The Robe, First Widescreen Film in Utah

 
On 1 October 1953, the Lyric and the Villa became the first theaters in the Salt Lake area to show widescreen movies with stereo sound. Both theaters showed The Robe, the first movie filmed in a new process called CinemaScope.  The Lyric later became the Promised Valley Playhouse.

. . . a screen so large a viewer has to turn his head to see from end to end . . . CinemaScope, the new movie process which was introduced with "The Robe," is quite as impressive as the picture itself.  It projects to the audience a panorama bigger than life itself. Looking at the wide, curved screens, viewers have the impression they are part of the picture.  The sound, emanating from where it is spoken, is another feature that's interesting, new and intriguing.  Whatever faults, a slight blur at times, a slight buzz in the sound, are more than compensated for by the over-all splendor of the new CinemaScope screen. "The Robe" and CinemaScope, now on view at the Lyric and Villa Theaters, truly are experiences that should not be missed. Deseret News, 1 October 1953

No. 1 shows how the flat ordinary screen is dwarfed by the newly created curved Miracle Mirror Screen.  Nos. 2, 3, 4 show how CinemaScope's superior new Stereophonic Sound, enhances the scope of the audience participation.  No. 5 shows how the new Anamorphic Lens creates infinite depth and life-like reality to engulf you in the action on the screen. From the opening day ad for The Robe, Deseret News, 1 October 1953.

After the debut of Cinerama in 1952, studio executives raced to develop a similar widescreen process. 20th Century Fox acquired world rights to Anamorphoscope, a filming process developed by Prof. Henri Chrétien, and renamed it CinemaScope.

CinemaScope used an anamorphic lens to squeeze a wide image onto traditional 35mm film during filming. Movie theaters were equipped with large wide screens, with a slight curve, and then the image was stretched back out using another lens. The result was an image twice as wide as traditional movies, without the extra complication and expense of using three separate cameras and projectors as with Cinerama.

A squeezed frame from The Robe, as it appears on the film.

The same frame, as it appears on the screen. Images courtesy of The American WideScreen Museum - www.widescreenmuseum.com

CinemaScope also provided stereo sound using four magnetic tracks on either sides of the sprocket holes. Three channels of sound were behind the screen and the fourth used speakers on the side and rear walls of the auditorium. Although movie studios expected this stereo sound format to become the standard, movie theaters operators resisted the high expense and an optical mono soundtrack was later added to CinemaScope prints.

Although the term CinemaScope is not longer used, many widescreen films today use the anamorphic process.  It is referred to now simply as "scope."