Tynesiders of the 1950s queuing to see Vincent Price in the 3D shocker House of Wax could perhaps have been forgiven for thinking they had seen it all before. The British inventor William Friese Greene had, after all, devised a system for making what were then known as ‘stereoscopic’ films while Queen Victoria was still on the throne. And the first ‘third dimension’ movie had been screened to a paying audience as long ago as 1922, with members of the audience in Los Angeles wearing spectacles with one red and one green lens.
That year also saw the debut of Plastigrams, a 9-minute short showing such things as a boy firing a catapult at the screen and soldiers appearing to march into the stalls. In Newcastle, the film was shown at the Stoll Picture Theatre (which is now the Tyne Theatre and Opera House) and the Sunday Sun was impressed. ‘The figures in the picture step out and perform remarkable feats among the audience,’ the newspaper wrote, ‘providing both thrills and amusement’.
There was little further interest in stereoscopic films until 1936, when Audioscopiks, another short, arrived. This time, viewers saw a ladder and a baseball coming towards the camera, and they heard humorous comments from a narrator off screen. The film culminated with a woman on a swing seeming to soar out over the heads of the audience, and it caused a sensation. A reporter who attended the premier said, ‘This afternoon I had the rare experience of seeing at least 2,000 people duck their heads and scream simultaneously.’
A lion in your lap
Audioscopiks was even nominated for an Oscar, before it arrived in the North East. It was shown at the Apollo cinema in Byker, and then in Gateshead, North Shields, South Shields and Blyth. And from 1 February the following year, it was shown in Newcastle again, this time at the News Theatre on Pilgrim Street (which is now the Tyneside Cinema). In this, the cinema’s opening week, the film was part of a 75-minute programme of topical stories, which could be watched for as little as 6d (the equivalent of £1.50 today). The Chronicle said it was ‘an amusing demonstration of stereoscopic effects, marred chiefly by a cretinous commentary’.
The next developments in stereoscopic film came in the 1950s, as the growth of TV forced US movie studios to find new ways of attracting audiences. But those developments came as no surprise across the Atlantic. Several 3D shorts made for the 1951 Festival of Britain had subsequently gone on tour, and been seen in Newcastle, at the News Theatre again.
The 3D feature film that finally made the breakthrough was Bwana Devil, a tale of the East African savannah, which promised ‘A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!’ Though made by an independent company, it was a huge hit, grossing $2.5m in the US in its first month alone – although audiences in north-east England would have to wait nearly a year to see it.
Falling bodies
The success of Bwana Devil encouraged other experiments, and in June 1953, just after the Coronation, Britain saw Man in the Dark. This was the first 3D movie to be released by a major studio, and also the first full-length one to come to the North East. It was shown at the Essoldo, which called itself ‘Newcastle’s Luxury Theatre’. A first-run cinema that kept abreast of new technology, the Essoldo would premier a number of 3D films. Man in the Dark was a film noir, and therefore shot in black-and-white, and the things Tynesiders saw coming towards them this time included fists, guns and falling bodies.
House of Wax would be the first major colour feature. It was directed by Andre De Toth – who, ironically, had only one eye – and it opened in Newcastle in August 1953, at the ABC Haymarket, which had camels and palm trees painted on the walls of the foyer. The reviews weren’t good – the Journal called it ‘a poor film which produces giggles where it is supposed to horrify’ – but it proved popular and was kept on for several weeks.
Only a month after House of Wax opened, Fort Ti did, too. This, the first 3D western, was shown at the Essoldo in Newcastle, and also at the Boro’ cinema in North Shields, where newspaper advertisements promised ‘Flaming Arrows! Scalping Savages! Charging Cavalry!’.
Nine-day wonder
And then, the following autumn, came Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. But although this film had been made in three dimensions – the only one of his to have that distinction – it was shown at the Haymarket in Newcastle, and in the rest of Britain, in only two. ‘3D was a nine-day wonder,’ Hitchcock later explained, ‘and I came in on the ninth day.’
3D disappeared because it was cumbersome, with the two projectors it required often going out of synch; because widescreen movies were able to provide spectacle more efficiently and more cheaply; and because cinemagoers grew tired of having to wear the red-and-green spectacles.
But it didn’t disappear completely. Fort Ti turned up again in 1982, this time on Tyne Tees TV. It was shown one Sunday afternoon just before Christmas, as part of a national 3D experiment, with Rumbelows on Northumberland Street in Newcastle selling those specs for 60p a pair. Stereoscopic films were, in fact, about to enjoy something of a renaissance. And when Jaws 3-D came to Newcastle the following year, it was shown at the Haymarket, where House of Wax had debuted three decades before.
You can now stream House of Wax and Dial M for Murder, and even watch them in 3D on Blu-ray DVD. And you can find Plastigrams and Audioscopiks online. Although to enjoy the full effect of any of those films, you’ll still need to put on a pair of the wretched specs.
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