Lawrence Tierney

Joe Cabot, a crime leader, plans a diamond heist and hires a group of six experienced criminals, who are oblivious to each other's real identity.

The dramatic lives of trapeze artists, a clown, and an elephant trainer are told against a background of circus spectacle. To ensure a full profitable season, circus manager Brad Braden engages The Great Sebastian, though this moves his girlfriend Holly from her hard-won center trapeze spot. Holly and Sebastian begin a dangerous one-upmanship duel in the ring, while he pursues her on the ground. Subplots involve the secret past of Buttons the Clown and the efforts of racketeers to move in on the game concessions. Let the show begin! —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> "The Greatest Show on Earth" is a dazzling spectacle of life behind the scenes with Ringling Bros.-Barnum and Bailey Circus, the best three-ring circus in the land. Celebrates the extravagant three-ring circus and depicts the passionate scenes of love and jealousy behind the greatest show on Earth. —Jwelch5742 Brad Braden (played by Charlton Heston) is the manager of a circus. The circus is his life and everything else is secondary. The next most important thing to him is Holly (Betty Hutton), a trapeze artist, but she realises she will always take second place. Then Brad hires a world-famous trapeze artist, The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) and Holly is bumped to second place in the trapeze act. The Great Sebastian has a reputation as a womaniser and Holly soon falls under his spell. —grantss To ensure that the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus stays in the black, rugged, money-oriented manager Brad Braden brings in a famed aerialist known as The Great Sebastian to increase sales. However, as Brad's dogged determination moves ambitious trapeze artist Holly to the second ring, driving her into the arms of another man, the unbridled competition between the duelling star attractions invites heartbreak and disaster. And as profound, turbulent feelings emerge, cryptic clowns and villainous racketeers threaten Braden's future. Yet the circus is above all else. What will it take to keep the greatest show on Earth running? —Nick Riganas

DILLINGER Newsreels are being shown to an audience in a theater. At the end of the film, a master of ceremonies introduces to the crowd the person you have been wanting to see. An older man of countrified appearance and manner introduces himself as the father of John Dillinger. He says that John had a normal childhood and adolescence, but soon after he left his small town to seek fortune elsewhere. In a manner reminiscent of Orson Welles Citizen Kane, the rest of the film shows crucial scenes in the life of John Dillinger. A young man, John Dillinger and his date are having drinks at a booth in a bar. The girl says she wants two more drinks. The waiter insists that the drinks must be paid for in advance. John evidently does not have the money, tries to pay by check, is refused, and angrily wants to drag the girl somewhere else. The girl refuses to leave. John walks out of the bar and holds up a candy shop, pretending to have a gun in his pocket, and takes the cash from the till. In his room, later, he counts the money to be seven dollars and twenty cents. In the next sequence, John goes to see a movie. On the way in he is attracted to the girl at the box office, who returns his glances with interest. On his way out, he sees the girl counting money. Once again pretending to have a gun, he takes all the cash. He is caught by police but the box office girl does not want to finger him from the police lineup, despite the fact that she had identified him from a photograph. John is taken to a jail, where an older man is his cell mate. After initial friction, they strike up a relationship, and the older man, also a holdup robber, introduces him to four others of his gang. They become pals of sorts. Johns jail sentence is relatively short, and he promises to spring the others free after he first comes out of jail. In a sequence of economically filmed scenes, John frees his friends, they become bank robbers, and pull a long series of robberies, each more daring than the rest. In the course of time, he replaces the older robber Specs Green who had been his cell mate as the leader and brain of the operations. When things get too hot, they hole up in a remote country inn where one of the gang had grown up, raised by a kindly couple. At one point, flush with money, John goes back to find the girl that he liked from the movie house, seduces her with expensive gifts, such as a diamond bracelet priced at eight thousand dollars, and brings her to the farm hideout as an additional member of the gang. John is caught and sent to jail. While in prison, he buys from a man in the next cell a piece of wood and a whittling knife, with which he fashions a wooden replica of a hand gun. Using the replica hand gun, he manages to escape by tricking the guard. Some time later, the gang is so well known that they decide it is too risky to keep holding up banks, so they hold up a train that is carrying a load of money instead. Eventually the police authorities sniff out where they are hiding and are about to surround and storm the farm hideout. The tremendous pressure turns the gang members against each other. John shoots and kills Specs Green, and also the kindly couple who have been hiding them, when John finds them trying to phone for help. When the girl plans to leave the farm in the car with a younger gang member, John intercepts the gang member and axes him to death, successfully escaping from the inn with the girl. Because posters offering 15000 dollar reward for his capture are everywhere, John and the girl remain in hiding for months. The girl gets very tired of their existence, says she wants to have fun. John has grown a mustache so she says he will not be recognized. But they are running out of money. The girl decides she has no future, contacts the police and eventually gets John to take her to a movie. She is wearing a red dress so the police will recognize her. As they leave the movie house, she says she wants to buy some candy and leaves John alone. The police move in, and John is killed in a shootout. The policemen examine his pockets as he lies dead, and find seven dollars and twenty cents in his pocket.