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.
Ethics Alarms 
