Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Was ther an anamorphic of White Christmas?

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Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-28-2014, 08:57 PM:

IMDB indicates White Christmas was re-released in 1961 in anamorphic 2.35 format. I cannot find any other reference or information about this title in 'scope release prints.

Anyone else know about this?

Thanks

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 07-28-2014, 09:10 PM:

The Paramount camera department had in its inventory a William Fox "Natural Color" camera built in the late 1920s by the William P. Stein Company. This camera exposed two frames at a time through color filters. John R. Bishop, head of Paramount's camera and film processing departments, cut out the separation between the two vertical frames, rolled the camera over on its side and fitted it with Leica still camera lenses. The "Lazy-8" camera, so called because of its horizontal 8 perforation pull down (or pull across), provided a useable negative area 2.66 times greater than a standard 35mm film with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Paramount liked the results obtained with the "Lazy-8" and set about to obtain a second "Natural Color" camera. With two cameras available, Paramount began filming White Christmas in 8 perf and placed orders with Mitchell Camera Company to develop a new silent studio camera for the process that had been christened "VistaVision."

White Christmas was a very popular song but it was not a particularly good introduction of VistaVision, though it did pretty good box office. When the first of the new cameras arrived they were immediately put into use in Cecil B. DeMille's production The Ten Commandments, which would not reach the screen for two more years. In the meantime the older conversions and additional new cameras were put to use, initially filming all of Paramount's color productions and ultimately their black and white features, too. Using new Mitchell movements, Technicolor converted six of their old three-strip color cameras for VistaVision. When an adequate supply of Mitchell VistaVision cameras were available, Technicolor's converted cameras would have anamorphic attachments added in 1957 to be used to produce Technirama films.

While the first conception of VistaVision called for standard 35mm prints, Paramount felt that the negative quality allowed for a variety of prints to be made. Several features were shown in 8 perf horizontal contact prints in limited runs. These included White Christmas, Strategic Air Command, To Catch A Thief, and several Rank Studios productions from Britain such as The Battle of the River Plate (a.k.a. Pursuit of the Graf Spee). While Paramount tried to keep with their preferred aspect ratio of 1.66:1, they also made provisions for 35mm four perf anamorphic prints with an aspect ratio of approximately 2:1. The special 8 perf horizontal prints and the anamorphic prints did not see much use and the vast majority of VistaVision films were released on standard 35mm flat prints which the theatres showed in the same aspect ratio as other non-anamorphic films. With Technicolor dye transfer printing and the large format Eastmancolor negative, VistaVision films, regardless of print type, provided an extremely sharp image with beautifully saturated colors.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-28-2014, 09:21 PM:

Unless, "White Christmas" was matted down to 2:1 for SuperScope viewing that year, but advertising called it "2:35:1".

I played "Son of Sinbad" in SuperScope and even had a 2:1 aperture set for the feature with my XL's.

That IB print was fantastic in color and image detail.

Stuff that digital cant even match up with.

-Monte

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-30-2014, 05:06 PM:

Thanks for the responses.

Were there any anamorphic prints?

Has anyone screened one of them?

The dismal prints (dull colors and poor focus) available to us at this time are poor quality. It would be nice to have a print that is not a duplicate from a used projection print.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-30-2014, 05:38 PM:

Not that I'm aware of. It would have allowed a brighter image but with scope lenses of the day probably no sharper than projecting a 1.85 35mm print would have been. Technirama was an 8 perf 1.5X squeeze camera format system and I do have a couple thousand feet of anamorphic Technirama footage from a Bob Hope movie. It's even dye transfer.

Monte... I find that DCP can indeed do a good rendition of Technicolor IF everthing is just right. It would be preferable to watching a crappy Eastman print

Mark