Ever see a “Cinerama” movie?

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Fyrefox

Well-known Member
In the 1950’s, the movie industry was feeling pressure from television, so they came up with “Cinerama” movies as a lure, which wedded three projectors together to give a wide, wrap-around kind of movie that was billed as a theatrical experience.

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People dressed up to attend Cinerama movies, which aired in big theaters unlike the small mini theaters that are the norm today. I can remember seeing “How the West Was Won” in Cinerama. The visual clarity was better than in the fuzzy TV screens of the day, and you did feel like you were seeing something special… 🎥 🍿

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Oh, you betcha! Cinerama came to our city with a bang! I can remember the first movie shown, "This is Cinerama!", which was sort of an introduction/documentary to the process.

The biggest and grandest movie theater in the city was renovated for the new screens.. There was a small parade of dignitaries and classic cars passing by the theater on opening day and my high school band played in front. Planes flew over pulling banners.

When the movie started, the curtains opened (remember the curtains?) but only the width of the regular screen for the first minute or so (OK, what the heck is this? Did I pay the huge sum of $2 just to see a regular movie???) But then, the curtains started opening further and the movie expanded and WOW!!!!!! there I was riding a roller coaster and hurdling down the streets of somewhere exotic in a basket cart and climbing up the rigging of the Norwegian cadet tall ship the Christian Radich (which I actually got to board some years later in Oslo harbor).

My mind was blown. I had a raging headache by the time it was over, but what a show!

It was crude by today's standards of cinematography, but fantastic for the day.
 
You bet! I think it was in the early 60's we went to the Newly opened Cinera Cooper Theater in Denver, Colorado, to see the movie How the West Was Won. It was the premier showing in Colorado and some of the actors and Indians that were in the movie were at the showing. We all dressed up in our Sunday best. That movie was and still is my favorite movie. On top of all of that, we lived in a small mountain town in Colorado. Some of this movie was shot in our area and we actually went down by the river to watch them shoot a scene that ended up in the movie.

It is the scene where two families got on a rafts going down a raging river (the first scene showed them starting out on a flat muddy river, but the next scene showed them on a fast, clear, river with rocky rapids.) The clear river was the Gunnison River, an area just north of the town of Gunnison. In the movie one of the rafts tips over in the rapids and the parents of one family get killed and one son was injured.

Anyway as a kid it was really fun seeing them shoot the river scene and then watching it on the BIG screen....
 

Cinerama aside, I miss the big movie theaters of my youth. They were among the few places that were air conditioned in the summer back then, making them a place of sanctuary from the heat. The aisles used to be long, and the theater wide. Some even had balconies! The movie theater in my college town had wonderful Art Deco decor. Today, you have the feeling of being herded into a small, Spartan-styled box…
 
Fyrefox said:
Cinerama aside, I miss the big movie theaters of my youth. They were among the few places that were air conditioned in the summer back then, making them a place of sanctuary from the heat. The aisles used to be long, and the theater wide. Some even had balconies! The movie theater in my college town had wonderful Art Deco decor. Today, you have the feeling of being herded into a small, Spartan-styled box…
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We would spent hours in the theater. Once you paid for your ticket, you could stay as long as you liked.

There were always two movies, the "big" one and then a "second run one", and newsreels and cartoons and "coming attractions". We'd frequently sit through both movies and extras and then watch the main attraction again....so as to get good value for our admission fee.

You could get candy for as little as 5 cents. Bonomos Turkish Taffy was a nickel and you got your money's worth. That stuff would still be stuck to your teeth the next morning.
 
jujube said:
You could get candy for as little as 5 cents. Bonomos Turkish Taffy was a nickel and you got your money's worth. That stuff would still be stuck to your teeth the next morning.
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My parents would give me and my brother $.50 cents each to go to the movies. $.25 for a ticket, and the rest for snacks that got us through 2 movies. Of course, weekly pay checks were a lot less than now, and people managed to pay their bills and even put some $ into a savings account.🤑
 

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