Anaglyphic 3-D movies

[P3D Neil Harrington <nharrington@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Kernes writes:

>I saw a bit of this show last night on AMC, and was shocked to hear the
>supposedly knowledgable Roger Ebert state that the 3D movies of the '50s were
>show theatrically as ANAGLYPHS!!!!! The man should know better. Perhaps
>someone even more knowledgable on the subject than myself (truly, I only
>learned that the original showings were polarized through this list) should
>write AMC a nasty letter.

The nasty-letter writer might want to lay in a supply of facial egg remover
first, though.

I've followed the polarized vs. anaglyph movies arguments here and meant to
reply to them earlier.  Much the same arguments were made a year or so ago
on the Fidonet "Movies" echo, with one self-proclaimed expert taking the
position that ALL 3-D movies were made in polarized version only, NEVER
released in anaglyph form, an assertion I have seen repeated here.  

The only problem with that is that many of us who are old enough to have
actually seen those 3-D films when they were released in the early fifties
(as that particular expert was not) REMEMBER being given red/green glasses
to see them with.

Several of us users of that Fidonet echo said so, independently of each
other.  My own recollection is that I saw "Creature From the Black
Lagoon"--and one or two other B&W 3-D films--with red/green glasses, and
color 3-D films such as "Fort Ti" in different theaters, with Polaroid
glasses.  A friend of mine remembers much the same thing, red/green glasses
for some movies and gray for others, though he doesn't now remember which
glasses went with which movies.

Now, human memory is a very fallible thing, to be sure, and it often happens
that people "remember" things that never actually happened.  But in this
case, one has to believe either that (a) many of us have, independently of
each other, exactly the same false memories, or (b) some of the experts are
wrong about this.  At this remove in time I can't prove it either way, but
(b) seems the more likely to me.

Anaglyph seems like such a natural thing for B&W 3-D films, since it works
very well and doesn't require synchronized projectors or a silver screen,
that if some such films were not released that way one would wonder why not.

Does anyone here have access to that book on 3-D movies which has been
mentioned here?  And if so, what does it have to say on the subject?


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