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I’d Love to Win the West Again
Years ago I saw the film “How The West Was Won” in Cinerama. The film cannot be viewed in that format today. What a shame.
On a warm Friday night in July, 1963, I settled into a seat in Row 8, Center Section of the Music Hall in Detroit, Michigan. By my side was a young lady who was a good friend, but not a girlfriend. We had come to watch a stunning portrayal of American history in a film format that put its viewers in the center of the action. Three screens, seven sound tracks, and a super-wide picture told the story of a family which moved from the east to the newly developing west. Along the way there were buffalo stampedes, Indian attacks, and a runaway train. And music. Lots of music.
The film was, of course, MGM and Cinerama’s How The West Was Won, released in 1962 and a popular film which played for nearly two years. The film’s star-studded cast portrayed the various members of the family who experienced triumph and tragedy as they claimed the west. I was impressed with the huge picture and multi-channel sound track and the great story-telling I was experiencing.
All too soon the evening was over and the west had been won and my friend and I returned to our normal lives. As time went on, my friend left my life and faded from my memory as did the film and the experience of watching it in its full scope.
Recently I became reacquainted with the film through that repository of all information, the Internet. I learned that no one any where in the world today can view the film the way it was intended to be viewed. There are three theaters in the world that have the capability of showing the film, one in London, England, one in Seattle, Washington and a third in Los Angeles, California, but prints and people skilled at running the projectors are difficult to find. The three camera and four projector Cinerama system was soon replaced with more advanced technology and the theaters which showed it, including the Music Hall where I saw it, were refurbished and now are used for other forms of entertainment. The Music Hall, for instance, is now a jazz theater.
It is sad, in a way, that the film cannot be viewed in its original form today. There has been a DVD available for some time, but users report the quality of the print is terrible, and that putting that super-wide picture on a television screen leaves a lot to be desired, not to mention the squashing of the sound tracks with that wonderful Alfred Newman score into two-channel stereo and what that does to the fullness of the orchestrations.
It would be great if somewhere, preferably here in the Midwest where I live, a theater were built as a museum to play remastered prints of the only two Cinerama story-telling movies, How The West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, in their original multi-screen and multi-track sound systems for a whole new generation of viewers to see.
Why, I would take my best girl to see that! Although my wife also saw the film in 1963 (we had not yet met), I am certain she would enjoy the film once again as side by side we would watch them build a nation from this land and win the west.
I know. That would be expensive to build and expensive to maintain, and would there really be enough people willing to pay to see it when today there is a multitude, a plethora of entertainment options available? I don’t know.
But I would love to see it again in its original format. And this time I would be accompanied by the lady who has gone home with me every night for the past forty years. Now that is almost as good as building her a home in the meadow.
