20th Century-Fox Dynamo (April 18, 1953)

ORDERS FOR EQUIPMENT ARE POURING IN EXHIBITORS VIE WITH EACH OTHER TO BE FIRST TO SHOW CIHEMASCOPE PRODUCTIOHS This exclusive Dynamo photograph shows better than anything you have seen to date the precise width of the wide-screen used at the recent studio demonstra- tions of the CinemaScope process. The screen measured 65 feet in length. Imagine 53 average-sized men lined up, shoulder to shoulder, and you get a correct idea of the width of the screen pictured above. The group in front of the CinemaScope screen constituted 83 °f the more than 700 representative exhibitors who attended the studio demonstrations. If your exhibitors will multiply the width of their present screens by 2.66 they will be able to ascertain the exact width of the CinemaScope screens for their theatre. Upwards of 500 key-city theatres in the United States and Canada will be equipped to lawch this company’s CinemaScope productions by October. Moreover, annouiced Director of Distribution 41 Lichtman in New York this week a minimum of 1000 theatres will have been sim- ilarly equipped by the end of the year. There- after, he stated, CinemaScope installations will be at the rate of 500 theatres per month. Meantime, circuit and unaffiliated theatre operators, in large and small situations in United States and Canada, were vying among themselves to be the first to be equipped to locally present CinemaScope productions. Not only President Spyros P. Skouras and Mr. Lichtman, but division and branch managers, as well as salesmen, were being increasingly snowed under an avalanche of mounting ap- plications for the equipment. Several thousand theatres in the United States had applied for equipment by press- time. The number will be doubled within a fort- night, if the past week’s pace of application de- livery is maintained. Hundreds of others have asked for further details, namely cost of in- stallations, size of screens required and many other technological questions that have been turned over to Earl I. Sponable, director of tech- nical research for this company, for answering. Firther acceleration of the flow of instal- lation applications resulted from the joint con- clusion of a half score of the nation’s fore- Poge 8 most showmen who, after viewing, studying and appraising all wide-screen and 3-D processes, issued a clarifying statement to the trade press and their associates that left no doubt that “CinemaScope is the answer to all theatres, big and small,” as Interstate circuit’s Bob O’Don- nell put it. This significant statement, issued by fully-informed veteran showmen, followed a special showing of CinemaScope on a 21-foot screen at our studio. After this demonstration these showmen surrounded Production Chief Darryl F. Zanuck and Mr. Lichtman and con- gratulated them, for their reaction, to put it mildly was enthusiastic. These showmen, in ad- dition to Mr. O’Donnell, included Leonard Goldstein, President of United Paramount Theatres Corporation, John Balaban of Balaban & Katz, Chicago, and Robert Weitman, general manager of the New York Paramount theatre and a high official of United Paramount Theatres. Among circuit and other motion picture op- erators who have applied for installation of CinemaScope with stereophonic sound are: National Theatres for 217 theatres; drive-in circuit of Claude Ezell & Associates for 19 situations; Edwin Gage for 11; Walter Reade theatres in New York and New Jersey; Walter Reade theatres in New York and New Jersey; Walter Morris for two theatres in Knoxville, Tenn.; Ralph N. Goldberg for six theatres in Nebraska; Joseph Varbalow for 12 houses op- erated by the Savar circuit in New Jersey; George M. Schwartz for three theatres in Dela- ware; C. Hayward Morgan for three in Green- ville, S.C.; Harry J. Schad for two in Reading, Pennsylvania. Also, Jack H. Ska-ball for three theatres in Hollywood, Cal.; the John Harris circuit in Pittsbiagh, Pa.; Martin B. Ellis circuit, Phila- delphia; Mike Naify, United California Thea- tres, in San Francisco area; Stanley Sumner of University Theatres, Cambridge, Mass.; James J. Mirras, Canadigua, N.Y.; Lloyd J. Wineland Theatres, Washington, D.C.; Ed P. Ortte, Logan Theatre, Gulfport, Miss.; M.A. Lightman circuit, Tennessee; Moe Horwitz circuit, Cleveland; Jack Rose for seven Elkhart Amusement Com- pany of Indiana; Myron N. Blank for 34 situa- tions operated by the Central States Theatres in Iowa, Nebraska; Albert Settile for Pastime Amusement Company, Charleston, S.C. Also, Ralph S. Pasho of the Salem Play- house, Naugatuck , Conn.; Riger Mahan for two theatres in Waterbury, Conn.; Bert Schoonmaker of Toledo, O.; Phil Bloomberg of the Orpheum, Denver, Colo.; Spyros Skouras, Jr., for 35 Skouras circuit theatres, Greater New York, N.Y.; Si Fabian for Fablan-Warner circuit; S. Goldftnger for the Hippodrome, Cleveland; Malcolm C. Green for 28 situations operated by the Interstate Theatres Corporation of New England; Jerome Gordon for three theatres in Newport News, Va.; Leonard W. Lea for two theatres in Danville, III.; Dan Weinberg of Continued On Page 26