Glenn Miller Story OAR. (1 Viewer)

[rob kilbride]

According to DVDBeaver.com the movie was not released in 1.85:1 aspect ratio in theaters,thus makeing the DVD a MAR release. Does anyone have any information to confirm or refute this?

 

[Robert Crawford]

I investigated this before when the dvd came out. From the information I could gather, "The Glenn Miller Story" was filmed in June/July of 1953. It was filmed 1.37 to 1 ratio. When the film was released in February of 1954, It's possible that some theaters showed it similar to how they displayed "Shane" during its theatrical run in 1953, even though that movie was filmed in Summer/Early Fall of 1951 in the academy ratio.






Crawdaddy

 

[rob kilbride]

From DVDBeaver.com :

The image is cropped from the OAR of 1.37:1, approx 13% top and 12% bottom, to aprx 1.85:1, in order to allow anamorphic encoding (see comparison between VHS and DVD below). While Universal eventually did mask their films into 1.85:1, only 5 films were released in Widescreen in 1953, and this is not one of them.

 

[Jim Robbins]

I remember seeing this movie when it came out. The local theater cropped it as they did all their films after they installed CinemaScope screens. Some were framed OK for this and some were not.

 

[Steve...O]

Jim Robbins,

I know this is probably a ridiculous question, but just out of curiosity: do you remember if movie patrons were upset about cropping back in 1954 or did anyone really notice? I'm trying to get a historical perspective on the OAR debate.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Robert Crawford]

They were probably as upset as my family was when my dad stuck that piece of colored plastic sheet on our black and white tv screen to emulate a colored picture.






Crawdaddy

 

[GerardoHP]

Funny, but people in the early 50's didn't know the difference between movies that were meant to be widescreen and those that were cropped to simulate widescreen. Besides, a lot of films that were shot 1.37:1 were released with a widescreen matte with such fanfare the studios all but made it look like the widescreen was intentional. It really wasn't until the advent of DVD's that the general public started to understand the difference between scope, widescreen and Academy ratio (LD's never reached the general public enough that they would get it). And to this day, I think most people who just saw a movie in the theater still don't know whether it was in scope or not.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I ran this in 35mm two weeks ago and as with many Universal films from this era, it is most definitely framed for 1.85 projection. Compositions are much more balanced at that ratio - no oddly-cropped heads or chins, no clipped-off text, the Universal logo fit within the 1.85 frame, the titles were centered for 1.85, the reel-change cues were right where they should be for 1.85 (a different location than if they were on an Academy ratio film) and the leaders were also marked "for 1.85".

For my final test prior to the public show I ran the same reel back-to-back, once in 1.85 and once Academy ratio - it was no contest, the 1.85 was obviously the correct framing. Running it at Academy revealed a lot of extraneous headroom and footroom and the compositions were off center in a way that the 1.85 version was not. Assuming the DVD is framed correctly (i.e.: not zoomed or mis-framed high or low), the 1.85 ratio is the correct one for The Glenn Miller Story.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Pete is right: Universal-International began composing all films in production for widescreen presentation starting in April/May, 1953.