15. The Greatest Show On Earth
By 1950, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus comprised more than 1,400 employees and performers, and several hundred animals as part of its traveling retinue. Supporting equipment included animal cages, aquariums, traveling aviaries, kitchens and canteens, electrical generators and miles of wire and cables, hundreds of lights for signage and for spotlights, requiring sixty railcars to transport the show from one location to another. The logistics of moving and operating the circus was a staggering undertaking, and the show had to perform as the cost of maintaining it remained whether revenues were coming in or not. The animals still had to be fed, the equipment maintained, and the payroll met.
In 1952 Cecil B. DeMille, known for producing lavish biblical film epics, produced The Greatest Show On Earth, which depicted both a fictional drama about circus life and an almost documentary presentation of the challenges of producing and operating a traveling circus. It was set within Ringling Brothers, and the circuses performers and supporting employees were included in the film, along with Betty Hutton, Dorothy Lamour, Charlton Heston, Cornel Wilde, and Jimmy Stewart (as a clown who never removed his makeup, even when not working). It won the Oscar for Best Picture and was the most popular film in the United States and England in 1952, and in France when released there in 1953. Nonetheless, attendance at the real circus was in steady decline, and losses mounted for Ringling Brothers beginning in the 1950s.