The Smallest Show on Earth
Struggling with his half-written novel with the advance almost spent, Matt Spenser does not need further distraction but that is what the postman has delivered, his wife Jean bringing in the letter from Simpson, Carter and Sons, Solicitors, which carries consternation, confusion and surprise, informing Matt of the sad death of his great-uncle Simon of whom he has little recollection but naming him as sole heir of the whole estate.
Travelling to Sloughborough (pronounced “Sluffburra”) to meet with Robin Carter, they are at first thrilled to discover the inheritance is principally a cinema, then disappointed to learn that it is not the prestigious Grand but the near-derelict Bijou Kinema, known as “the Fleapit,” built before the railway line which now towers next to it and currently closed although cashier Mrs Fazackalee, alcoholic projectionist Mr Quill and janitor Old Tom are still on the payroll.
Released in 1957, the same year that they were married, Born Free’s Virginia McKenna and Gorgo’s Bill Travers are Jean and Matt, scrabbling in the dust and dinge to restore the glory of The Smallest Show on Earth, directed by The Assassination Bureau’s Basil Dearden from a script by The Ladykillers’ William Rose and John Eldridge, with location shooting at Kilburn in north west London where the facade of the Bijou was erected with the former Gaumont Palace in Hammersmith standing in as the Grand.
The production undertaken in the company of the great detectives Jane Marple and Jacques Clouseau, Margaret Rutherford and Peter Sellers are Mrs Fazackalee and Mr Quill alongside Leslie Philips as Robin, Bernard Miles as cantankerous Tom and Curse of the Werewolf’s Francis de Wolff as Albert Hardcastle, owner and manager of the Grand, who only likes competition in the small town when he is beating it.
The characters, situations and humour heavy handed, with film reels unspooling, thundering trains interrupting performances, unruly patrons fighting in the stalls and Old Tom’s loose lips undermining attempts to convince Hardcastle the Bijou is operating as a going concern, the film within a film of Riders of Wyoming is perhaps consciously terrible to demonstrate that the main feature is not all that bad in comparison, but a slog at only eighty minutes it can in no way be regarded a classic of the era or the genre.
McKenna maintaining her charming demeanour until the point she is required to dress as an usherette and sell ice cream, the understairs bickering of the fractious staff set in their ways has no need of the top line talent employed, The Smallest Show on Earth a well-intentioned celebration of cinema and community but never feeling more than filler material, relevant now only in its prediction that profit comes from the refreshment stand rather than the sales at the ticket booth.
