Cinema: Strictly for the Marbles

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At Warners, Brother Jack hired Gunzburg to rush production on a remake of that ancient horror about murder in a wax museum. "We'll be the first major studio to produce a 3-D picture," Jack gloated, "just the way we did with sound." To stereoscopic photography, Jack added stereophonic sound, thus making "3D squared." To direct his first three-dimensional picture, he selected, with a fine sense of Hollywood fitness, the only director on the lot who cannot properly perceive depth: one-eyed André de Toth. Not at all dismayed that he could not see what he was doing, De Toth remarked serenely: "Beethoven couldn't hear music either, could he?"

At Columbia, two cameras were strapped together and something called Man in the Dark was cuffed off in eleven days—three days before House of Wax was finished. Whooped Columbia's Production Chief Jerry Wald: "Now we got a gimmick . . . We'll throw things at the public until they start throwing them back!"

Bwana Devil has set records almost everywhere it has played; Man in the Dark set new records too; House of Wax —by now, according to Variety, the top U.S. box-office attraction for the fifth straight week—is well on its way to joining company with the biggest money-winners of all time. Together, the three pictures seem certain to gross more than $20 million.

Not from a Genius. In short, the public had spoken. "The unconscious genius" (as Showman Mike Todd calls the national audience) had uttered the collective grunt of assent. Exhibitors are cheering because even the old "flatties" are pulling in more customers since the "deepies" arrived. Best of all, the popcorn, Coke and candy sales—which in some theaters actually match the box-office receipts—are booming as never before. (In most theaters, 3-D requires an intermission to allow for a change of reels.)

Stock in the Polaroid Corp., whose refinement of its product in 1946 made 3-D more readily possible, has doubled in value in the last year. Gunzburg and Co. are sore-handed from accepting checks: Hollywood has guaranteed them 5% of the national gate on all pictures made in Natural Vision, and Polaroid has granted them exclusive rights for one year to the distribution of the glasses. Since Bwana's release, Gunzburg has bought 100 million glasses at 6.7¢each, sold them for 10¢ and pocketed more than $2,000,000 profit (before taxes).

Open Up Wide. Hollywood had forgotten that revolution breeds revolution. One night in January, the moviemen went to bed and slept soundly. The next morning, between the taking of a Danish and coffee, the town got a severe shock. 20TH, said the top line in the Hollywood Reporter, GETS BIG SCREEN PROCESS.