"How The West Was Won" - in Cinerama

Legend has it that former Cinerama projectionist John Harvey (Dayton, Ohio, USA), became so inspired by this article by Greg Kimble in 1983, that he decided to build his own 3-strip Cinerama set-up in one bedroom and the living room of his own house. His initiative also sparked the interest for the Cinerama process in Australia and Europe and by 1985, a small group of film buffs, enthusiasts, cinema employees and ex-Cinerama staff had formed The International Cinerama Society, to preserve the Cinerama and Cinemiracle 3-strip processes. The ultimate goal was to build a complete authentic 3-strip cinema. Less than 10 years later, a new 3-strip Cinerama theatre opened in Bradford (England), followed by installations in Dayton, OH (USA), Seattle, WA (USA) and at the Cinerama Dome, CA (USA). In 2002, the history of Cinerama was documented in the feature length documentary "Cinerama Adventure". Prompted by this interest for the library of nearly forgotten films, Cinerama Inc. set out to restore their library of negatives and sound elements. By 2022, all five travelogues and two MGM feature films had been remastered through the splendid efforts of Dave Strohmaier, Randy Gitsch & Tom March and re-issued on BluRay.

 

"How The West Was Won" - in Cinerama
By: Greg Kimble, October, 1983

Since the days of the first sound film, publicists have been fond of describing Westerns as "thundering across the screen." This past February marked the twentieth anniversary of a film which "thundered" in a way quite unlike any other. "How The West Was Won" thundered - quite literally - into theaters on February 21, 1963, just eight months before the innocent era of the 50s would end in Dallas. An epic of Americana, it followed three generations of the Prescott family through 50 years of westward expansion beginning in 1839 with the opening of the Erie Canal. Filmed in the awe inspiring 3-screen Cinerama format, it was enthusiastically received by the public, becoming the final vindication of a dream born more than 15 years earlier.
 

Waller's Wonder

The System

The Cinerama camera had the unique ability to look down both sides of a building at one time, as each panel had its own vanishing point.

Peter Gibbons was with the Cinerama corporation the entire time the company was producing films, later becoming head of the camera department at CBS Studio Center. Now semi-retired, he teaches cinematography at Columbia College in Hollywood. [Peter passed away in May, 1983.] He is truly one of those people who have "forgotten more than you'll ever know". As Cinerama cameraman and technical advisor for over 20 years, he is uniquely qualified to explain the mysteries of the Cinerama system:

"The Cinerama camera was actually three cameras in one. There were three synchronized movements, three separate 1000-foot Mitchell magazines and three separate lenses. Each camera was set at a 48° angle to the next, so the center movement photographed straight ahead, the right movement captured the left portion and the left was aimed to the right. Eastman manufactured 21 identical lenses for us, so that footage from all seven cameras would be consistent. Those lenses were fantastic. We discovered that 27mm was a very close approximation of the focal length of the human eye. Each camera had three, each covering one third of the field of view."

"When projected, the three images blended into one, covering an astounding 146° horizontal angle of view. A single shutter, rotating in front of the lens at a point where all three images crossed, assured simultaneous exposure. The film ran vertically as in a conventional camera, but each frame was six perforations high, instead of four."

Director Hathaway (in white hat) confers with cinematographer Milton Krasner, ASC, (center) and Technical Advisor Peter Gibbons (left of camera) for the runaway train sequence.

"Because Cinerama carried its seven channels of sound on a separate full coat head, the entire width of film could be used. The additional two perforations, plus the now usable sound track area meant that each frame had twice the standard Academy area. The total available image area was 3.24 square inches, six times that of Academy, nearly twice that of 65mm. The aspect ratio was 2.66 to 1."

"I built the first camera blimp myself. It was made of layers of plywood faced with 1/32 in. lead sheeting. Then the whole thing was given a finished coat of fiberglas. Completely blimped, the camera weighed over 800 pounds."

"There were five sound channels behind the screen, and two at the rear of the theater for ambient and directional sound."

"Even the screen itself was unique. It was discovered that the deep curvature-a radius of 25 feet-caused the left and right images to reflect onto each other. This was solved by redesigning the screen as narrow vertical strips, like venetian blinds."

"To solve the problem of double light intensity in the 2° overlap of the projectors, Fred incorporated small stainless steel combs in the aperture. Vibrating at high speed, they reduced the light on each edge by one half, creating a 'soft split: I suppose it was inevitable that they would be called 'gigolos:"

The name "Cinerama"  is an anagram of "American." Its impact was simply sensational. A wave of "0-ramas" swept the country. Launderamas, Liquoramas sprang up everywhere, even a Kiddie-Rama for pre-schoolers. And, of course, a stripper billed herself as the "Sin-Erama Girl "

The film ran for 122 weeks in New York alone. It created a whole new concept in motion picture marketing - the road show. Cinerama films changed only twice a year. Attending them was an event - the Metropolitan Opera of the movies. In the next three years, three more Cinerama travelogues were released, each as successful as the last. By now the town was taking notice. Peter Gibbons and Cinerama moved West in 1960, setting up shop in the old Forum Theater on Pico Boulevard. In April of 1959, Life Magazine ran a series of articles on the westward expansion in the last century. Bing Crosby bought the rights and released a record album of period songs on the theme of the winning of the West. From these simple beginnings came Cinerama's greatest achievement, "How The West Was Won".

Director General

You would be in the scene above because of the wide scope of the Cinerama format.

Of the three legendary directors who guided "How The West Was Won" - John Ford, George Marshall and Henry Hathaway - only Hathaway is still living. [Hathaway passed away in February, 1985.] He comes close to embodying the entire history of motion pictures.

His career began in 1908 when, at the age of 10, he worked as an extra at the old Inceville Studios for $1 a day, plus lunch. In March, 1914, he quit school and followed his mother's lead to Universal, becoming a prop man alongside another kid named John Ford.

"In those days, the prop man did everything. Paint, drapes, set decoration, you name it."

And did he know then he wanted to direct?

"Sure, from day one. Do you think I wanted to be a prop man?"

After working with Von Sternberg and Victor Fleming as assistant director, Hathaway got his chance to direct when Paramount remade their Zane Grey Westerns as talkies in 1932. Fleming, director of the silent versions, recommended Hathaway for the job.

Hathaway's career included many firsts. He directed the first Shirley Temple film ("the brightest, most wonderful child I've ever met - a complete professional"); made the first sound film shot entirely in the streets of New York ("Kiss Of Death"); helmed the first outdoor film shot in three color Technicolor ("Frail Of The Lonesome Pine"); and gave several stars their first movie jobs: Henry Morgan, Karl Malden, Richard Widmark, Grace Kelly. But he remembers "How The West Was Won" as his most unique - and enormous - undertaking.

"They asked Bing Crosby if he would do a television show on the record album he had released, but it became too expensive, so it was offered as a feature to Sol Siegel, who had been looking for a story to do in Cinerama. For some time, Irene Dunne had been looking for a property that could be made to benefit Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica. Crosby sold the rights, and assigned his profit participation to the hospital. Everyone on the crew worked for half salary. The top price for actors was $25,000, even John Wayne, who at the time was making upwards of half a million per picture.

"The original concept was mine. The first step in the winning of the West was the opening of the canal, then came the covered wagon, next the Civil War, which opened up Missouri and the mid-west, then the railroads, and finally the West was won when the Law conquered it instead of the gangs, which was the theme I worked out for the picture;" says Hathaway.
 

Cinerama-eye view of the above scene.

"So I conceived that whole idea, then got writers to work on the five episodes." ("How The West Was Won" won an Oscar for adaptation screenplay.) "Each section was to be about a song, originally. Then I traveled all over the country to find locations."

"There was supposed to be a different director for each segment, but I ended up making three of them. And I did over the fourth one, the railroad building sequence of Marshall's. It was awful. The only one I didn't do over was Ford's (Civil War) - and I should have, because it was lousy. But I didn't want it known in the industry that I was doing over John Ford's work!"

"You couldn't move the Cinerama camera much, or the picture would distort. The opening dolly down the street to the wharf was the first ever done. I thought we might have to shoot it in 65mm and split it, but it worked beautifully."

"Except for the interiors, which we shot at MGM, we were on wilderness locations almost all the time. That must have been a strain on my camera crew, but they never complained."

"And I think we made a pretty good picture, though I didn't think I'd do another one with that system. There was so much you couldn't do with it. You had to get 18 inches from somebody just to get a waist shot. To see anything, I had to lie on top of the camera and look down at the person. But it was worth it. The picture was a big success."

"There were a lot of obstacles to getting this picture done, but I've learned in this business that you've got to have guts, you've got to believe in what you're doing, then do it and don't fool around, and don't let anybody change your mind, and be entirely responsible for what you're doing."

The Production

The posh riverboat interior, the only scene in which all three vanishing points are clearly visible.

Principal photography of "How The West Was Won" began on May 26, 1961 in Paducah, Kentucky, but not before a year of intensive pre-production was completed. Even allowing for the usual hype surrounding an "epic" the production's statistics and logistics are awesome. MGM's art and research departments were on yellow alert almost continually, designing 77 sets and thousands of period props from over 200 volumes and 10,000 photographs collected especially for the film.

During early tests of the Cinerama camera, it was glaringly apparent that the huge format revealed fine detail to an extent no one could have imagined. Machine-sewn costumes were reassembled by hand and thousands of yards of authentic homespun were ordered from India. Fifteen hundred pairs of moccasins arrived from Indian reservations across the country, and an entire studio department was created to handcraft 2300 pairs of period shoes. Conestoga wagons were built - 107 of them - many being full scale mechanical effects designed to break apart on cue, as was the entire train from "The Outlaws" sequence. ("How The West Was Won" received an Academy Award nomination for its mechanical effects.)

The casting department was kept busy filling the 12,617 bit and extra parts in the film. One grizzled man, east in Hollywood as a railroad worker, later turned out to be a local millionaire and treated cast and crew to weekend sightseeing trips of the Black Hills in his private plane. The Indian cast was drawn from five tribes, including survivors of the Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn massacres. Of course, all 12,617 needed costumes, designed by "Gone With The Wind" alumnus Walter Plunkett.

Location scouting was an arduous task, as no sign of modern civilization could be apparent anywhere. And, as wagon master Robert Preston said,

"Every time you moved the camera 10 feet, you had to dress another 200 acres."

Often, an entire composition was dictated by the blend line position.

Just before intermission, they are reunited by chance, years later, aboard a posh Mississippi riverboat. They agree to marry, and move to San Francisco.

The "Civil War" segment, directed by John Ford, returns to sister Eve. Linus is away fighting for the Union and, against her wishes and better judgment, she agrees to let her oldest son Zeb (George Peppard) enlist as well. Linus is killed at Shiloh, and Zeb saves Gen. Grant (Harry Morgan) from an assassin's bullet. He eventually returns home disillusioned ("There ain t much glory in seeing a man with his guts hanging out.") to find his Mother dead, and his younger brother anticipating their farming together. But Zeb announces he is transferring to the regulars and departs that same afternoon, leaving a stunned brother on the porch at the fade out.

The Marshall-directed portion, "The Railroad;' finds Zeb (as treaty liaison to the Indians) in conflict with railroad builder Richard Widmark. The film was somewhat ahead of its time with its sympathetic treatment of the Indian question and consciousness of ecological issues. After a terrifying buffalo stampede, Zeb decides he has had enough of seeing the Indians "railroaded." We last see Widmark astride the front of the locomotive, undefeated amid the wreckage and death of the stampede. It rolls inexorably forward as the camera dollies back, vainly attempting to escape this malevolent juggernaut.

In the final segment, Hathaway's "The Outlaws;' Peppard is a nearly 50, married U.S. marshal, battling arch enemy Eli Wallach aboard a runaway train that crashes spectacularly. The emotional climax comes much earlier in the segment, however. Her husband dead, and all her possessions auctioned except her land in Arizona, an aged Lillith steps off the train to meet nephew Zeb, son of the sister she never saw again, for the first time.

In this, the film's most poignant scene, we realize how completely we have become vicarious Prescotts, experiencing an almost unbearable longing for those lost days, as though they were our own. As truth comes, not in the earthquake or the whirlwind, but in the still, small voice, West's strongest moment comes not with a stampede or a train wreck, but with a tear. As Lillith looks up into Zeb's face, we see the memory of all those separated years flash by in an instant, and get a sense, in the very midst of the West that is won, of what has been lost.

"Oh my" she weeps quietly, "I swore up and down I wasn't going to cry."

The Photography

Into the Sunset

Budget

Stampede

As Newsweek enthusiastically informed its readers in the March 4, 1963 issue,

"The buffaloes make the whole ... picture worth seeing. The stampede lasts forever. From a small moving mass at the horizon, they come looming down to fill the whole screen with a great, gray, shaggy blur. They fan out, 50 abreast, galloping at an unlikely speed, a swath of dirty fur and deafening noise. They roar up to sheds, a small house, a water tower, and trample them all flat in a fantastic display of mindless animal might. It is one of the great moments in the history of movies."

That "great moment" almost never happened as Joe LaShelle remembers.

"We were on location in South Dakota at Custer State Park, where a large buffalo herd is allowed to roam free. They had spent two months rounding them up from all over the state. They had about 1200 of them in an enclosed valley where they were being fed. Over the hill was the camp we set up with shacks, tents and the locomotive which had been shipped up from Hollywood."

"We thought that once we shot the buffalo coming down, they're gone. They're in the next county. So when we were finally set up it was a big deal."

"We had Indian riders who had to look like they were trying to get out of the way of the buffalo while actually herding them so they would go through the camp. Now, buffalo are pretty unpredictable. They can be running full speed and turn on a dime. They could turn into a horse and it could never get out of the way. We didn't know the Indians were scared to death of them and wouldn't get close to them for love or money."

"So here we were, set up to shoot the big drive with four cameras in pits and one on a jeep. The buffalo came charging down the hill but when they saw the camp, they just veered over to one side and never went through it. Everybody just about died."

"For a long time we just sat there discussing how many weeks it would take to get those things back again. Suddenly somebody yelled. We looked up and on the hill, here comes a trail of buffaloes right back to the valley where they started from. They went around in a big circle and I don't think we lost a one. They must have liked the free food they were getting."

"So we sent to Hollywood and got a lot of cowboys and stuntmen and fixed them up as Indians. I guess they didn't know about buffalo because they stayed real close to them. We shot it three or four times. And let me tell you, when they started to go through that camp, they went through it."

Time thought so. "The huge screen goes black except for a dancing fringe of buffalo hooves silhouetted along the bottom. It is a moment of pure impressionist cinematography."