| |
The 70mm Promotion Tour
Los Angeles 1 - 15 October 1994
|
This article first appeared in
..in 70mm
The 70mm Newsletter |
Written by:
Johan C M Wolthuis, secretary
International 70mm Association |
Issue 36 - December 1994 |
It was a valuable experience to visit San
Francisco and Los Angeles as part of our "70mm Promotion Tour". On
my way to California I had to spend one night in the "Boeing city"
Seattle and guess what: just around the corner of my hotel, what a surprise:
they screened the just
restored 70mm version of
"My Fair
Lady" on the large curved screen of the former Seattle
Cinerama Theatre. And it was unbelievable, but on a Thursday evening there
was a large queue outside the theatre and the performance was sold out! The
manager invited me into the cinema and gave me a review and the new advertisement
of "My Fair Lady". It was a special
experience to see this wonderful musical back on the big screen after so
many years.
In San Francisco we visited Dolby Laboratories and saw how they
had restored an enormous old wooden factory building into a beautiful Dolby
film theatre with offices all around it and transformed it into an earthquake
safe building. In this city we also saw two beautiful old film theatres, the
Alhambra that looks like a mosque and the Castro theatre with its famous
cinema organ.
Arriving in Los Angeles we had not enough time to visit all the companies
and theatres we wanted. But thanks to our friendly host,
Mr Dan
Leimeter, a
lot of appointments could be made.
Let me mention a few highlights: at first we visited the Todd-AO soundstages
where we saw one reel of the unsurpassed musical
"Oklahoma!"
in 70mm 30 fps. And the visit to the Panavision plant in Tarzana, where we
met Mikael Salomon and watched the chariot race from
"Ben
Hur" in the original 70mm 2,76:1 format! And of course we saw
all that beautiful old and new 70mm cameras. And let us not forget the
visit to the MGM headquarters in Santa Monica where we had a very important
conversation with Mr Larry D Gleason about old 70mm prints. We too made a
short visit to the Academy Film Archives and Library where we could have
stayed for dayes to see everything.
After a short visit to the DTS digital sound company, in the late Friday
afternoon we visited the Amblin Studios which were located on the Universal
lot. I was very exited to be so near to Mr Steven Spielberg, but he himself
was too busy forming his new company. But we saw the offices, entertaining
rooms and the projection booth with among other things an original 35mm
horizontal VistaVision projector for screenings of special effect rushes.
On our last evening we visited the famous Samuel Goldwyn theatre and saw a
special screening of a restored lovely "Mary Poppins"
in the presence of one of the leading characters and some people of the
original production team. That was a nice end of our trip and you can
imagine that we were very tired when we flew home the next day.
|
Further
in 70mm reading:
The 70mm Promotion Tour
1994, part #2
Wolthuis
Interview
"Digital & 65mm" - New book from International 70mm Publishers
“Old fashioned” 70mm promotion
My Fair Lady
The 1964 8 time OSCAR winner and Super Panavision 70 blockbuster has
been restored by Robert A Harris. The film was re-released in the States
in September with a few 70mm prints. "My Fair Lady" was released in
London November 18th at MGM Shaftbury Avenue for a two week limited
engagement in 70mm. 35mm prints are available in both SR.D and DTS
digital sound. The film originally premiered 21. October 1964 at the
Criterion Theatre in New York.
|
|
|
Go:
back
- top
-
back issues
Updated
28-07-24 |
|
|