This article originally appeared in ICG Magazine in Sept. 2000.

December 7, 1941 — “a date which will live in infamy!”   Thus did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt describe the Japanese’s infamous attack on Pearl Harbor.  Within days, declarations of war reverberated around the world and the United States officially joined the Allies in a battle against the Axis powers — a conflict that would determine the destiny of humankind. The price of victory over tyranny was dreadfully high: the Second World War left 50 million people dead. The economic devastation was almost incalculable. In August of 1945, when the last gun was silenced, great cities in Europe and Asia were little more than gutted, smoldering ruins.   

Hollywood answered the call to arms with patriotic dedication to the war effort — on the homefront and on the frontlines. In 1942, the studios released 80 war- themed movies and that number would increase as the war progressed. Most were forgettable, but a few films captured those desperate times perfectly and remain classics to this day. Arthur Edeson, ASC shot Bogey and Bergman in Casablanca (1942).Joe Ruttenberg, ASC photographed Greer Garson to perfection in Mrs. Miniver(1942); her close-ups were so powerful and moving that Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, stated that the film’s inspirational value to be worth that of two battleships. A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Since You Went Away, and even Swing Shift Maise  (Rosie the Riveter falls in love with a test pilot!) brought the war to local movie theaters and sent box office receipts soaring. The weekly March of Time and Pathé newsreels were sobering reminders of the realities of war, even though the footage had been heavily censored and sanitized so as not to overly shock movie patrons. More than 8,000 men and women from the film industry wore uniforms of the armed forces.  Dozens of Hollywood cameramen lent their talents to the Army Signal Corp and the photo branches of the Navy and Marines. When the photo groups were being formed early in the war, cameras suitable for combat were in short supply.  Local camera stores quickly sold out their inventory of Bell & Howell Eyemos and Filmos as well as Kodak Cine Specials to help supply the freshly uniformed camera crews until Bell & Howell could ramp up production for the thousands of cameras needed for frontline filming.

The Bell & Howell “Bomb-Spotter” version of the 35mm Eyemo became the favorite camera for battle- hardened cinematographers.  It held 100 feet of film wrapped in a daylight spool and ran for 30 seconds on its hand-wound spring motor. A single lens helped keep it small, lightweight and simple. Rugged enough to stop a bullet, it probably saved the lives of many cameramen.  A saying resonated among the troops that “The brave ones were shooting the enemy. The crazy ones were shooting film.” Other models of the Eyemo sported a three-lens turret and some could hold a 400-foot magazine and battery-powered motor. But for “run-and-gun” on the battlefield, the little “Bomb-Spotter” was the camera of choice. 

Mitchell “Newsreel Cameras” went to sea with the U.S. Navy. The “NC’s” were mounted on tripods secured to rolling decks of aircraft carriers, cruisers and battleships. Along with handheld Eyemos, the Mitchells recorded the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, both crucial turning points in the clash for control of the vast Pacific Ocean. Every carrier landing by every plane was photographed for pilot review and Naval records. Often times, a Mitchell recorded the successful “traps” and the not-so-successful “arrivals” when battle-damaged Hellcats or Corsairs came in on “a- wing-and-a-prayer,” with their wounded or exhausted pilots barely able to fly. The disabled fighters were frequently filmed skidding across the pitching flight deck and careening into the bridge or over the side into the churning seas. A few Mitchells actually flew combat missions in the Army Air Corp. Cameraman John Craig rigged an NC from bungee cords in a B-17. Reloading Eyemos in the bone-numbing cold at 20,000 feet was no easy task, especially while buffeted by turbulence, flak and fighter attacks. With the Mitchells 1000-foot magazines, Craig could shoot much longer between reloads and, suspended from bungee cords, the camera could swing in any direction to capture the lightning fast and deadly aerial action. (Aerial photography is always dangerous, even in peacetime. But should cameramen and pilots continue to pay the ultimate price for exciting footage even when there is no enemy shooting back at them?) 

Safely on the ground and back in the States, the armed forces utilized Mitchells and old Bell & Howell 2709s extensively for training films and publicity “photo-ops.” Wartime production of the Mitchell BNC ceased between 1941 and 1945. American industry had other priorities — the nation’s factories produced over 300,000 airplanes but only one BNC rolled off the line in June of 1941. Serial #18 was the last BNC built until the post-war boom restarted the BNC assembly line. Under the Lend Lease Plan, eight BNC’s were shipped to the Soviet Union during the war. The great Russian director, Sergie Eisenstein and his cameraman Edouard Tissé used several of these Mitchells to film Ivan The Terrible (1944/46). (German military cameramen in WW II wielded a highly advanced, ergonomically designed, handheld, light-weight, reflex camera.  Future articles will discuss the Arriflex.)

Many of Hollywood’s finest cameramen and directors risked their lives to photograph the war in every theater of operations. Director John Huston used an Eyemo alongside cameraman Jules Buck to document “The Battle of San Pietro” 1944.  John Ford (“a guy who did westerns”) and cameramen Bob Moreno, Jack Mackenzie and Kenneth Pier captured the “Battle of Midway” on film in 1942. Ford was wounded while filming the attack on Midway Island: his own camera recorded the incoming barrage of shrapnel that put him out of commission for several weeks. William Wyler’s camera team shot the dramatic final combat mission of The Memphis Belle. Bill Clothier, ASC served behind the camera with valor and, after the war, photographed such memorable John Wayne Westerns as The Alamo (1960) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The War Wagon (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970). Joe Longo, a leading documentary cameraman during and after the war, served in the 13th Air Force. He and his cameras logged 35 combat missions in B-24s, B-25s and Bristol Beaufighters while flying sorties across the Pacific from Guadalcanal to the Philippines. Joe Biroc, ASC and director George Stevens numbered among the first Americans to enter Dachau as the Allied Troops liberated Europe. In the Nuremberg war crimes trial, their chilling documentary film, Nazi Concentration Camps, was entered as evidence. Lester Shorr, ASC, David Quaid, ASC, Emmet Berkholtz, Stanley Cortez, ASC and many more dedicated cameramen served with honor during World War II. Many did not return. The images they committed to film live on as important historical documents. The campaigns, the battles, the victories and defeats, and even the day-to-day tedium of war’s “hurry-up-and-wait” boredom, were all recorded with skill and guts. But more importantly, their celluloid legacy reminds us of the courage of ordinary men and women placed in extraordinary circumstances — bravery, heroics and, finally, the ultimate horrors of war’s atrocities will haunt humanity as long as motion picture film exists to replay history.  

The Best Years of Our Lives?

By 1946, Gregg Toland, ASC had hung up his Army uniform, and dusted off his Mitchell BNC. With the war over, the time had arrived to get back to work. In post-war America, the story of the returning veteran was told a million times over. The Hollywood version chronicled the experience perfectly in the classic Samuel Goldwyn production The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). William Wyler directed from a script by Mckinlay Kantor and Robert Sherwood, while Toland applied his deep-focus expertise to the story of three servicemen returning to their hometown, their families and a world forever changed by the six-year conflict. The euphoria of peace was tempered by an underlying feeling of dread — a kind of ennui brought on by the post-war era’s uncertainties. The film noir cycle — as finessed to near perfection in Double Indemnity (1944), The Blue Dahlia (1946), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Out of the Past (1947) — mirrored its dark underbelly. MGM musicals like An American in Paris (1952) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) spoke to the optimism of the New World Order.

Technological change accelerated during World War II. There’s nothing like survival to motivate scientific breakthroughs. In 1946, the world’s first true electronic digital computer went on-line at the University of Pennsylvania. The ENIAC weighed 30 tons, stood 18 feet high, and contained 18,000 vacuum tubes and 500 miles of wiring. Designed for ballistics calculations, it arrived too late for the Second World War but would be employed for classified nuclear weapons work for almost 10 years. The Manhattan Project came to apocalyptic fruition when mushroom clouds rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki — dark harbingers of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. On October 17, 1947, the jet age announced its arrival with a sonic boom resounding over Southern California’s Mojave desert as Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. A less spectacular venue — one deep within Bell Laboratories — witnessed the birth of the transistor. In Glendale, California, the Mitchell Camera Corporation worked overtime to crank out new BNC cameras. Nineteen forty-seven saw 32 Mitchell BNC’s leave the plant, ready to take their place as the world’s premiere soundstage camera.

Hollywood had a spectacular comeback in the late 1940s. Theater attendance was the highest since 1930.  In 1947, 90 million people went to the movies every week.  A ticket cost 35 cents and purchased a double feature, short subject, cartoon, newsreel and on Saturday matinees, an exciting serial from Republic Studios. But the ride down easy street was about to get bumpy for the movie studios. A new entertainment technology was about to grab the attention of millions of Americans — television was coming of age.  Like every technological development in the modern world of audio-visual arts, television can trace its roots back before the 20th century. (The movie camera, color film, widescreen, “talkies” and Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Machine” — a precursor to the modern computer — were all invented in the 19th century.  It seems that nothing new sits under the sun, and please don’t say digital.) Television was first discussed as a scientific possibility in the 1881 book titled The Electric Telescope. The Cathode Ray Tube, that instrument which makes TV possible, was actually invented in 1897.  

In 1927, Philo T. Farnsworth successfully demonstrated “electronic television” in his San Francisco lab. Fast-forward through brutal TV patent wars (not unlike those seen in the pioneer film era) and the crude broadcast experiments during the Twenties and Thirties and we land back in 1947, which turns out to be an interesting year for all sorts of technology). In that year, NBC and the Dumont Network first broadcast the World Series (the Yankees won) and Bob Hope appeared on air for the inauguration of Los Angeles “commercial” broadcast television. When Hope announced the new call letters for station KTLA, live from Paramount Studios, he flubbed the line and got the letters mixed up — the first L.A. blooper. That year, the United States had about 7,000 TV sets; three years later, that figure exploded to 10 million. Television’s proliferation was inversely proportional to the precipitous decline in movie attendance. By 1950, only 60 million movie patrons made the weekly trek to the theater; by the mid-Fifties, ticket sales dropped to half the peak set in 1947. Clearly something was rotten in the state of Hollywood. Some observers felt “déjà vu all over again”— a replay of the radio’s ascendancy in the Twenties. However, other forces were working to pull Americans away from the silver screen.

The 1949 opening of the sprawling cookie-cutter tract homes of Levittown, Long Island sparked mass migration to the suburbs. The population shift away from downtown theaters and the domestic responsibilities brought about by the post-war baby boom helped curtail the movie-going habit. The G.I. Bill helped veterans buy new homes and attend college in unprecedented numbers. Boosts in the post-war economy put cash in America’s pockets. Behold the new, highly educated, upwardly mobile middle class! But early television’s typical programming in no way indicated this new sophistication. The ghostly, snow-filled picture tubes emanated with basic scenarios that had entertained people for decades, if not centuries. Vaudeville made a comeback on The Ed Sullivan Show, Howdy Doody continued the puppet show tradition going back to the Middle Ages and Dick Lane’s wrestling shows featured “Gorgeous George” and “Mr. Moto” in outlandish parodies of Greco-Roman matches. Very old wine presented in new, inferior wineskins. The quality of television improved — both technically and aesthetically — and like the movies, TV would soon create it’s own  “Golden Age.”

Widescreen to the Rescue

A spectacular motion picture experience made its debut September 30, 1952 in New York City’s Broadway Theater.  This is Cinerama played to a packed house for two years and opened in specially modified theaters to outstanding business all across the country. With deeply curved screens sweeping up to 96 feet wide in some venues, Cinerama certainly offered a thrilling alternative to the fuzzy TV images that had recently mesmerized Americans. Three interlocked projectors cast a glowing panorama 146 degrees wide and 55 degrees high. The original photography was accomplished by a set of three Mitchell cameras rolling six-perf 35mm film at 26 frames- per-second through a trio of matched 27mm lenses. A single shutter rotated in front of all three lenses to ensure perfect sync, and the lenses were interlocked and focused as one. The mechanical genius behind Cinerama was Fred Waller, a former engineer and special effects wizard from Paramount Studios. During World War II, Waller developed a “virtual reality” simulator for training aerial gunners. Five projectors filled a hemisphere with airplane footage shot by five interlocked 16mm cameras.  Gunners could follow the attacking planes and shoot at the screen, which recorded their “hits” with an audible cue — a kind of giant video game, if you will. Waller refined his “Viterama” system into three camera, three projector Cinerama with the backing of Marian C. Cooper (“father” of King Kong and an early promoter of Technicolor), explorer-journalist Lowell Thomas and the redoubtable impresario, producer Mike Todd. 

When Cinerama was abandoned in the early Sixties, only seven productions had been filmed with “the three-eyed monster.” Only two of those were narrative films, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won (both 1962). The remaining films consisted of glorified travelogues or thrill rides like Cinerama Holiday (1955), The Seven Wonders of the World (1956) and Cinerama South Seas Adventure (1958). From the start, Cinerama was limited by it’s cumbersome cameras (the blimped version weighed 800 pounds) and the excessive cost of equipping theaters with screens, projectors and seven-channel-stereo-interlocked-mag-track sound systems. But the incredible success of This is Cinerama  — even in it’s limited engagements — ushered in the modern widescreen era.  However, to be universally accepted by exhibitors and easily adapted to current production procedures, a single camera/single projector system for widescreen movies would need to be developed quickly, because the audience hungered for more super-colossal productions.

When Hollywood needs a new technology to satisfy the audience’s cravings for novelty there is only one thing to do — go into the vaults, dust off the old technology and make it new again. Widescreen systems of every kind had been kicking around the movies since the days of Edison and Lumière. It’s been said that in 100 years of the motion picture, film has come in some 100 different sizes. In 1897, the Veriscope system used 63mm film to record the famous Corbett - Fitzsimmons boxing match. Biograph utilized 68mm and Lumière tried 75mm in an attempt to circumvent the Edison patents, which had settled on 35mm. Around 1930, widescreen came very close to a major resurgence with the Fox 70mm Grandeur format, Warner Brothers 65mm Vitascope, RKO’s 63mm Natural Vision, and Paramount’s Magnascope (put to use to stunning effect in certain presentations of Howard Hughes’ 1930 World War I flying epic Hell’s Angels). Brilliant and visionary French director Abel Gance probably plied widescreen to its greatest early artistic success in his grand triple-screen “Polyvision” film of Napoleon (1927).  Polyvision used three Debrie cameras mounted on top of one another, presaging Waller’s three-camera Cinerama by 25 years.  In 1930, studios and exhibitors dished out a fortune on the massive conversion to sound, and audiences seemed quite content with the standard screen size. Widescreen would wait in the wings until the moguls deemed it time for a revival.

Cinerama proved that widescreen meant big box office so the race was on to find a system that could be swiftly grafted to standard production and exhibition methods. Fox and Warners sent executives racing to France in hopes of securing the widescreen process invented by optics professor Henri Chrétien. Fox won the race by a few hours, purchasing the small inventory of anamorphic lenses first developed by Chrétien in 1927.  The Frenchman based his “Hypergonar” lens on the concept that an anamorphic (Greek for “controlled distortion”) lens systematically distorts an image on film that is restored to normal during projection by a complimentary lens. “Anamorphoscope” created a 100 percent horizontal squeeze, resulting in a picture twice as wide as that projected by standard 35mm film. A pair of lens attachments could be used on existing cameras and projectors to create a motion picture aspect ratio of 2.66:1. (After magnetic soundtracks had been added to the print, the proportion dropped to 2.55:1. Optical tracks further reduced the ratio to 2.35:1). Not quite Cinerama, but the concept was so simple (at least in theory) that Fox immediately announced that it would use their new “Cinemascope” on all future productions. Photographed by Leon Shamroy, ASC, 1953’s The Robe was the first feature produced in Cinemascope. The Biblical epic proved a tremendous hit and shortly MGM, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers and Columbia all licensed the Cinemascope process for their own widescreen ventures.  Leon Shamroy, ASC recalled some of the problems encountered during the “terrible days of early Cinemascope. Those early lenses were hell and the films became very granulated. We never had the sharpness of the old three-strip Technicolor days. You couldn’t even do close-ups because the lenses would distort so horribly. It was like photographing a stage play again. The widescreen revolution wrecked the art of film for a decade, but it saved the picture business!”

To combat the grain that became apparent when 35mm was stretched to twice its size by the anamorphic lens and projected on screens over 50 feet wide meant that larger negatives became needed in the contest for widescreen superiority. Fox resurrected one of their 1929 70mm “Grandeur” cameras, converting it to handle specially manufactured 55.62mm negative film. Fitted with a Bausch & Lomb anamorphic lens, the system was titled “Cinemascope 55” and used on only two features – Carousel  (Charlie Clarke, ASC) and The King and I  (Leon Shamroy, ASC). Both films saw release in 1956 on 35mm reduction prints. (The rushes were screened in 55mm with even Darryl Zanuck reportedly impressed beyond words at the depth and clarity of “55”.)  Paramount — the only major studio not to license Cinemascope — instead conceived its own widescreen, non-squeezed process, christening it “VistaVision.” Using a “Natural Color” camera from the late 1920’s, the Paramount camera department modified the double-frame, two-color relic into the first VistaVision camera by first, rotating the camera on its side and machining out a horizontal aperture eight perforations wide.  Much like a 35mm still camera, the film was pulled sideways across the enlarged gate yielding a negative over 2 1/2 times the size of standard 35mm movie film.  In fact, Leica still camera lenses had to be used in order to cover the expanded frame. Quite a technological coup, because the Paramount engineers managed to come up with a large format negative while using standard 35mm film! The new camera was nicknamed the “Lazy-8” for it’s 8-perf frame and unusual repose. Two “Natural Color” cameras were modified and put to work on White Christmas (1954), the first VistaVision feature with photography by Loyal Griggs, ASC. The second VistaVision film — DeMille’s Ten Commandments (1956) — used totally new silent studio cameras designed and built by the Mitchell Camera Corporation. The Mitchell cameras were dubbed “Elephant Ears” because of the drooping coaxial magazines, which were mounted vertically while the film made a 90-degree turn to approach the gate.  Originally intended for projection in the horizontal format, VistaVision achieved superb results when shown in standard 35mm Technicolor reduction prints. A handful of films were actually projected from eight-perf horizontal contact prints. White Christmas, Anthony Mann’s Strategic Air Command (William Daniels, ASC) and Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (Robert Burks, ASC) received limited runs in glorious widescreen VistaVision.  

Many contend VistaVision as having been the best of the widescreen formats. The flat negative did not contain the distortion anomalies that anamorphic systems were prone to, and Paramount’s preferred 1.66:1 aspect ratio was considered more pleasing than the “ribbon-thin” Cinemascope frame. Alfred Hitchcock used VistaVision for several of his finest films — Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) being two excellent examples, both photographed by Hitch’s favorite cinematographer, Robert Burks, ASC.  John Ford took VistaVision to Monument Valley for The Searchers (1956), and the director’s signature locale never looked better as shot by Winton Hoch, ASC.  Even Elvis Presley received the VistaVision treatment in what could be his best movie, King Creole (1958), directed by veteran Michael Curtiz and recorded in black-and-white by Russell Harlan, ASC.   Paramount retired the process after Marlon Brando’s One Eyed Jacks in 1961. (The system actually found its demise on 1963’s forgettable My Six Loves.  But Brando’s directorial debut, with artful camerawork by Charlie Lang, ASC would have been a better official finale for VistaVision.) The early Sixties found the studios in one of their perennial cost-cutting modes. Since VistaVision was a little more expensive (running at 180 feet per minute to feed the eight-perf gate, it consumed double the stock of a standard production). In its accounting wisdom, Paramount decided VistaVision to no longer be cost-effective and sold off their cameras.  But it wasn’t long before Vistavision made a comeback in the special effects world. The horizontal cameras currently contribute crisp, fat negatives for optical shots in today’s FX-laden blockbusters.

65mm or Mike Todd’s Cinerama in One Hole

Mike Todd sold his interest in Cinerama and invested the windfall in a system that could emulate the spectacle of the three-camera process with the simplicity of single camera photography. Enlisting the services of the American Optical Company, Todd and his engineers decided that an unsqueezed 65mm negative running at 30 frames-per-second would be the basis of their new system. They obtained a 1930-era Fearless Superfilm 65mm camera and (with the help of the Mitchell Camera Corporation) began modifications that would result in the “Todd-AO” system. A 12.7mm “Bug-Eye” lens was mounted on the Fearless camera and recorded a vista of 128 degrees. The 90-pound, wide-angle lens became permanently attached to the Fearless, as swapping lenses was quite an interesting task. Mitchell provided up-graded versions of their 1930’s 65mm cameras and later built the new 65mm “BFC,” which outwardly resembled an overweight BNC (many components were interchangeable). The Mitchells were used with the standard compliment of lenses that covered 37, 48 and 64 degrees. Robert Surtees, ASC inaugurated the Todd-AO cameras on Oklahoma (1955). Like other Todd-AO movies, the popular Broadway musical was printed on 70mm film to allow extra room for the stereo sound tracks. Other musicals used Todd-AO and Leon Shamroy, ASC received one of his 18 Academy Award nominations for his glossy, color-washed photography of South Pacific (1958).

While MGM provided the studio and technical services for the Todd-AO production of Oklahoma, (including the loan out of Bob Surtees, ASC) they were developing their own 65mm system. During the early Fifties, Leo’s camera department chief, John Arnold, ASC devised and tested “ArnoldScope,” a 10-perferation horizontal camera similar in concept to VistaVision.  Arnold may have gotten the idea from the 1929 Fearless Superpicture system or from an Italian process that used horizontal cameras and projectors as early as 1909.  Perhaps Arnold stumbled on this latter process while MGM filmed Ben Hur on Italian locations in 1925. By the mid-Fifties, MGM was planning a remake of Ben Hur, for a spectacular widescreen roadshow release. Though impressed by the results of Todd-AO, MGM went one step further. The studio commissioned Panavision’s Robert Gottschalk to design a new widescreen process that would not have the distortion of current anamorphic lenses, and could be printed in several formats including Cinerama, 70mm, 35mm reduction (both flat and squeezed) and 16mm. Panavision had been primarily involved in building high-quality anamorphic projection lenses, but their sights had been set on entering the production arena for some time. Gottschalk and his team first used converted Mitchell cameras from the MGM inventory that went back to the 1930’s “Realife” 70mm process, but soon Mitchell was building fresh 65mm cameras housed in 300-pound magnesium blimps.  Panavision enhanced the system (then still quite similar to Todd-AO) by using newly designed anamorphic lenses that created a compression of 1.25:1. The APO Panatar lenses used prisms rather than cylindrical elements and virtually eliminated distortion, especially in close-ups.  Named “Ultra Panavision” by Gottschalk, the Metro publicity department preferred their snappy label of “MGM CAMERA 65.” 

Ben Hur was to be Camera 65’s debut film, but production delays gave that honor to Raintree County in 1957 with Bob Surtees, ASC once again called on for the widescreen photography. He then segued into the filming of Ben Hur, which would be in production for more than a year and would earn 11 Academy Awards, including Best Photography for Surtees.  Released on November 14, 1959, Ben Hur was presented in a stunning aspect ratio of 2.76:1 for it’s roadshow engagements and would play continuously in various sizes and theaters for two-and-a-half years. Sixty-five millimeter had finally become a mature, fully viable motion picture format. By the time MGM and Bob Surtees went to work on the 65mm re-make of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962),“Ultra Panavision” had officially replaced the “Camera 65” label on credits, posters and the cameras themselves. “Super Panavision” — the non-anamorphic version of Camera 65  — saw it’s initiation on The Big Fisherman in 1959, but found its first artistic and commercial success by filming Otto Preminger’s Exodus in 1960  (Sam Leavitt, ASC did the photography. After all, Surtees couldn’t be expected to shoot every 65mm film). 

The widescreen revolution of the 1950s not only included the major players of Cinerama, Cinemascope, VistaVision, Camera 65, Ultra and Super Panavision, but many supporting characters auditioned for billing on mega-movie posters. The studios crafted some names for its licensed systems, others were short-lived experiments that lasted for one or two films and a few were nothing but “hoopla.” Maybe some of these publicity department trademarks will bring back memories: Warnerscope, Vistarama, Vectograph, Variascope, AmpoVision, Glamorama, Naturama,  Megascope, Hammerscope, Panoramica, Technirama, Superscope and Cinemiracle. The Fifties began and ended with movie gimmicks designed to lure patrons away from their TV sets. Arch Obler’s 3-D, African escapade Bwana Devil (1952) sparked the short-lived craze that required audience members to look and feel ridiculous while wearing those goofy glasses with flimsy red and blue “lenses.” Mike Todd Jr. continued his father’s gift for showmanship and finished the decade with his “Todd 70” production of Scent of Mystery “in glorious Smell-O-Vision.” Advertisements proclaimed  “First They Moved – 1893, Then They Talked – 1927, Now They Smell – 1959.” Apparently, the audience agreed with the last description, as the film quickly wafted into oblivion. 

One major technical development made all these wide screen systems possible. In 1950, Eastman Kodak introduced a monopack color negative patented as “Eastmancolor.” Agfa’s color negative followed soon after. Both companies earned Academy Awards for their emulsion innovations. Not too many years later, three-strip Technicolor retired as a color origination medium.  From 1950 onwards, motion picture cameras became colorblind. Just by changing its raw stock, a Mitchell BNC could be a black-and-white camera or a color camera. It seems obviously self-evident now, but after the reigning supremacy of three-strip Technicolor, this “software” revolution helped trigger the widescreen revolution. Imagine three giant Technicolor cameras in the Cinerama configuration (it was already big enough!), or three rolls of film hurtling through multiple gates of a VistaVision camera at 180 feet-per-minute.  (Technicolor did convert several of their three-strip cameras to VistaVision. After extracting all the movements and gates and prisms and filters, plenty of room remained to bend the single roll of film around rollers and guides and pull it past the horizontal aperture. Built like the proverbial tank, Technicolor eight-perf “Blue Boxes” found their way into special effects work for a few more decades.)  Engineering problems aside, the economics of three-strip would have probably stifled development of so many widescreen formats. Technicolor’s contribution to widescreen’s glory days lay in its extraordinary printing artistry that rendered all of these formats in vivid, saturated colors that jumped off the screen.  Watching a mighty 65mm movie like Ben Hur projected through a lush Technicolor dye-transfer 70mm print is a breathtaking motion picture experience.  Most of today’s moviegoers have no idea what they are missing. Sadly, that fact may be the irony that sets the stage for the future of cinema. Next episode takes a “trip” through the Sixties — new waves, old waves, “reflexology” and beyond!

The author would like to thank Joe Longo, Richard Bennett and Peter Anderson, ASC for their patience and invaluable help in preparing this series. •