Hearts and Spangles

Throughout his life Edward Bloom has always been a man of big appetites, enormous passions and tall tales. In his later years, he remains a huge mystery to his son, William. Now, to get to know the real man, Will begins piecing together a true picture of his father from flashbacks of his amazing adventures.

Director Karl Brown's 1938 circus drama stars Marjorie Main as a tough, fur-coat-wearing circus boss who raises her orphaned niece to be a trapeze star.

Flora is a circus elephant who can no longer perform her tricks. The night before she's scheduled to be euthanized, the circus owner's 14-year old daughter, Dawn, sneaks Flora from the circus. All that stands between them and the safety of the elephant preserve is two hundred kilometers of woods, one raging river, two elephant hunters and the fear of not making it.

In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, a chimpanzee named Caesar resurfaces after almost twenty years of hiding from the authorities, and prepares for a revolt against humanity.

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

Gino finds the circus.

An IRA operative escapes to the Americas and teams up with a circus singer to create a popular vaudeville act. When the singer falls for a rebel, they leave the circus behind to become fierce revolutionaries.

After Clown Teddy lost his son, he lost his gift for laughter. He opened a joke shop and lives above the shop. His landlady has had a foster son since birth, and Teddy decides to raise the child, who always believed that Teddy was his father. When the mother suddenly appears five years later and wants her son, Teddy decides to run away with the child and goes back onstage with his son. Will the family catch up with them, or will the mother never get her son back?

It's night on a Paris bridge. A girl leans over Seine River with tears in her eyes and a violent yearning to drown her sorrows. Out of nowhere someone takes an interest in her. He is Gabor, a knife thrower who needs a human target for his show. The girl, Adele, has never been lucky and nowhere else to go. So she follows him. They travel along the northern bank of the Mediterranean to perform.

The arrival of a travelling circus sends ripples through the inhabitants of a remote Keralan village.

A snake-charmer falls in love with a circus trapeze artist who trains her and has her debut in this discipline.

A child is born. We see underwater swimmers representing this. He is young, in a jungle setting, with two fanciful "instincts" guiding him as swooping bird-like acrobats initially menace, then delight. As an adolescent, he enters a desert, where a man spins a large cube of metal tubing. He leaves his instinct-guides behind, and enters a garden where two statues dance in a pond. As he watches their sensual acrobatics of love, he becomes a man. He is offered wealth (represented by a golden hat) by a devil figure. In a richly decorated room, a scruffy troupe of a dozen acrobats and a little girl reawaken the old man's youthful nature and love.

Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Tairo, a young lion-tamer, is unhappy. Losing his lucky charm gives him a reason to set off for a journey across Italy in search of Arthur Robin, a former Mister Universe, who gave him the charm a long time ago.

Four circus freaks with superpowers find themselves trapped in Nazi-occupied Rome after their owner and father figure goes missing in the aftermath of the 1943 surrender of Italy to the Allies.

Ruriko's father is a well known scientist who's involved in secret research that even his family doesn't know about. Ever since he moved up to the research laboratory in Hokkaido, Ruriko hasn't heard from him. The only thing that reminded her of his warmth was the green music box that he’d left behind for her. She longed to reunite with her father. The little box played music that lifted her spirits, to a place where everything was perfect.

The end of the XIX century. Petya, an eight-year orphan who has been cast in training German acrobat Karl Becker, who curses and beatings would incorporate the new assistant to the circus profession and ruthlessly exploited child in their speeches. The only consolation, brightens the harsh life gutta-percha boy, as referred to Petya on the posters, is the concern of the carpet clown Edwards, who regretted the fatherless and secretly taught him this circus arts...

The manager of The Big Circus plots to marry the owner's daughter and gain control of the outfit.

Joe Bonomo played circus acrobat Welles "Red" Landow, Louise Lorraine was the heroine, tightrope artist Trixie Tremaine, and such studio stalwarts as Slim Cole, Sam Polo, Monte Montague, and Albert Prisco