Post #521183 by congawa on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 10:38 AM

I've seen several of the Cinerama presentations done at the Cinerama Dome (now ArcLight) in Hollywood, which are mostly of THIS IS CINERAMA--the first of the "travelog-u-mentaries" (my word for them) they did, and HOW THE WEST WAS WON. I can tell you that when you see real Cinerama (3 projectors, 3 screens) it is an amazing spectacle--on par with IMAX (not as high a screen, but wider). There also is a contemporary documentary called CINERAMA ADVENTURE, which is confusing because there was also one of the original films by that name as well, which is in the same boat as SOUTH SEAS ADVENTURE.

In my other life (one of several) I'm a film historian (just had a book published about Mack Sennett, and did one years ago about the Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids) and know a number of people in archives and other areas of film history and preservation. I'll check around to see if anyone knows if there is any material at all surviving (such as parts of an audio track or something--certainly even if there was only audio of, say, Don the Beachcomber's scenes, that would be something extremely worthwhile).

Caltiki Brent