Do you remember a Warner Bros. retrospective at the Fine Arts sometime in '76-'78? I went on a few evenings, and though I was marginally aware of this stuff then, I now have absolutely no idea what the ARs were. From what you're saying, those '40s noirs and such would have been shown in 1.85...
When I played in that orchestra for "The Freshman" last month they rolled the picture up a couple of feet from the bottom of the screen so as to avoid musicians' heads. However, no image size adjustment was made, so the top part of the picture was cut off, resulting in what probably looked like...