There is evidence to suggest that the character of “the
Great Sebastian” in DeMille’s TGSOE was partially inspired by a
character that appeared in CIRCUS GIRL, a rather obscure B-movie
released by Republic Pictures in 1937.
(DeMille’s writers allegedly screened every circus film they could find
while preparing the script for TGSOE. If that was the case, then CIRCUS
GIRL was probably one of the films they looked at.)
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Saturday, April 26, 2014
Circus Girl #1 (From Eric Beheim)
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At the beginning of its production year, Republic Pictures would provide exhibitors with a list of titles of the features, serials, B-westerns, etc. that it planned to release during the next 12 months. In addition to the titles, there would also be fancy artwork to further sell exhibitors on booking these films. Quite often, all that existed were the titles and the artwork, as the scripts had yet to be written. That might have been the case with CIRCUS GIRL, since its rather generic title might have been used with any number of different plots.
Producer Nat Levine was the founder of Mascot Pictures, which produced primarily serials. (He was the one who produced Clyde Beatty’s Mascot serial THE LOST JUNGLE. He also brought Gene Autry to the screen in a serial titled THE PHANTOM EMPIRE.) Levine and Herbert J. Yates later merged Mascot with several other smaller studios to form Republic Pictures in 1936, with Levine in charge of producing its serials and B-westerns. In this capacity, he produced DARKEST AFRICA, Republic’s first serial, which starred Clyde Beatty. He also produced many of the early Republic B-westerns starring Gene Autry, John Wayne and the Three Mesquiteers. He and Yates didn’t get along, however, and Levine left Republic in 1938. After briefly working for MGM’s B-unit, he ended up managing a theater in Redondo Beach, California.
Hollywood rewards come in strange, often unwarranted ways. When DeMille's writers, Frederic M. Frank, Theodore St. John, and Frank Cavett derived their GSOE script from Hollywood's previous circus movies, they did little that was original other than updating the story to the 1950s Ringling show. Seeing what other misguided efforts were used, they immediately fell to the shopworn jinx plot--their lead staffers and performers were a band of travelling miscreants, with at least one of them scheming to destroy the show. For DeMille, his writers provided the elephant trainer wrecking the train. Along with a fugitive murderer hiding 24 hours a day in clown makeup, and a thug running gambling games on the midway, the writers wrote from the dregs of their research, and shared their Oscars for Best Writing of a Motion Picture Story for 1952.
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