P3D Re: Hold the Rumor, Please

[Greg Kintz <gkintz@xxxxxxxx>]

I had originally written:
>> In the early fifties it was not uncommon to shoot two versions
>> of the 1st Cinemascope films, due to the lack of widescreen
>> theateres and for safty if the ultra-wide 2.55:1 Cinemascope
>> format did not catch on. For safty, the 1st 'Scope film "The
>> Robe" was shot in standard 1.33:1, Cinemascope 2.55:1, *and*
>> in 3-D!

To which Marvin Jomes repied:
> Whoops! Here we go again! "The Robe" WAS shot in 'scope and
> "square-screen" versions, but it was NOT shot in 3D! This rumor
> got started a couple of years ago when someone in a Usenet group
> made a wildly garbled misinterpretation of a memo which had been
> reprinted somewhere and announced his "discovery" that there was
> a 3D version of "The Robe." It ain't so.

Allow me to direct you to the memo in question. A few years back
researcher/author John Belton (Author of Widescreen Cinema) noted
a March 5th 1953 letter from from Fox's Darryl Zanuck to Jack Warner:

"I am looking each night at the flat rushes, 3-D polaroid rushes
and finally the Cinemascope on The Robe"
-Twentieth Century-Fox folder, Warner Brothers Archive.

This can be found in his very detailed book "Widescreen Cinema" on
pages 132 & 272.
 ..Hope this helped!

     -GK-


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