This incredibly rare film was produced in 1953 by 20th Century Fox to sell theater owners on the then brand-new technologies of 4-track magnetic stereo and CinemaScope projection. Hosted by legendary Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, the film features clips from several of the first CinemaScope and stereo productions being made at the studio in the early 1950’s. Extensive clips were shown from Broken Lance (Dmytryk), Woman’s World (Negulesco), Untamed (H. King), There’s No Business Like Show Business (W. Lang), Garden of Evil (Hathaway) and, according to Mr. Zanuck, the first film entirely shot with the “new” lenses, The Egyptian (Curtiz). Zanuck extolled the virtues of Fox’s new widescreen process by showing the same scene framed at 1.37:1, then in the “new” widescreen format at 1.85:1 and finally in CinemaScope at 2.55:1. The first 12 minutes of the presentation was a Technicolor IB print re-cut from The Miracle of Stereophonic Sound in Association with CinemaScope. This short had actually been released before the CinemaScope Demonstration Film, about April 1954 after Fox lost its lawsuit against New York’s Walter Reade Theater chain over channeling the stereo sound through one speaker. At that time they announced they were going to release their films in 4 track magnetic stereo, one track magnetic mono, and mono optical.

John Belton