I checked: I’ve made various comments about 1952’s The Best Picture Oscar winner “The Greatest Show on Earth” over the years, but I never mentioned that it’s an ethics movie. The Cecil B. DeMille wide-screen spectacular is often cited by current critics as the worst “Best Picture” ever, which tells you a lot about movie critics and the leftward biases of our so-called elite.
I just watched the end of the film because it happened to be showing on MGM+ this morning, catching the film right after its DeMille trademarked train wreck, which both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have said helped inspire them to be movie-makers. The circus train suffers a disastrous crash that devastates performers, animals and equipment, and the company, already in dire financial straits, appears to be doomed. But in the best “the show must go on,” “fight, fight, fight!,” “Don’t give up the ship!,” “I have not yet begun to fight!,” “Victory or death!” (It’s Alamo week, remember!) American tradition, the performers rally around their grievously wounded boss (pre-Moses Charlton Heston) and put on a ramshackle show in an open field after parading through the nearby town to gather an audience. Meanwhile, Jimmy Stewart, as a clown who is secretly a doctor on the run from law enforcement after his mercy killing of his wife, reveals his identity to a police detective by using his skills as a surgeon to save Heston’s life.
Sure the movie is pure schmaltz, and as in all De Mille productions, the acting lacks subtlety (and I’m being kind). But “The Greatest Show on Earth” is now a relic and a fond memorial to an iconic American art form that is gone forever, and best of all (to me) it unbashedly celebrates the American values of courage in adversity, refusing to back down or give up, and the willingness to stand for principles and ideals even when doing defies the odds and demands personal sacrifice.
De Mille showed typical audacity by calling his movie “The Greatest Show on Earth,” because it was a boast as well as an allusion to the famous motto of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Only one other renowned Hollywood director, the brilliant George Stevens (“Shane,” “The Diary of Ann Frank”) dared to use such a title. In his case, “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was so far from great that it virtually ended his career. Popcorny as it was, De Mille’s movie was a big hit with audiences, and is still fun to watch as well as inspiring and nostalgic. As I wrote regarding the movie in 2019, noting that it is derided by critics in part because the film dared to beat out the anti-American Western, “High Noon,” for the 1952 Oscar,
“It’s a big, sprawling ode to the circus, with lots of real circus acts, the great Betty Hutton, and the patented DeMille spectacle of a circus train wreck. DeMille’s spectaculars were the super-hero movies of their day, and even now, I’ll watch “The Greatest Show on Earth” over “High Noon” every time, because it’s fun, and “High Noon” (Yes, it’s a great movie ) isn’t.”
I still feel that way. I also still look to leaders who, when their train crashes, have the character and determination to keep their show going.
Ethics Alarms 
So, what was the worst Best Picture winner? Which, I suppose, could mean the worst picture to actually win, except that all the other nominees that year were worse (i.e., it was the best of a bad lot.). Or it could mean a rather good picture, except that there were much more deserving nominees that year, i.e., it won unfairly. I’m not really an expert in film history, but I would take your opinion in either category.
Thanks for giving me something to get my foggy brain going first thing in the morning. There have been many many examples of where the test of time has revealed that there were much better movies, indeed all-time classics, in the class where another, lesser movie was hailed as “Best Picture.” In fact, as I reviewed that list, the first film I hit where I felt that the “Best Picture” was unquestionably the best picture that year was “Godfather 2,” over 50 years ago. But the question of what was objectively the worst film ever to receive the honor is a different one. I’m going to skip the last five years, because 1) I’ve only seen one of those winners [Oppenheim] 2) we need a little more perspective to judge any film, and 3) when Hollywood went Full Woke, I pretty much lost any interest in seeing any general release movies at all.
All that said, I think the winner of Worst Best Picture Ever is pretty clear: it’s the unwatchable “Around the World in 80 Days.” At the time, it was impressive because of the Todd AO technique which really was special, but today IMAX is better, and a film being visually attractive isn’t enough to make it a great movie. It also marked the beginning of the all-star cast with celebrity cameos fad, on the assumption that seeing a lot of stars in bit parts is inherently an enhancement. It was in “The Longest Day” and “How the West Was Won,” for example, but those films also had great stories to tell. Now, most people seeing “Around the World” have no idea who the stars are. But mainly the movie is just incredibly boring. For some reason critics made a big deal about the casting of a beloved Mexican comic as the protagonist’s sidekick, and he was praised and applauded to the skies. This was an early DEI warning: Cantinflas is OK, but nothing special. Like some other “spectaculars,” notably the Cinerama movies like “2001”, small screens literally reduce the film’s major virtues to the vanishing point. It’s a good test: Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments (and The Longest Day) all lose a lot on TV, and they still work. No service even streams ATWINED very often. It’s unwatchable. I doubt that anyone can stay with it for its entire length at one sitting on TV.
Your take on this is interesting. I only watched the movie once…okay, I did fall asleep during it. I may try watching it again.