4-D

Bleary-eyed from 3-D and other new projection systems, and suffering from the collywobbles of TV competition, some 1,000 movie theater owners met in Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel last week to look into a fourth dimension: the future. What they saw depended on who was in the projection booth.

Twentieth Century-Fox President Spyros P. Skouras, there to boost Cinema-Scope, flashed a gloomy picture on the screen. Said he: "Over 6.000 theaters have been closed since 1946. Don't be misled. What happened to those people can happen to you . . . Television is the greatest enemy the industry ever had."

From one of their own kind, however, the theater owners got a brighter image. Said Leonard H. Goldenson, president of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, Inc.: TV and the movies are so different that they are not truly competitive. "One is the 'athome snack' while the other is a seven-course meal at a sumptuous restaurant. And television will no more put motion pictures out of business than home cooking--good as it may be--has put restaurants out of business."

Which of the new projection systems will win out--3-D, CinemaScope, Cinerama or some new system? Most of the theater owners thought that no one system will dominate the field, but that theaters will be equipped to handle a variety of projection methods depending on the film. Harvey Fleischman, district manager of the Wometco theater chain (32 theaters) in southern Florida and the Bahamas, summed up: "Cinerama, because of the size of its equipment, is impractical for most theaters. It will be confined to special productions in certain big houses. CinemaScope is impractical for some small theaters, fine for the larger houses. Three-dimensional films are finished as a novelty, but people will buy 3-D if the story is pleasing. And good movies will still be made in standard 2-D."

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