If HOW THE WEST WAS WON will play this fall at the Cinerama Dome, I will unquestionably drive to Hollywood from Albuquerque to see it. I think if I could choose how I wanted to go out of this world when I die, it would be while sitting in the middle of the front row watching the end of HTWWW!!
I saw IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD here when the theater first opened, then THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD several times. The last film I thought was awesome, and I must have been among the only youngsters (and adults for that matter) at that time who thought the film amazing. Once I had my brother take me for an evening show (my brother was a minister), and I remember forcing him to sit in the very first row dead center, so that the power of th screen would overwhelm us. I have forever after almost ALWAYS sat in the first several rows of any theater, as I’m convinced that that’s the location of maximum impact. I also remember attending the film on enough occasions that I was able to buy all three folios of the gorgeous large-scale color photographs from the film that were offered in the lobby along with the souvenir book. I loved to sit at the front of the theater before the show started and smell the fresh-printed odor of the souvenir book—some vintage copies of souvenir books in general still retain that odor, even when I’ve purchased them on eBay. In any event, I considered (at the age of 14!) the GSET’s souvenir book to be the most artistically-produced of any souvenir book in the history of motion pictures (it’s only rival in my adolescent opinion was LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’s).
My family had something of an indirect connection to composer of the film’s score. Ken Darby, Alfred Newman’s collaborator, was the son of my junior high school English teacher. My mother, who worked as a highly respected music teacher and choral director for the Santa Monica school system, and who was renowned enough that the Santa Monica city council shut down operations for the day when she passed away, collaborated with Alfred Newman on at least one occasion to produce the popular Stairway Under the Stars. The highlight of the program was Alfred Newman himself conducting the rousing closing music from CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE, which has gone down in soundtrack history as “Conquest.” You better believe I was in the audience that day.
One of the things that my mother said about the music to GSET has always stuck in my mind, primarily because I couldn’t believe it was true. She told me that the main theme from the score was lifted from a Classical composer (I believe it was perhaps Bach). I genuinely loved the film score and didn’t believe her (there were a lot of things I didn’t believe her about in those days, much to my deep regret).
Years later I had a chance to visit the Cinerama dome with my own children, just before the Archlight rennovations (I have yet to see in person what they did to the place). The film showing was WILD WILD WEST with Will Smith—not a particular popular film. There were maybe three or four additional audience members in the theater besides myself and my son and daughter, so we pretty much had the run of the theater and could explore all we wanted to. Naturally, I grabbed the center seats in the very first row, just as I did more than thirty years ago.
Now, WILD WILD WEST was not a particularly great movie, but after seeing it projected on (only about 2/3rds) of the curved screen and overwhelmed by the stereo system, we all came away thinking we had just watched the greatest movie ever made!! We live in Albuquerque where movie screens are puny by comparison. I just don’t think that kids nowadays realize how great the impact of even mediocre films can have when shown at colossal scale—the way films were meant to be seen in the golden age of widescreen cinema. Imagine what viewing a full-scale three-strip Cinerama film like HOW THE WEST WAS WON in an original Cinerama theater can do to the senses! How we’ve given up so much simply for the sake of convenience. Students in my college art history classes just can’t believe that films used to be 3 ½ hours long or what could keep an audience fascinated that long. It was the magnitude of the bid screen to be sure!
I saw both HOW THE WEST WAS WON and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY here in their original roadshow engagement. I had a special connection to the film, as my junior high school English teacher, Clara Smith, was the mother of the choral director for the film. Clara taught at Lincoln Junior High in Santa Monica and talked endlessly about her son’s accomplishments, which included playing Jesus at an annual production of the Last Supper or something like that held at a local theater. Her son, Academy Award winner Ken Darby, was a long-time collaborator and friend of the renowned composer Alfred Newman, and produced and directed the choral arrangements for THE ROBE, THE EGYPTIAN (I think, which was co-scored by Bernard Hermann), and THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. Much of the fine choral arrangements and folk songs in HTWWW were the work of Darby, and Darby conducted and wrote much of the original music for the film in conjunction with Newman. Indeed, Darby had more to do with the score than Newman himself, who wrote only limited original themes.
Although I never met Ken Darby, his ghost in a sense has dogged me the rest of my life.
In any event, after recently viewing photographs of the interior of the Warner Hollywood I was struck with an instant flood of memories about the day I saw the show. I remember the exterior and interior of the theater, but not the lobby, although I vaguely recollect buying popcorn there. I believe I sat in the second or third row just left of center as you face the screen—a practice I repeated when I saw IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD at the Cinerama dome. This allowed for maximum stereo effect and for the giant curved screen to wrap almost as far around the viewer as the corner of their vision. This effect diminishes as you sit farther back in the theater, and when you reach the back seats the cinerama effect is nearly insignificant. At least that’s what I thought when I was 11!
I remember seeing LAWRENCE OF ARABIA here when I was 11. I probably saw it with my family first, but I returned six separate times over the course of its roadshow engagement. In those days, I lived in Santa Monica off of San Vicente on Lincoln and would take a bus up to the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire then walk the rest of the way. I often went to the evening show, which let out somewhere around 11 pm, I believe then had to walk back to the bus stop where I hoped to catch one of the last buses home. Often as not I missed the bus and would call my parents to come pick me up. Meanwhile I continued to sit on the bus stop sometimes until midnight. Now, imagine letting your 11 year-old-son travel from Beverly Hills at that hour, and compare it to today’s conditions, where you don’t dare let your kids out of the backyard! In those days neither I or my parents had any fear I’d been kidnapped or molested, and we all felt I was perfectly safe. Those were the days!
I also saw BECKET here—LAWRENCE made me a die-hard fan of Peter O'Toole’s and I always had enormous respect for Burton (I often wrote and acted in plays both in elementary and junior high school, so that I was probably one of the only kids my age in SoCal public schools who would watch something like Burton’s HAMLET and listen to the complete recording of the play over and over again; and what kid around my age was into something like NIGHT OF THE IGUANA??).
Finally, I also saw LORD JIM here, a rather widely over-looked film that I nevertheless found compelling enough that it helped inspire an interest in lost ruins and hence a career as an art historian.
If HOW THE WEST WAS WON will play this fall at the Cinerama Dome, I will unquestionably drive to Hollywood from Albuquerque to see it. I think if I could choose how I wanted to go out of this world when I die, it would be while sitting in the middle of the front row watching the end of HTWWW!!
I saw IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD here when the theater first opened, then THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD several times. The last film I thought was awesome, and I must have been among the only youngsters (and adults for that matter) at that time who thought the film amazing. Once I had my brother take me for an evening show (my brother was a minister), and I remember forcing him to sit in the very first row dead center, so that the power of th screen would overwhelm us. I have forever after almost ALWAYS sat in the first several rows of any theater, as I’m convinced that that’s the location of maximum impact. I also remember attending the film on enough occasions that I was able to buy all three folios of the gorgeous large-scale color photographs from the film that were offered in the lobby along with the souvenir book. I loved to sit at the front of the theater before the show started and smell the fresh-printed odor of the souvenir book—some vintage copies of souvenir books in general still retain that odor, even when I’ve purchased them on eBay. In any event, I considered (at the age of 14!) the GSET’s souvenir book to be the most artistically-produced of any souvenir book in the history of motion pictures (it’s only rival in my adolescent opinion was LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’s).
My family had something of an indirect connection to composer of the film’s score. Ken Darby, Alfred Newman’s collaborator, was the son of my junior high school English teacher. My mother, who worked as a highly respected music teacher and choral director for the Santa Monica school system, and who was renowned enough that the Santa Monica city council shut down operations for the day when she passed away, collaborated with Alfred Newman on at least one occasion to produce the popular Stairway Under the Stars. The highlight of the program was Alfred Newman himself conducting the rousing closing music from CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE, which has gone down in soundtrack history as “Conquest.” You better believe I was in the audience that day.
One of the things that my mother said about the music to GSET has always stuck in my mind, primarily because I couldn’t believe it was true. She told me that the main theme from the score was lifted from a Classical composer (I believe it was perhaps Bach). I genuinely loved the film score and didn’t believe her (there were a lot of things I didn’t believe her about in those days, much to my deep regret).
Years later I had a chance to visit the Cinerama dome with my own children, just before the Archlight rennovations (I have yet to see in person what they did to the place). The film showing was WILD WILD WEST with Will Smith—not a particular popular film. There were maybe three or four additional audience members in the theater besides myself and my son and daughter, so we pretty much had the run of the theater and could explore all we wanted to. Naturally, I grabbed the center seats in the very first row, just as I did more than thirty years ago.
Now, WILD WILD WEST was not a particularly great movie, but after seeing it projected on (only about 2/3rds) of the curved screen and overwhelmed by the stereo system, we all came away thinking we had just watched the greatest movie ever made!! We live in Albuquerque where movie screens are puny by comparison. I just don’t think that kids nowadays realize how great the impact of even mediocre films can have when shown at colossal scale—the way films were meant to be seen in the golden age of widescreen cinema. Imagine what viewing a full-scale three-strip Cinerama film like HOW THE WEST WAS WON in an original Cinerama theater can do to the senses! How we’ve given up so much simply for the sake of convenience. Students in my college art history classes just can’t believe that films used to be 3 ½ hours long or what could keep an audience fascinated that long. It was the magnitude of the bid screen to be sure!
I saw both HOW THE WEST WAS WON and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY here in their original roadshow engagement. I had a special connection to the film, as my junior high school English teacher, Clara Smith, was the mother of the choral director for the film. Clara taught at Lincoln Junior High in Santa Monica and talked endlessly about her son’s accomplishments, which included playing Jesus at an annual production of the Last Supper or something like that held at a local theater. Her son, Academy Award winner Ken Darby, was a long-time collaborator and friend of the renowned composer Alfred Newman, and produced and directed the choral arrangements for THE ROBE, THE EGYPTIAN (I think, which was co-scored by Bernard Hermann), and THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. Much of the fine choral arrangements and folk songs in HTWWW were the work of Darby, and Darby conducted and wrote much of the original music for the film in conjunction with Newman. Indeed, Darby had more to do with the score than Newman himself, who wrote only limited original themes.
Although I never met Ken Darby, his ghost in a sense has dogged me the rest of my life.
In any event, after recently viewing photographs of the interior of the Warner Hollywood I was struck with an instant flood of memories about the day I saw the show. I remember the exterior and interior of the theater, but not the lobby, although I vaguely recollect buying popcorn there. I believe I sat in the second or third row just left of center as you face the screen—a practice I repeated when I saw IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD at the Cinerama dome. This allowed for maximum stereo effect and for the giant curved screen to wrap almost as far around the viewer as the corner of their vision. This effect diminishes as you sit farther back in the theater, and when you reach the back seats the cinerama effect is nearly insignificant. At least that’s what I thought when I was 11!
I remember seeing LAWRENCE OF ARABIA here when I was 11. I probably saw it with my family first, but I returned six separate times over the course of its roadshow engagement. In those days, I lived in Santa Monica off of San Vicente on Lincoln and would take a bus up to the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire then walk the rest of the way. I often went to the evening show, which let out somewhere around 11 pm, I believe then had to walk back to the bus stop where I hoped to catch one of the last buses home. Often as not I missed the bus and would call my parents to come pick me up. Meanwhile I continued to sit on the bus stop sometimes until midnight. Now, imagine letting your 11 year-old-son travel from Beverly Hills at that hour, and compare it to today’s conditions, where you don’t dare let your kids out of the backyard! In those days neither I or my parents had any fear I’d been kidnapped or molested, and we all felt I was perfectly safe. Those were the days!
I also saw BECKET here—LAWRENCE made me a die-hard fan of Peter O'Toole’s and I always had enormous respect for Burton (I often wrote and acted in plays both in elementary and junior high school, so that I was probably one of the only kids my age in SoCal public schools who would watch something like Burton’s HAMLET and listen to the complete recording of the play over and over again; and what kid around my age was into something like NIGHT OF THE IGUANA??).
Finally, I also saw LORD JIM here, a rather widely over-looked film that I nevertheless found compelling enough that it helped inspire an interest in lost ruins and hence a career as an art historian.