When the Circus Came to Town

The best part here is Tommy Madden as the midget, who offers the only scenes of some interesting humanity. He becomes her first friend, as she runs away with a circus directly after her mother's funeral, the circus caravan and the funeral party actually collide, but nothing special is made of that scene. Christopher Plummer is excellent as always and fully convincing as the casual circus director, and Elizabeth Montgomery is always interesting and perfect in roles involving some maturing and developing. The story is casual however: she joins a circus just to get away from her humdrum home life and after a while leaves it to return home. There is no real drama in between, and the circus performances fall rather flat in comparison with more serious circus films, like Elia Kazan's and Carol Reed's, but this is just for the television, so it is excused for its short story character.