A Sound Idea 1953

by Terry Gallacher on September 6, 2011

Movietonews was part owned by Twentieth Century Fox. The cinema had been badly affected in the United States by the progress of television. In order to combat this the cinema industry made a number of moves to win back an audience. Wide Screen became the big thing. A huge picture that spread from one side of a cinema’s proscenium arch to the other. Fox introduced CinemaScope in February 1953.

The system used an anamorphic lens which allowed an extremely wide angle of view to be squeezed so that it could be captured on a standard 35mm film. When the production was completed the final film was then shown in a cinema that had an anamorphic lens on the projector which spread the picture back to it original aspect ratio.

The first film ever made in the system was “The Robe” and it was shot on one lens. That lens was the prototype lens which had been developed and produced by the French inventor, Henri Chretien, in 1929. Fox could not wait for Borsch-Baum to produce some new lenses.

In addition to the new picture format, they devised a system of stereophonic sound by laying very thin magnetic sound tracks on the outside and inside of the perforations of the 35mm film.

Fox paid for all the anamorphic lenses used in all the cinemas, throughout the world, that volunteered to take Cinemascope films. However, they would not pay for the stereophonic sound system. Because of this, only the very biggest cinemas in capital cities were able to afford the system.

Image by Matt From London via Flickr

Fox had a problem and they wrote to every outpost of Twentieth Century Fox throughout the world, including Movietonews in Soho Square.

It was me that opened the letter to us. The gist of the letter explain the problem that most cinemas would not be able to run their stereophonic system and they asked all members of their world-wide staff to think about a solution to the problem, namely, to come up with a system that could be run as a standard monophonic system or as stereophonic, dependent upon the equipment available to an individual cinema.

Although I was not in a technical job at that time, I used to investigate anything technical that I had not previously understood. Even then, I knew how the various sound systems worked. Movietonews used, under licence, the Western Electric sound system which was otherwise known as a ”variable density” sound track. This was the alternative to the “Variable Area” system used by others.

The “variable Density” track was, in fact, the first bar-code which reproduced speech and music instead of today producing numbers.

I had come up with an idea of re-producing music, mainly classical, by using only sound tracks on a 35mm film. The space usually occupied by the image would be replaced by as many as eight optical tracks. One would need a machine to run the film or, say, 400 feet which would provide 4 minutes of music until the film ran to the end. I then found out about a ultrasonic note which could be used to tell the machine that it had come to the end of a track and that it should now change to the next track and travel back the way it had come. A total of 32 minutes of sound could be recorded on to the reel of film.

A friend of my brother Bob, one Len Kilby, was a football “trainer” at Bob’s football club Hayes FC to the West of London. They had close connection with E.M.I. and Len got me an interview with one of the development people. The man thought that the idea had merit, but he did not think that E.M.I. would pursue the matter. Remember this was before the release of Long Play discs in the United Kingdom.

However, the man did not think me a fool.

Image by ChrisGoldNY via Flickr

So, when the Fox letter came round, I thought that I might have a solution to their problem.

It was this: In those cinemas that wished to have stereophonic sound, they would have three sets of speakers across the screen area. My idea was that as the film progressed, all the sound on the track would pass through the centre speakers, and an ultrasonic note built into the sound track would direct the sound, at a higher volume, to either the right or the left speakers as the action required.

When I had thoroughly thought through the idea, I went to see Movietone’s Chief Sound Engineer, Pat Sunderland. Sunderland was an overweight gentleman in his mid fifties and he lived in Southgate.

I explained my idea. His reply was “Absolute bloody rubbish”. This would have taken place during the Spring of 1953. In February 1954, Paramount introduced their wide-screen system, VistaVision, with “Perspecta Stereophonic Sound”. Strictly, it was not stereophonic sound, but “directional” sound. The trade papers showed exactly how it worked. It was my idea down almost to the last detail. The only difference was that, instead of using an ultra-sonic note, they used three sub-audible low frequency control signals. It was obvious that they had been working on it before I ever thought about it, but it showed that my idea would have worked.

When I saw it, I went in to the sound room and said to Sunderland (and his crew), “I see that Paramount have made a huge blunder, they’ve used that idea of mine – absolute bloody rubbish”. There was no response.

Perspecta was eventually abandoned but it was used on such classic films as: Vertigo, The Barefoot Contessa, Gone With The Wind, Bad Day At Black Rock, East Of Eden, To Catch A Thief and High Society.