Disney drops 'Fox' name and will rebrand its movie studio as '20th Century'

[Bobby Henderson]

20th Century Fox didn't really invent anything new with the development of CinemaScope. The concept of the anamorphic lens was invented in the 1800's. Henri Chretien modified the idea to work with motion picture cameras in the 1920's and patented it under the name "Hypergonar." Various people and companies worked on their own anamorphic lens systems for gauges like 16mm. Outside of some experimental demonstrations, such as the Hypergonar system at the 1937 Expo in Paris, there was no serious interest in using anamorphic lenses until This Is Cinerama became a huge hit.

20th Century Fox and the folks at Bausch and Lomb merely bought Chretien's Hypergonar patent and took it into production. CinemaScope was very common in the 1950's and 1960's. The CinemaScope name had a lot of brand equity. But Panavision slowly took over for obvious reasons.

Panavision made anamorphic film projection lenses that were easier to use than the original CinemaScope projection lenses. Panavision made conversion lenses for different film formats which helped in film print production. Then they developed the MGM Camera 65 system, which led to the Super Panavision and Ultra Panavision format names. The introduction of the 35mm Auto Panatar anamorphic lens in 1958 is really what signaled doom for CinemaScope. It was a better film production lens and it wasn't attached to some rival movie studio. Panavision started making their own motion picture camera systems and only offering them and the lenses for rental.

I think one of the biggest things that helped Panavision over the long term was the company loudly emblazoned their logo on their camera systems. Panavision cameras stood out on movie sets. The cameras weren't just some black box with no name on it with a lens attached. Today just about everything has gone digital, with cameras looking like modest-sized black or grey boxes with a bunch of inputs and computer stuff all over them. They don't have huge film magazines pimped out with a great big logo. Likewise, Panavision isn't as popular today as it was in the film age.

[David Ferguson]

20th Century Fox and the folks at Bausch and Lomb merely bought Chretien's Hypergonar patent and took it into production.

I'm fairly sure that I read that the patent had expired by this point, so what 20th Century Fox bought was the lenses that Chretien already had.

[Frank Angel]

This is all true -- it was Chretien's little anamorphic lens, but it was Zanuck who had the vision to turn it into a full-fledged, working system that including a specially designed silverized, lenticular screen and 4 track penthouse for stereo surround sound capable of real high fidelity. He then promoted it and was able to sell it to an entire industry, including rival studios. It wasn't just the lens, it was perfecting and standardizing it all, providing the whole package for the exhibitor and then convincing them that this was the way to go. Plus,it was freakin backward compatible...no new projectors.

I think that because we have all lived with it for decades, we may not appreciate what a monumental leap that had to have been. If it had failed...if THE ROBE turned out to bomb at the BO, Fox might have gone under. It took some real chutzpah to go forward in spite of that. CinemaScope brought wide screen to the industry and the public who till then had only ever seen "square" movies, me to, that was no small steps -- this was a leap forward. Zanuck was so committed to CinemaScope that he said from THE ROBE forward, Fox would only produce CinemaScope releases. As I said, after THE ROBE, no one wanted to see Academy any more. Even titles that were already in the can were cropped by the theatre owners so they didn't look so puny on those scope-width screens. You could hear them saying, "I paid for this wide screen; I want wide movies, damn it!" as they ordered their projectionists to cut new aperture plates.

While mag stereo sound didn't take off quite the way the thirst for wide screen did, the improvement in audio quality was exponentially better than the mono/optical sound of the day. I'd even go so far as to say that if it weren't so expensive to produce, it would have become the norm. It certainly had the advantage over Dolby's matrix stereo with its inability to do any real channel separation. OK, the 12khz trigger tone on track 4 mag sound was something conceived when the Fox tech guys were all drunk, but still, when 4 channel mag was good, it was jaw-dropping impressive, not to mention it was the first time most people had ever heard high fidelity sound in movie theatres, other than the few who saw Cinerama.

No, I say Fox should have kept the name CinemaScope on all their anamorphic releases long after they let it go into oblivion for that ten year period. I don't think the name ever lost its recognition value. It certainly isn't any less recognizable than Panavision. Panavision is just the lenses; CinemaScope was a whole system and Fox had the cojones to launch it for the industry, after which we never looked back.

Michael Todd had that same kind of vision -- Todd-AO was something that took that kind of vision and belief in an idea; once it was launched, it changed the industry.

[Bobby Henderson]

Panavision is just the lenses; CinemaScope was a whole system and Fox had the cojones to launch it for the industry, after which we never looked back.

Did Fox or Bausch and Lomb actually create film cameras with CinemaScope branding? I thought those lenses were used on standard motion picture cameras made by other companies (such as Mitchell?).

Panavision was only just lenses in its early years. It was able to produce its own anamorphic lenses for film projectors faster and better than Bausch and Lomb could do making its CinemaScope lenses. The same thing happened when Panavision started making anamorphic lenses for 4/35 film cameras in 1958. Panvision introduced its own 35mm motion picture camera and spherical lenses a few years later.

MGM switched all of its 35mm anamorphic production over to Panavision in 1958, but still used the CinemaScope name for awhile after the switch. Eventually the Panavision brand gained its own level of popularity. Let's not forget CinemaScope was far from being the only widescreen process out there. Lots of movies were being filmed in VistaVision, Technirama, Todd-AO, SuperScope, etc and presented in a variety of ways (with 70mm being the best of the bunch). CinemaScope had its own problems too -like the optical "mumps" issue Panavision eliminated with its lenses. The public might have been keen on the CinemaScope brand name. But cinematographers and projectionists did not like those lenses, leading to the Panavision takeover.

CinemaScope does get points for being first to bring real widescreen to the 4/35 format.