The atmosphere of the circus has served as a dramatic setting for many musicians. The most famous circus theme song is called “Entrance of the Gladiators”, and was composed in 1904 by Julius Fučík. Other circus music includes “El Caballero”, “Quality Plus”, “Sunnyland Waltzes”, “The Storming of El Caney”, “Pahjamah”, “Bull Trombone”, “Big Time Boogie”, “Royal Bridesmaid March”, “The Baby Elephant Walk”, “Liberty Bell March”, “Java”, Strauss’s “Radetsky March”, and “Pageant of Progress”. A poster for Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal, one of the most popular circuses of Victorian England, inspired John Lennon to write Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! on The Beatles’ album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song title refers to William Kite, a well-known circus performer in the 19th century. Producer George Martin and EMI engineers created the song’s fairground atmosphere by assembling a sound collage of collected recordings of calliopes and fairground organs, which they cut into strips of various lengths, threw into a box, and then mixed up and edited together randomly, creating a long loop which was mixed into the final production. Another traditional circus song is the John Philip Sousa march “Stars and Stripes Forever”, which is played only to alert circus performers of an emergency.
Plays set in a circus include the 1896 musical The Circus Girl by Lionel Monckton, Polly of the Circus written in 1907 by Margaret Mayo, He Who Gets Slapped written by Russian Leonid Andreyev 1916 and later adapted into one of the first circus films, Katharina Knie written in 1928 by Carl Zuckmayer and adapted for the English stage in 1932 as Caravan by playwright Cecily Hamilton, the revue Big Top written by Herbert Farjeon in 1942, Top of the Ladder written by Tyrone Guthrie in 1950, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off written by Anthony Newley in 1961, and Barnum with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics and book by Mark Bramble, Roustabout: The Great Circus Train Wreck written by Jay Torrence in 2006.
Following World War I, circus films became popular. In 1924 He Who Gets Slapped was the first film released by MGM; in 1925 Sally of the Sawdust (remade 1930), Variety, and Vaudeville were produced, followed by The Devil’s Circus in 1926 and The Circus starring Charlie Chaplin, Circus Rookies, 4 Devils; and Laugh Clown Laugh in 1928. German film Salto Mortale about trapeze artists was released in 1931 and remade in the United States and released as Trapeze starring Burt Lancaster in 1956; in 1932 Freaks was released; Charlie Chan at the Circus, Circus (USSR) and The Three Maxiums were released in 1936 and At the Circus starring the Marx Brothers and You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man in 1939. Circus films continued to be popular during the Second World War; films from this era included The Great Profile starring John Barrymore (1940), the animated Disney film Dumbo (1941), Road Show (1941), The Wagons Roll at Night (1941) and Captive Wild Woman (1943).
Tromba, a film about a tiger trainer, was released in 1948. In 1952 Cecil B. de Mille’s Oscar-winning film The Greatest Show on Earth was first shown. Released in 1953 were Man on a Tightrope and Ingmar Bergman’s 
Gycklarnas afton (released as Sawdust and Tinsel in the United States); these were followed by Life Is a Circus; Ring of Fear; 3 Ring Circus (1954) and La Strada (1954), an Oscar-winning film by Federico Fellini about a girl who is sold to a circus strongman. Fellini made a second film set in the circus called The Clowns in 1970. Films about the circus made since 1959 include Disney’s Toby Tyler (1960), the B-movie Circus of Horrors (also in 1960); the musical film Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962); A Tiger Walks, a Disney film about a tiger that escapes from the circus; and Circus World (1964), starring John Wayne. Mera Naam Joker (1970) a Hindi drama film directed by Raj Kapoor which was about a clown who must make his audience laugh at the cost of his own sorrows. In the film Jungle Emperor Leo (1997), Leo’s son Lune is captured and placed in a circus, which burns down when a tiger knocks down a ring of fire while jumping through it. The Greatest Showman, a musical film loosely based on the life of P. T. Barnum, was released in 2017.
The TV series Circus Humberto, based on the novel by Eduard Bass, follows the history of the circus family Humberto between 1826 and 1924. The setting of the HBO television series Carnivàle, which ran from 2003 to 2005, is also largely set in a travelling circus. The circus has also inspired many writers. Numerous books, both non-fiction and fiction, have been published about circus life. Notable examples of circus-based fiction include Circus Humberto by Eduard Bass, Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan, and Spangle by Gary Jennings. The novel Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen tells the fictional tale of a circus veterinarian and was made into a movie with the same title, starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon.
Circus is the central theme in comic books of Super Commando Dhruva, an Indian comic book superhero. According to this series, Dhruva was born and brought up in a fictional Indian circus called Jupiter Circus. When a rival circus burnt down Jupiter Circus, killing everyone in it, including Dhruva’s parents, Dhruva vowed to become a crime fighter. A circus-based television series called Circus was also telecast in India in 1989 on DD National, starring Shahrukh Khan as the lead actor.
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