Technologies
CinemaScope
Cinema
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Twentieth Century Fox's 1953 anamorphic widescreen process, adopted by studio head Spyros Skouras and engineered by Earl Sponable and Herbert Bragg, squeezed a wide image onto standard 35mm film for projection through a matching lens. Launched with The Robe, it was Hollywood's answer to television's inroads on movie attendance, though Fox was not first to market: Cinerama's three-projector spectacle had opened in New York the year before, in September 1952. CinemaScope's single-camera, single-projector design made widescreen practical for ordinary theaters in a way Cinerama never was, and rival studios licensed it within a year.
Facts
Introduced Year OriginIntroduced by 20th Century Fox as a response to competition from television. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
IMAX, Technologies Both are widescreen exhibition formats developed to compete for audiences beyond the standard theatrical frame, decades apart.
In Medium
Sources
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationOrigins sectionQuote, Origins section
This persuaded Spyros Skouras, the head of 20th Century Fox, that technical innovation could buoy filmmaking against the television challenge.
Open Questions (1 open question)
Which process truly began the 1950s widescreen era: Cinerama or CinemaScope?
Cinerama's three-projector This Is Cinerama opened in New York on 30 September 1952, a full year before Twentieth Century Fox brought CinemaScope to market with The Robe. Some historians therefore date the widescreen era to Cinerama's debut. Others credit CinemaScope, because its single-camera, single-projector design was the version ordinary theaters could actually install, and it is the one every other studio licensed within a year; Cinerama remained a novelty shown in a handful of specially built houses. Neither claim is wrong on its own terms; they answer different questions about what "began" an era means.
What would resolve this Not an empirical question; a field-wide convention on whether priority means first public exhibition or first format to reshape the industry at scale would settle which claim the atlas itself should lead with.
Film HistoryWikipedia
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.