The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 American drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille,[2] shot in Technicolor and released by Paramount Pictures.

James Stewart also stars as a mysterious clown who never removes his makeup, and Dorothy Lamour and Gloria Grahame also play supporting roles.

In addition to the actors, the real Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's Circus' 1951 troupe appears in the film with its complement of 1,400 people, hundreds of animals and 60 railroad cars of equipment and tents.

He has been forced to hire world-famous aerialist (and notorious ladies man) "The Great Sebastian" as the star and main attraction of that year's show.

Sebastian arrives and is coldly greeted by two former lovers: Angel, who performs in the elephant act with the pathologically jealous Klaus; and Phyllis, who has a dual role as an iron jaw artist and a singer in one of the musical numbers.

Brad makes the connection and casually observes that Gregory will be taking fingerprints at the next stop, so Buttons can escape or lie low if he wishes.

Holly leads the performers in an improvised "spec" around the three rings – a magnificent recovery from the disaster that insures the circus will continue its national tour.

The film features about 85 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus acts, including clowns Emmett Kelly and Lou Jacobs, midget Cucciola, bandmaster Merle Evans, foot juggler Miss Loni and aerialist Antoinette Concello.

[5] One story concerning the movie says that Lucille Ball was offered Gloria Grahame's role but withdrew when she discovered that she was pregnant with her first child, Lucie Arnaz.

However, this account has been disputed because when DeMille was filming with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Ball was preparing I Love Lucy for its launch on CBS.

Art Concello, who was the general manager of Ringling Bros. at the time DeMille was traveling with the show, figured out how to execute the stunt and doubled for Cornel Wilde in the Great Sebastian's fall scene.

Film footage exists showing Hutton rehearsing 40 feet (12 m) in the air, talking to DeMille who had ridden to her height on a camera crane.

[7][8] The music for the song "Lovely Luawana Lady" was written by John Ringling North, who appears briefly as himself during the discussion about whether the show would play the road rather than have a short ten-week season.

[13] The film played for 11 weeks at New York's Radio City Music Hall, a record duration that it shared with Random Harvest in 1942 and that would last until at least the 1960s.

[14] On the film's release, Bosley Crowther in The New York Times called The Greatest Show on Earth a "lusty triumph of circus showmanship and movie skill" and a "piece of entertainment that will delight movie audiences for years":[15] Time magazine called the film a "mammoth merger of two masters of malarkey for the masses: P. T. Barnum and Cecil B. de Mille" that "fills the screen with pageants and parades [and] finds a spot for 60-odd circus acts," but its plot "does not quite hold all this pageantry together.

"[16] Variety wrote that the film "effectively serve[s] the purpose of a framework for all the atmosphere and excitement of the circus on both sides of the big canvas.

"[4] In 1977, Joe Walders wrote in TV Guide that a film's box-office success does not necessarily translate to continued popularity on television, and cited The Greatest Show on Earth as a primary example: "[It] was not only the top moneymaker of the year, but it also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The website's critics consensus reads, "The Greatest Show on Earth is melodramatic, short on plot, excessively lengthy and bogged down with cliches, but not without a certain innocent charm.

[31] Senator Joseph McCarthy was pursuing communists at the time, and DeMille was a conservative Republican involved with the National Committee for a Free Europe.

A Hollywood legend, DeMille's best work had been done during the silent film era, before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established.

In an early scene in Spielberg's 2005 remake of War of the Worlds, the train-wreck sequence from The Greatest Show on Earth is briefly shown on a television.