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Films with longest runs in Sheffield


Guest Old Canny Street Kid

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I like that wording,

"Now in the splendour of 70mm widescreen and full stereophonic sound"

Takes us back to that song quoted in a similar thread to this one

"In glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope and Stereophonic sound" lol

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Guest funkydory

I like that wording,

"Now in the splendour of 70mm widescreen and full stereophonic sound"

Takes us back to that song quoted in a similar thread to this one

"In glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking CinemaScope and Stereophonic sound" lol

Yes DaveH...the wording in those days matched the majesty of the magnificence (lol) . I'll have to wait and see which films Sheffielders post up as a memory (or a moment in time at one of your great cinemas) to see if I can come up in my collection with an equally descriptive advert. MGM were especially good at this technique!

20th Century-Fox may have thought they had the monopoly of 'widescreen wording' as they invented Cinemascope to challenge Cinerama; but then Cleopatra with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor came along and the rest his...history!

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Yes DaveH...the wording in those days matched the majesty of the magnificence (lol) . I'll have to wait and see which films Sheffielders post up as a memory (or a moment in time at one of your great cinemas) to see if I can come up in my collection with an equally descriptive advert. MGM were especially good at this technique!

20th Century-Fox may have thought they had the monopoly of 'widescreen wording' as they invented Cinemascope to challenge Cinerama; but then Cleopatra with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor came along and the rest his...history!

20th Century Fox must have sounded a very modern name for a company when it was founded in the early 20th century.

But doesn't it sound very dated now?

It's so "20th Century"

Not a good idea to give your company a name which sounds good now but has built in obsolescence.

Having said that, even if you don't know what technicalities lie behind the words (or how long those technical inovations have been around) expressions like "Glorious Technicolour", "Breathtaking CinemaScope" and even "Stereophonic Sound" still have a freshness and interest about them even today.

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So if the original was on 35mm and in standard format but the 70mm copy was in a more modern "Widescreen" format they must have either lost some of the picture at the ends or, more likely, gained a black margin top and bottom in what became known as "letterbox" format.

Unless, possible but even more technically advanced, each frame was copied using AO (Anamorphic Optics) to distort the image into the new format, and then using similar optics on projection to correct it again.

Actually, the original image was " top and tailed ". When you show a square picture through an elongated (letterbox) rectangle, obviously, the top and bottom of the picture has to go. Some tops of heads were missing, but on the whole, it was a successful experiment.

A huge hit, all over again, and a big enough success for MGM to start rummaging through it's old hits and blowing them up to 70mm too. Such as: "7 Brides for 7 Brothers", "The Great Caruso" and "Quo Vadis". .....none of which made it back to Sheffield in that format !

Other studios tried it too. Most notably, Paramount with "The Ten Commandments" and Columbia with "The Jolson Story" .....which did show in 70mm at the Gaumont 1 from Oct 26th to Nov 8th, 1969.

Incidently, the artwork for "Gone With the Wind" that you mentioned (and the one that we still see today) was not the original 1939 artwork. This was painted by Howard Terpning for the 1968 re-issue, and was based on the 1961 artwork, when the film was re-issued during the centenary year of the American Civil War ( returning to the Sheffield Hippodrome in Feb, 1962). This would also be the final film to be shown at the Hippodrome, when it closed in March, 1963.

The 1961 artwork: The 1968 artwork:

Some of the original, 1939 artwork:

Whichever way you show it, it's still a great film !

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Actually, the original image was " top and tailed ". When you show a square picture through an elongated (letterbox) rectangle, obviously, the top and bottom of the picture has to go. Some tops of heads were missing, but on the whole, it was a successful experiment.

I hadn't thought of doing it by that quick and simple method and losing the top and bottom bits witout a care. I was just trying to retain as much of the original picture as possible by whatever method.

As the 70mm version is merely an enlarged copy of the 35mm version it does mean that the overall picture quality of the larger 70mm version will still be no better than the original and, that by using lenses to magnify the original the quality of the copy will be slightly reduced.

However, they seem to have got away with this without any noticable quality loss.

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Other studios tried it too. Most notably, Paramount with "The Ten Commandments" and Columbia with "The Jolson Story" .....which did show in 70mm at the Gaumont 1 from Oct 26th to Nov 8th, 1969.

Now if you are going to convert "The Jolson Story" (starring Larry Parkes as Jolson) into 70mm then surely you would also have to convert the sequel film "Jolson Sings Again" (starring Larry Parkes as Jolson and also Larry Parkes as Larry Parkes **) into 70mm as well.

** In one scene, "Jolson" meets Larry Parkes and has a brief conversation with him!!

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Yes DaveH...the wording in those days matched the majesty of the magnificence (lol) . I'll have to wait and see which films Sheffielders post up as a memory (or a moment in time at one of your great cinemas) to see if I can come up in my collection with an equally descriptive advert. MGM were especially good at this technique!

20th Century-Fox may have thought they had the monopoly of 'widescreen wording' as they invented Cinemascope to challenge Cinerama; but then Cleopatra with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor came along and the rest his...history!

Well, I guess you could say that 20th Century Fox did rather have a monopoly on Wide Screen movies. After the huge success of CinemaScope in the early 50's, it was onwards and upwards......to Todd-AO.

This process had been pioneered by Mike Todd in order to produce a single lens version of the gigantic ("You are in the Picture") Cinerama.

The first two movies were "Oklahoma!" in 1955, and "Around the World in 80 Days" in 1956. Neither of these two films were seen in that process here until the late 1960's.

Cinema managers didn't want to go to the expense of re-equiping their theatres all over again, so soon after installing CinemaScope.

The UK's (and Sheffield's) first Todd-AO movie was "South Pacific", released by Fox in 1958 with the tagline "The perfect / greatest show in Todd-AO".

After this, Fox plumped for the Todd-AO process for most of their Epic films of the 1960's. Such as: "Can-Can", "Cleopatra", "The Sound of Music", "Those Magnificent Men....", Star!", "Hello,Dolly!", "Doctor Doolitlle", etc.

"Cleo" had it's London Premiere on July 31st, 1963, and arrived in Sheffield for a ten week run at the Sheffield Odeon in Feb, 1964.....here is an announcement:

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I hadn't thought of doing it by that quick and simple method and losing the top and bottom bits witout a care. I was just trying to retain as much of the original picture as possible by whatever method.

As the 70mm version is merely an enlarged copy of the 35mm version it does mean that the overall picture quality of the larger 70mm version will still be no better than the original and, that by using lenses to magnify the original the quality of the copy will be slightly reduced.

However, they seem to have got away with this without any noticable quality loss.

On the whole - yes. Although, in the case of "The Ten Commandments", in the scene where the giant obelisk is raised, in the 70mm blow-up, the top of the obelisk gets sliced off.

Ouch!!

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On the whole - yes. Although, in the case of "The Ten Commandments", in the scene where the giant obelisk is raised, in the 70mm blow-up, the top of the obelisk gets sliced off.

Ouch!!

I don't think Cecil B. DeMille would have been very impressed with that.

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Now if you are going to convert "The Jolson Story" (starring Larry Parkes as Jolson) into 70mm then surely you would also have to convert the sequel film "Jolson Sings Again" (starring Larry Parkes as Jolson and also Larry Parkes as Larry Parkes **) into 70mm as well.

** In one scene, "Jolson" meets Larry Parkes and has a brief conversation with him!!

You would have thought so, wouldn't you? But, the second movie was never as good as the first one, and , I guess that , by 1969/70, tastes and audiences were changing quickly, and the audience for "Jolson Sings Again" just wasn't there.

I still like them both though!

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You would have thought so, wouldn't you? But, the second movie was never as good as the first one, and , I guess that , by 1969/70, tastes and audiences were changing quickly, and the audience for "Jolson Sings Again" just wasn't there.

I still like them both though!

So do I.

..and they were my late fathers 2 favourite films.

He was a big fan of Jolson.

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So do I.

..and they were my late fathers 2 favourite films.

He was a big fan of Jolson.

He was a great entertainer, a great Star, and a great ego!

He even has the biggest and flashiest tomb in the cemetery.....Amazing! :

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He was a great entertainer, a great Star, and a great ego!

He even has the biggest and flashiest tomb in the cemetery.....Amazing!

..and not to mention a string of ex wives!!

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Now if you are going to convert "The Jolson Story" (starring Larry Parkes as Jolson) into 70mm then surely you would also have to convert the sequel film "Jolson Sings Again" (starring Larry Parkes as Jolson and also Larry Parkes as Larry Parkes **) into 70mm as well.

** In one scene, "Jolson" meets Larry Parkes and has a brief conversation with him!!

Now in another scene in the first film Jolson goes to see his new wife, Ruby Keeler, starring in Show Girl. Mrs Jolson isn't feeling to well and when she fells faint asfter making her grand entrance at faulters at the first words of her song, the George & Ira Gershwin number "Liza (all the clouds will roll away)". Jolson, seeing his wifes predicament does no more than jump up from the third row back in the stalls and sing the song for her, - immediately making "Show Girl" a success and creating a new hit for himself as well as rescuing his wifes situation on stage.

For years I assumed that this was a bit of artistic licence in the film, that it wasn't really true but was based on what the Jolson's were doing at that time. It was a sort of a bit of a legend, a piece of folklore, an apocryphical story.

Then, in the 1990's a read a well researched book about the life and complete lyrics of Ira Gershwin. It contained lyrics to most of his more famous works and also "notes" about each song, mainly taken from Ira's own notes made at the time as he had a habbit of writing everything down in a note book.

So I was very suprised to read the following extracts and find that the whole story was in fact absolutely true!!

What a man Jolson was, - what an entertainer!

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Now in another scene in the first film Jolson goes to see his new wife, Ruby Keeler, starring in Show Girl. Mrs Jolson isn't feeling to well and when she fells faint asfter making her grand entrance at faulters at the first words of her song, the George & Ira Gershwin number "Liza (all the clouds will roll away)". Jolson, seeing his wifes predicament does no more than jump up from the third row back in the stalls and sing the song for her, - immediately making "Show Girl" a success and creating a new hit for himself as well as rescuing his wifes situation on stage.

For years I assumed that this was a bit of artistic licence in the film, that it wasn't really true but was based on what the Jolson's were doing at that time. It was a sort of a bit of a legend, a piece of folklore, an apocryphical story.

Then, in the 1990's a read a well researched book about the life and complete lyrics of Ira Gershwin. It contained lyrics to most of his more famous works and also "notes" about each song, mainly taken from Ira's own notes made at the time as he had a habbit of writing everything down in a note book.

So I was very suprised to read the following extracts and find that the whole story was in fact absolutely true!!

What a man Jolson was, - what an entertainer!

There is further confirmation of this incident in the stage version of Show girl here in Wikipedia

Show Girl

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An interesting story, and another example of Jolson's huge ego. He always had to be "on".

Ruby Keeler was Jolson's third wife - a fact not mentioned in "The Jolson Story" - and was married to him for eleven years.

When they married in 1928, she was 18 - and he was 42......something else overlooked in the movie!

I guess, just like in the movie, Ruby had had enough of coming second to his career, and moved on to a second, very happy marriage and four children.

She didn't want to know when Columbia approached her about the movie, and wouldn't even let them use her name.

That's why Evelyn Keyes' character is called Julie Benson in the movie.

Up until a few years before her death, she had always refused to even watch the movie. Friends finally got her to sit down and watch it on video, and she actually enjoyed it.

We met her towards the end of her life, and she was charming and very friendly, signing several items for us.

A nice lady, and a real trouper.

By the way, when "The Jolson Story" was muted to him, even though he was 50 years old at that time, he immediately wanted to play himself (of course!), but finally saw sense.

Larry Parks did an excellent job lip-synching him, but Jolson did finally get his way and appeared in one sequence in the movie.

In the "Swanee" number, there is a long shot of the stage.....and the guy up there is not Parks, but Jolson himself.

You just couldn't keep him off!

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Here are a few more ads and flyers for movies showing in Sheffield.

They may stir a few memories for you.

I'm having difficulty down-sizing scanned images to show as thumbnails on this site, so I have posted larger images.

Some of the detail has been lost on some of them, but I think you can still read them.

Here goes:

Mary flew into the Sheffield Gaumont on April 18th, 1965 and stayed for four weeks (until the wind changed!).

In this photo, you can see the huge queue to get in. You don't see those today!

The poster on the right tells us that Eric & Ernie were on at the Odeon, in their first film - "The Intelligence Men".

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Guest funkydory

I am sure I have welcomed funkydory to the site already but the post I made seem to have disappeared.

Welcome to Sheffield History funkydory, - please don't let recent technical problems discourage you from posting.

I was made welcome by everyone when I registered last September. The posting disappeared for me too, Dave. You're not on the spooky Orange ISP connection too are you?

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I was made welcome by everyone when I registered last September. The posting disappeared for me too, Dave. You're not on the spooky Orange ISP connection too are you?

There are a few technical problems with the site at the moment,

ADMIN is working to sort them out.

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I was made welcome by everyone when I registered last September. The posting disappeared for me too, Dave. You're not on the spooky Orange ISP connection too are you?

No funkydory, not Orange ISP, mine is Virgin Media.

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Mary flew into the Sheffield Gaumont on April 18th, 1965 and stayed for four weeks (until the wind changed!).

In this photo, you can see the huge queue to get in. You don't see those today!

The poster on the right tells us that Eric & Ernie were on at the Odeon, in their first film - "The Intelligence Men".

That's an interesting observation S24, I went to see Eric 7 Ernie in "The Intelligence Men" at the Odeon but I had forgotten when.

It must have been at Easter 1965 then.

Perhaps we went to see this film because we didn't want to wait in the queue to see Mary Poppins at the Gaumont. lol

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Here are a few more ads and flyers for movies showing in Sheffield.

They may stir a few memories for you.

I'm having difficulty down-sizing scanned images to show as thumbnails on this site, so I have posted larger images.

Some of the detail has been lost on some of them, but I think you can still read them.

Here goes:

Now I am sure I saw this film, "The Battle of Britain", perhaps a while after it's original release at either Studio 7 or at the Classic in Fitzallen Square. Not sure which but I think it was Studio 7.

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Somehow I never enjoyed the story of "Hello Dolly"

But, with Barbara Streisand singing it was bound to get my attention.

Then the real best bit, LOUIS ARMSTRONG !!!!, wow, what a musical masterpiece that film was.

"Well Hello Dolly, - this is Louis, Dolly, - it's so nice to have you back where you belong"

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An interesting story, and another example of Jolson's huge ego. He always had to be "on".

Ruby Keeler was Jolson's third wife - a fact not mentioned in "The Jolson Story" - and was married to him for eleven years.

When they married in 1928, she was 18 - and he was 42......something else overlooked in the movie!

I guess, just like in the movie, Ruby had had enough of coming second to his career, and moved on to a second, very happy marriage and four children.

She didn't want to know when Columbia approached her about the movie, and wouldn't even let them use her name.

That's why Evelyn Keyes' character is called Julie Benson in the movie.

Up until a few years before her death, she had always refused to even watch the movie. Friends finally got her to sit down and watch it on video, and she actually enjoyed it.

We met her towards the end of her life, and she was charming and very friendly, signing several items for us.

A nice lady, and a real trouper.

By the way, when "The Jolson Story" was muted to him, even though he was 50 years old at that time, he immediately wanted to play himself (of course!), but finally saw sense.

Larry Parks did an excellent job lip-synching him, but Jolson did finally get his way and appeared in one sequence in the movie.

In the "Swanee" number, there is a long shot of the stage.....and the guy up there is not Parks, but Jolson himself.

You just couldn't keep him off!

Interesting story about Ruby Keeler AFTER Jolson.

..and you actually got to meet her!

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