Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Circus Cameos #12

This scene was most likely filmed on a Hollywood sound stage, and then combined with a scene of the midway that had been filmed on location. It is included here because it provides a good view of the 1951 sideshow banner line.
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Posted by Buckles at 6/28/2011 05:44:00 AM

4 comments:

JACKIE said...

It made the story interesting, but as all circus people know, Ringling never had any such games on the midway Jackie LeClaire

28 June, 2011 11:54
Chic Silber said...

A scene like this just helps to

convince the unwashed that we are

all of the same cloth Although

some of us have worked in both

they are different industries

Sharing a lot does not make them

a single or common show

28 June, 2011 16:55
Roger Smith said...

Most of us are grateful to see many showfolks we knew, and those we wish we had known. Circus, as a genre, provides endless compelling storylines of the life itself, if writers immerse themselves in finding them. Sadly, DeMille's scripters, Fredric Frank, Theo St. John, and Barre Lyndon, succumbed to the expected criminal plot and gave us gambling games on the midway, the warm, fatherly clown hiding from a mercy killing by wearing makeup around the clock, and the elephant boss teaming with crooked concessionaires to wreck the train. Enough circus survived this script to provide a setting, but even DeMille approved a theme that discredited what the show was at the time. Cutting past sentiment, the detractions remain, and so does the question of what power DeMille and Paramount wielded to compel John North to allow misrepresentation of his family's policies. The answer may be the money that finally paid off claims from the Hartford fire, while the audience's perception of "those circus people" remained in the shadows of Paramount's old Writer's Building.

29 June, 2011 18:07
JIM ELLIOTT said...

I have been in the CARNIVAL BUSINESS, over 56 years, now. And I must hear this said, at least four or five times, a season: How long have you been with the circus?
I try and make people see the difference, in the two, by telling them the following: This is a Carnival, it has RIDES. The Circus has tents and elephants.

27 September, 2011 19:07

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