bkoganbing The Smallest Show On Earth finds reel and real life married couple Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna thinking they've gotten a windfall of an inheritance from a grand uncle that Travers can barely remember. It's a small movie theater, but it's terribly run down. In fact it also has three aged employees Peter Sellers the projectionist, Margaret Rutherford the ticket seller and Bernard Lee the ticket taker. In fact what to do, but sell the place. However rival cinema owner Francis DeWolff is offering chump change for the place.But if we can put the thing into some kind of shape the old Bijou Theater than maybe we can get something for our money. So Travers and McKenna proceed to do just that and Travers proceeds to show he's got a Bill Veeck like sense of promotion and innovation. In fact watching The Smallest Show On Earth reminded me of Bill Veeck's memoirs Veeck As In Wreck. Particularly the chapters concerning Veeck and the St. Louis Browns and his valiant effort to compete with the Cardinals in the same town. Ultimately Veeck lost to factors beyond his and he was not the beneficiary of an act by one of his loyal workers to turn the tables on the opposition.This film underscores a problem that was common on both sides of the pond. Lots of small theaters were going under as more and more televisions were in living rooms. Eventually came the multiplex cinemas in the USA and the UK. I suspect that if Travers and McKenna really wanted to hold on to the business the Bijou, also known as the flea pit for its dilapidated condition would have become a small art house cinema.Bernard Lee and Peter Sellers were playing folks many years older with some great makeup. Rutherford is always a delight and Travers and McKenna had great chemistry carried over from real life.A very nice and gentle comedy from Great Britain.And this review is dedicated to the greatest promoter of the 20th Century Bill Veeck.

Cinema_Fan Character actors never come as grand and as enigmatic as the late Peter Sellers (1925 - 1980) whose greatest mainstream movie achievement would have to be the now legendary Pink Panther series. During too, the radio days of the nineteen-fifties in The Goon Show, with the late Spike Milligan (1918 - 2002) and Sir Harry Secombe (1921 - 2001).What was to be just one of four movies during 1957 by Peter Sellers, The Smallest Show on Earth here is his instalment in the persona of one not so young cinema projectionist Mr. Quill. By this time, he had already done the Ealing Studio classic The Ladykillers (1955), and this relatively small part in this 80-minute timepiece is of no exception.This charming little fable, via British Lion Films Limited, finds that quite unexpectedly modern and middle class couple Jean (Virginia McKenna) and Matt's (Bill Travers; 1922 - 1994) lives are about to change. She the doting housewife and he the up and coming novelist, receiving good news, they have become soul heirs to Matt's late uncle's cinema, the Bijou, literally meaning small and fashionable. It is in this tiny tale, and being told in the past tense, that the trip to the north of England has these dreamy pair coming straight back down to earth with much complication and bewilderment abound.They seem almost inseparable in their careers, having worked together in some eleven movies such as Born Free (1966), Ring of Bright Water (1969), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957) and The Belstone Fox (1973). With a tiny, blink and you'll miss him, bit part from one Sidney James (1913 - 1976) and fine co-starring from a very young and talented Leslie Phillips (B: 1924) as Robin, the mediator and solicitor Robin bringing a little sanity to the proceedings.The Smallest Show on Earth is a petite story that draws the line between the cinemas of the classic silent movie era and its constant struggle to adapt, and the inevitable onslaught of mass commercialism of the cinemas that have now grown into franchisees and chains. It is also the advent of the television that is ironically the main competitor for this new wave of Cinema in this 1957 movie. The tide of technological advancement waits for no one, sadly for the Bijou, its days, its old and tired staff and apparatus, and its movies, are now part and parcel of glories past.The coupling of the great and funny Margaret Rutherford (1892 - 1972) as the ticket and ice-cream seller, along with Bernard Miles (1907 - 1991) as Old Tom the ticket collector, with Peter Sellers is a fine and magnificent move, set against the seriousness of the couple from afar, these old nemeses with their differing standards set the humour and pace. Their comic bickering, nitpicking and constant, but harmless, backbiting toward one another are as sentimental and proud as is both their respect and fondness for this run down, clapped out old flea pit of a cinema, that all three have now become fully integrated, not with, but as the furniture.This is a truly heart-warming story, of the old romantic bygone age of the silent screen, the people who have been there and the realisation of the changing times. It's in the eyes of this young couple that the story has most effect, their City way's clashing against rustic and nostalgia's past, and their slowing fondness and respect for the peoples who still remain.

captainpat I saw this film on DVD. It was part of a package of 50 old films - it hadn't been restored and appeared much older than its 50 years. I had trouble reading the titles and credits.What ever happened to all those old cinemas? This is one of them. In one scene the projectionist is having a horrid time and the film burns causing a "melt" before the audience. I experienced this at a local theatre in Papua New Guinea and it took me right back. And how the audience would tolerate it. Well sort of.The scene where the three old codgers watch a silent film is very touching. In fact, I thought this would surface again in the film but it didn't.It was delightful. The ending is not your stereotypical Hollywood film that we accept as the norm.If you can get this film - it is well worth the watch.

malcolmgsw By some chance i watched this film yesterday morning,and in the afternoon i drove past the spot in Kilburn where the exterior had been constructed on my way to an organ concert at the Gaumont State Kilburn.I also passed the site of the Classic Kilburn,now a petrol station,which was the sort of cinema epitomised by "The Bijou".In the 1950s,when the film was made,there were a lot of cinemas,or flea pits as we called them like "The Bijou".Mainly surviving on revivals of old films.The Classic chain in particular.I loved these old cinemas,and although they were not as rundown as "the Bijou" they still had seen better days.Unfortunately many of these cinemas were located in high streets and thus were prime targets for the newly emerging phenomenon of supermarkets.So not only is this film a comedic masterpiece but to me it is a warm reminder of the passing of these marvelous places.