Flash in the Pan?

Hollywood's three-dimension fever was still running high last week. But amidst all the 3-D gags ("We'll have to hire opticians instead of lawyers"), epithets ("third dementia"), and a rash of planned 3-D productions (15 feature movies in 1953), a few industry veterans began wondering aloud whether sudden salvation is really at hand. Is 3-D certain to save the sagging box office? Notable reservations and misgivings about 3-D's future:

P:M-G-M's Production Boss Dore Schary sees 3-D as a novelty and a limited technique which will not enhance or improve all pictures. Said Schary, cautiously: "Third dimension provides the industry with a wonderful . . . opportunity to tell stories in new ways, but I believe that worldwide audiences will, in the next couple of years, help us to determine which films we should make in third dimension . . . The public, as always, remains the final arbiter."

P:Durable Cinemactress Gloria Swanson, with a nice 39-week TV contract to see her through this year, said bluntly: "Three-D will be a flash in the pan . . . The only real future for films is in developing some kind of box to collect money for movies on TV."

P:Hollywood Columnist Sidney Skolsky, currently producing a two-dimension screen biography of Eddie Cantor, concluded: "The movie industry, like a man running to a quack doctor, tried to find a quick cureall: a hypo of 3-D and wide screen (e.g., Cinerama). Both . . . have been around for some time, but the movie industry ignored them because it was feeling great, breaking all records at the box office . . . When the stuff wears off . . . the industry will still have to face and fight its original fear and frustration."

P:Chirped Producer Jerry Wald: "I'm enthusiastic about anything that calls attention to Hollywood--3-D, three colors, two legs or Marilyn Monroe."

P:Producer George (Tonight We Sing) Jessell, always ready with a gag, cracked: "I predict that one year from now the studios will be making nothing but glasses."

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