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264 Ifes, Mr. DeMille licity and exploitation campaign— He decided to make The Greatest Show on Earth because it is a HAPPY PICTUKE He made it to lift hundreds of millions of people out of the worries and tensions that beset the world today—hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles— This tinsel and spun- candy world will make the farmer forget his crops, the house- wife forget her dwindling budget, the head of the house forget the headlines As Lincoln said, when the wounded soldiers paid more attention to Barnum than they did to him, Daughter is the best medicine!'.. " It seemed a first-rate approach, hitched shrewdly to the post-World War II miseries and restlessness! We knew that in time we would be called upon to speak out on the merits of the happiness theme—one of those dangerous situations that called for advance thinking. "Yessing" the old man could, in this situa- tion, evoke some new tensions. The staff was not sure the theme was right; it had none of the characteristics of DeMille's past movies, steeped in thunder and foul play. We remembered the sign he had posted in the writers' conference room: WHAT is THE CONFLICT IN THIS STORY? We had heard Frank Cavett, that gentlest of writers, smilingly repeat a comment uttered by his ten-year-old boy: "My dad is working for Cecil B. Demolish." The happiness theme had not so much a false ring as an unlikely one, a pretty concept that sat askew on the brow of the maker of spectacles. The showdown did not come in the usual way. Some time later a full-page advertisement carrying DeMille's signature was placed in Variety. It was the first public expression on the picture, and read: My compliments to those stars and players who took great personal risks on the high trapeze, in the ele- phant acts, in the train-wreck scenes, and with the gorillas and other fangk animals while making THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. More than a half a million dollars was spent on the film's advertising and promotion, but not a cent on the happiness