The Third Dimension

In a converted indoor tennis court at Oyster Bay, N.Y. one night last week, the guests looked up at the big, curving cinema screen, swallowed hard and clutched for support as they seemed suddenly plunked down in the lead car of a plunging roller coaster. Next, they were surrounded by the cacophony of marchers and bands in the midst of a Fifth Avenue parade. Then they were transported to Chicago's Soldier Field at night, heard the rumbling applause swelling all around them as Douglas MacArthur's car swept into the arena under shifting beams of light.

What the audience was seeing was Cinerama, the 13-year-old brainchild of Inventor Fred Waller of Huntington, N.Y. A new variation on the old theme of three-dimensional movies, Cinerama does not reproduce such old tricks as the baseball thrown straight into the spectators' laps; rather, it seems to pull the audience into the picture. And it has managed to eliminate some bothersome three-dimensional snags: spectators do not need to wear special glasses, nor must they sit in a narrow area directly before the screen.

Gunnery Trainer. The secret of Cinerama is its outsize, curved screen and six synchronized sound tracks, which combine to give a remarkable illusion of depth (see diagram). Waller's invention got its first rigorous testing during the war as a gunnery trainer, was used by the armed forces to instruct aerial gunners under closely simulated combat conditions. But it was not until last fall that Cinerama, Inc., controlled by the Reeves Soundcraft Corp., developer of the Cinerama sound system, made a deal to put the new medium in show business. The deal gives exclusive commercial rights to Cinerama films for five years to a company formed by Broadway Showman Michael Todd, radio's Lowell Thomas, and Stockbroker Dudley Roberts Jr.

Producer Todd's first Cinerama production, budgeted at $700,000 and scheduled for release next winter, will carry one of cinema's most distinguished names on its list of credits: Director Robert Flaherty, father of the documentary film. It will be a glorified trailer, shot in color, and intended to show just what Cinerama can do that ordinary movies cannot. Sample items: a helicopter flight over Niagara Falls, the Salzburg Festival, Shakespearean plays at Stratford-on-Avon, possibly the Sadler's Wells Ballet.

Eloquent Answer? But the trailer, however impressive, will be mainly a demonstration of the new technique. Mike Todd will be shooting for more solid entertainment in his second production, plans a $2,000,000 dramatic spectacle with music or a Cineramadaptation of a surefire Broadway musical. Cinerama's projection equipment (estimated cost: $40,000-$70,000) can be installed almost anywhere from Radio City Music Hall to the neighborhood movie houses, as long as the theater is not too narrow. Todd plans to install it first only in a single Manhattan theater, then in one house in each of the 16 largest U.S. cities.

Hollywood turned down a chance to get into Cinerama long before the Todd group. Reason: it might make hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of films and equipment obsolete--the same reason cinemoguls once rejected talking pictures. But now that Cinerama is becoming a reality in spite of them, the moviemakers are beginning to take a second look. At the outset, if it proves as good as it seems, it may give movie attendance a kick in the pants rather than a shot in the arm. But in the long haul, it may become Hollywood's most eloquent answer to television.

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