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1. PARAMOUNT paid something like $250,000 to the Ringling outfit for the use of its famous motto The Greatest Show on Earth, and its circus machinery. At that point the two assets were just about all DeMille had: equipment and a title. However, he was not worried. He was interested, not in a history of the circus, but rather in a stream- of-civilization plot with a land of Grand Hotel flavor. He con- ferred at great length with his researcher, Henry Noerdlinger, who went to the books in search of sawdust drama. The rest of the staff was alerted to the problem. With customary contempt for obstacles, he wasn't exercised at first by our failure to come up with circus plots. He had been without a story before and with his usual convulsive drive he had always churned around and obtained one. Now some preliminary churning was taking place, with little apparent result. More churning; still nothing. It was strange and a little startling. Then we came face to face with an astonishing discovery; there was very little in the way of circus fiction, but a great deal of non-fiction, such as memoirs and on-the-spot observations. The preliminary work on ideas for a circus story was begun by a writer in late summer of 1949. In the following months his suffering proved to be heroic. He withstood constant ham- mering from DeMille, who daily reminded him that he was being paid $500 a week—on a long-term basis—to come up with something "acceptable to me/' 245