Ed Sullivan, so flummoxed by Cinerama’s stupendousness that he was reduced to using a then current cliché, wrote in his Daily News column that it was the biggest thing to hit New York since penicillin. Also present was Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, who in one telling had been so awed by Cinerama that he bolted from his seat and dashed to the paper’s nearby offices, where he alerted his editors to the filmic marvel in their midst. Mayer, the former head of MGM Richard Rodgers, the composer of Oklahoma! and South Pacific and Tom Dewey, the governor of New York and former presidential candidate.

And, with due account for the novelty of the system, it was evident that the distinguished gathering was as excited and thrilled by the spectacle presented as if it were seeing motion pictures for the first time.” This was not an audience of rubes: in it were such presumably tough customers as William Paley, the founder of CBS David Sarnoff, the longtime head of RCA and NBC Louis B. Beneath the paper’s best stab at a Variety-esque headline-NEW MOVIE PROJECTION SHOWN HERE GIANT WIDE ANGLE SCREEN UTILIZED-the movie critic Bosley Crowther wrote: “The new motion-picture projection system known as Cinerama was put on public display for the first time last night before an invited audience at the Broadway Theatre. You don’t remember Cinerama? Its unveiling in 1952 was so newsworthy that for what must have been the first (and last) time, The New York Times put a film review on its front page.

Erection in movie the dreamers