3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

Chapter 6: Wider, Not Deeper

Why was the 3-D movie boom in Hollywood between 1952 and 1955 so short-lived? What were the leading factors in its demise? There were a number of factors at play at the time with a convergence of entertainment technologies that were new to the motion picture landscape. Over fifty years later, with the digital 3-D cinema rollout commencing in 2005, many of the same business and technological dynamics would apply, especially with regard to exhibitor’s retooling for new display technologies, differentiation between theatrical and home content, and positioning content for an aftermarket beyond theatrical distribution. Television Impacts the Movies By 1952 motion pictures very quickly needed to offer a premium theatrical experience, unlike anything that was possible in the home. Stereoscopic cinema and wide-screen or large-format motion pictures, in both historical instances, provided that differentiation from home TV entertainment as well as conventional cinema itself. With the inauguration of television after World War II, motion picture attendance suffered a precipitous decline. From 1946 to 1952, attendance at movie theaters had dropped by almost half, from eighty-three million to forty-six million per week.1 Thousands of movie theaters had closed, and the motion picture industry desperately needed a way to pull the public away from their new television sets and back into theaters. On May 6, 1948, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), after granting licenses for a hundred TV stations, had imposed a freeze so that interference problems could be analyzed. From 1948 to 1952, New Wider, Not Deeper 6 Film Bulletin, the movie exhibitor’s trade publication, reported on CinemaScope technology in March 1953, just as the 3-D movies were starting to roll out to the theaters. Wider, Not Deeper 65 York and Los Angeles each had seven TV stations, but there were many major cities in the United States without television broadcasts. This was also the beginning of commercial television with sponsored programming. The cities with television provided an excellent means of examining the impact of TV on motion picture attendance. In 1951, the cities that had television experienced a 20 to 40 percent drop in movie attendance. The cities without television reported no drop in attendance, or even increased movie patronage.2 Locations that had television reported movie theaters closing in a great wave, including seventy in eastern Pennsylvania, 134 in Southern California, sixty-one in Massachusetts, sixty-four in Chicago, and fifty-five in New York City. By 1946 there had been roughly one million television sets in the United States. In his 1946 book, Here Is Television, Thomas Hutchinson observed that the movie studios were initially reluctant to release “any great portion of their product for television. There are several reasons why they should not,” wrote Hutchinson. One is the fear on the part of the exhibitor as to what television programs in the home will do to his business. Just as some theater operators believed that radio would put them out of business, the bugaboo of television drives film exhibitors to a state bordering on panic.3 By 1952, with the FCC freeze still in effect, sixty-four cities were broadcasting television to fifteen million TV sets.4 On April 11, 1952, the FCC discontinued the TV license freeze and officially began processing of channel applications. The FCC approved construction of 2,053 TV facilities in 1,291 communities across the United States, and by the end of 1952, 169 new commercial TV stations had won FCC sanctions.5 As of June 1, 1953, when the Hollywood 3-D boom was beginning to gather a head of steam, there were an estimated 24,292,600 homes in the United States with television. For the first six months of 1953, the RadioTelevision Manufacturers Association reported production of a record number of 3,834,236 TV sets. Total reported broadcast revenues for the TV industries in 1952 had been $324,200,000, a 38 percent increase over revenues for 1951. And by this time, a total of 79 percent of the United States’ population lived in an area where TV broadcast services were available.6 In April 1952, a four-year freeze on licensing new TV channels by the Federal Communications Commission was lifted, leading to an explosion of new stations in more remote areas of the United States. Wider, Not Deeper 67 Despite...