompson of The New York Times wrote in his review of the film: "Against the excellently staged sawdust numbers (the polar bear act is fascinating), the increasingly ugly incidents edge toward dank, Gothic melodrama (a trial and a murderous climactic fight).
The main match brackets the laconic Mr. Robertson, as the noblest circus heir, and a starry-eyed Miss Williams, in the briefest role of her career, as a rich American expatriate without a pool to her name.
The film's best performance, with the cast striving hard, comes from Renate Mannhardt, as a lovely, betrayed bear tamer.