CinemaScope

In 1953, only half of U.S. households had a TV set and most of the shows were beyond bad. But even with its godawful content, TV was eating into movie attendance.  The motion picture industry was scared, and it had good reason to be. Just three years earlier in 1950, only 9% of households had a TV. The growth of television seemed  an existential threat of epic proportions and it was a juggernaut. Somebody had to do something .

Somebody turned out to be 20th Century Fox and the something was super wide-screen movies that appeared to dwarf even standard movie screens, never mind the tiny TV screens of the day that began at 9 inches and maxed out at 17 inches. The very first movie to be released in the new wide-screen format was the 1953 biblical epic called The Robe, a box-office smash that earned seven times its production cost.

The new format, heavily promoted by 20th Century Fox, was called CinemaScope. (Yes, there was a capital letter in the middle of the name 50 years before that became commonplace in the digital world.) These pictures and many more on this site pay homage to that original wide-screen format, CinemaScope.