New Voyagers

The bright future of three-dimensional films (TIME, Feb. 9) was Hollywood's No. 1 topic of talk. Said Movie Spokesman Eric Johnston last week: "This may well go down in history as the year 1953-D." Wrote Gossipist Louella Parsons: "Nothing since the atomic bomb has struck the motion-picture industry with such force . . ."

The fuse of the bomb was the unexpected public interest in depth pictures. When the recent big box-office returns started coming in from 3-D movies, the rush began for the vaults and the warehouses to dust off and improve 3-D equipment. The basic principles of three-dimensional films have been kicking around for more than 25 years--e.g., audiences back in 1937 put on red & green glasses to watch Pete Smith's "audioscopiks."

The producers, their sensitive nerves tuned to public reaction, have made a calculated gamble that the interest is permanent rather than just a passing fad.

The problem is how to serve up the new product. The public will ultimately decide the issue by deciding whether to buy tickets to see a 3-D film with Polaroid glasses, or to see, without glasses, a three-dimension "illusion." The ideal solution may come from some hard-working engineer who figures out a true stereoscopic system which requires no glasses. This would be Hollywood's best answer to television, just as sound pictures answered the vaudeville stage in the early '30s.

Meanwhile, some sort of standardization for exhibitors is a problem. Exhibitors were invited to Manhattan last week to meet the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers to hash the matter over. At the moment, each system has its enthusiastic rooter. Fox's Spyros P. Kouras, flying off to scout the 3-D foreign field, predicted that by next October some 2,500 theaters across the country will be equipped for Cinemascope.

Catching some of Hollywood's excitement, the New York Herald Tribune editorialized on the 3-D age: "The flat screen, the silent screen, the uncluttered stage of Shakespeare and Marlowe, even the book in an armchair before the fire all have had their stimulating moments. What wonders may now be expected of a medium which out-engulfs all these predecessors and makes every man a voyager to a brave new world!"

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