Perhaps the least regarded Oscar winning Best Picture winner of all time, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth was a huge commercial success in its day. In fact, it was the biggest box office hit of 1952, one of the rare occasions when the Oscar went to the then most popular film.

To be fair, the acrobats and clowns and other circus folk were shown to their best advantage on screen up to that point. The real Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Brothers Circus performers were used in support of the Hollywood cast, and seeing, or rather not seeing, a huge star like James Stewart hiding behind clown makeup was intriguing. The film courted Production Code problems with its sympathetic view of euthanasia but DeMille surmounted the problem by having his mercy killer himself die.

The biggest problem with the film, especially to today’s audiences, is the dreadful lead performances of Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde. Wilde had always been a bit of a stiff but never more so than here, and Hutton, with her oversized personality, overwhelmed her character. The two made a bizarre couple.

Another problem which is much more obvious now than it was then is the cheesy special effects. It’s quite obvious that miniatures are being used in the climactic train fire sequence. If you’ve never seen a real circus or a film about the circus you might enjoy the film just as people of the time did, but it’s more than likely you’ll come away scratching your head wondering how this ever won a Best Picture Oscar. Its only other Oscar was for Original Story.

Holding up much better through the years, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon was widely publicized as the favorite film of former U.S. President Bill Clinton when he was in the White House. It’s easy to see why the film appeals strongly to Presidents and other men who find life lonely at the top. It’s about a lone hero, played by Gary Cooper in his second Oscar winning role, who is abandoned one by one by his friends and in the end has only the support of his wife, the emerging superstar, Grace Kelly. In addition to Cooper’s performance, Dimitri Tiomkin’s Oscar winning score and Elmo Williams and Harry Gerstad’s Oscar winning editing which tells the 90 minute tale in real time, were the film’s major assets.

Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado and Tex Ritter register strong support, the latter singing the film’s Oscar winning theme song “Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darlin’” throughout.

An instant classic and a TV staple, particularly around St. Patrick’s Day, John Ford’s The Quiet Man was the legendary director’s ode to his native Ireland.

John Wayne, in one of his best performances, plays a retired prizefighter who returns home to Ireland where he courts the lovely Maureen O’Hara against the wishes of her loutish brother, Victor McLaglen. Local moneyed widow Mildred Natwick has her cap set for McLaglen all under the watchful eyes of Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond and other colorful characters. The film won Oscars for Ford, his fourth as Best Director, and Winton Hoch and Archie Stout for their outstanding color cinematography. The other actor from that perfect cast to be nominated was former Best Actor winner Victor McLaglen (The Informer) in support.

Just as The African Queen had been rushed into one Los Angeles theatre in order to qualify for the preceding year’s Oscars, John Huston’s latest, Moulin Rouge was afforded the same opportunity. This time the plan worked even better. The film about the life of French painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec made it into the Best Picture race as well as six other categories. Former Best Actor winner, Jose Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac) was again nominated playing an even more tortured soul and newcomer Colette Marchand pulled off a supporting nod as one of his paramours. The film won for its color art direction and costume design.

The fifth nominee was Richard Thorpe’s film of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, MGM’s year-end blockbuster with Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine and George Sanders heading the cast of the swashbuckler.

Conventional wisdom says that MGM blew it, that the film they should have promoted for best picture was Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain but that’s revisionist thinking.

Singin’ in the Rain has since become the most beloved of original film musicals, but that’s only after the film’s TV showings and theatrical revival of the early 1970s. At the time it was a modest hit yielding just two nominations for Jean Hagen’s hilarious supporting performance and scoring of a musical. MGM did have a substantial awards getter on its hands with Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful. The film about a ruthless Hollywood producer won five of the six Oscars it was nominated for including one for Gloria Grahame as Best Supporting Actress. Grahame was on screen for maybe ten minutes but she also had key roles this year in The Greatest Show on Earth and Sudden Fear. The film also starred Best Actor nominee Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell and Walter Pidgeon.

Veteran stage star Shirley Booth made her film debut at the age of 54 repeating one of her signature stage roles in Daniel Mann’s film of William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba and walked off the year’s Best Actress Oscar. Booth’s slovenly housewife is an excellent portrayal but the film seems off kilter due to the miscasting of 38 year-old Burt Lancaster as her alcoholic husband. Oscar nominated Supporting Actress Terry Moore and Richard Jaeckel as Booth’s boarder and her lover fared much better.

Booth’s toughest competitor for the year’s female acting honors was Susan Hayward pulling out all the stops to play singer Jane Froman in Walter Lang’s With a Song in My Heart, but the film’s musical scoring accounted for its only Oscar win out of five nominations. The film did better at the Golden Globes where it won Best Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Musical or Comedy.

Marlon Brando solidified his star status with the title role in Elia Kazan’s not on U.S. DVD Viva Zapata!, a biography of the Mexican revolutionary. Although Brando’s Best Actor nomination accounted for one of the film’s five nods, only Anthony Quinn as his brother emerged triumphant as the year’s Best Supporting Actor.

Another biography garnering a significant number of Oscar nominations was Charles Vidor’s Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye, Farley Granger and Zizi Jeanmaire which was nominated for six Oscars including Best Song “Thumbelina” but lost them all.

Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Rashomon, which won an honorary award the year before as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States based on its New York release, was eligible this year for all other awards based on its Los Angeles release. It was nominated only for its black-and-white art direction.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s not on U.S. DVD 5 Fingers with James Mason and Danielle Darrieux was the year’s most successful spy drama. It was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay, this one written by Michael Wilson, not Mankiewicz himself.

Anthony Mann’s Bend of the River with James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy and Rock Hudson and Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious with Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy and Mel Ferrer were the year’s outstanding westerns.

George Cukor’s Pat and Mike starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn was the year’s most successful domestic comedy. It garnered an Oscar nomination for Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin’s Story and Screenplay.

Charles Crichton’s The Lavender Hill Mob and Alexander Mackendrick’s The Man in the White Suit, both starring Alec Guinness,were the year’s most successful British comedy imports. Guinness was nominated as Best Actor for Mob which won an Oscar for Best Story and Screenplay, while Man was nominated for Best Screenplay.

This week’s premier DVD release is Three Silent Films by Josef von Sternberg. Included are restored versions of Underworld, The Last Command and Docks of New York, all with a choice of accompanying musical scores. Also being released on both standard DVD and Blu-ray is Oliver Parker’s 2009 version of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, a film that failed to have a U.S. theatrical run.