"CINERAMA AT AMBASSADOR WEDNESDAY"

"This is Cinerama," first attraction in still another of the newfangled cinema processes, will open at the Ambassador Theater Wednesday evening. St. Louis will thus become the tenth city to see the initial results of the process generally conceded to be the most sensational and most revolutionary of the recent innovations in the motion picture field. The opening performance will be a benefit sponsored by the St. Louis Variety Club with the entire proceeds to go to the St. Louis, St. Louis County Day Nursery Care building fund. Regular public performances will begin Thursday. ...

Sponsors of the engagement point out that Cinerama can be shown only in theaters adapted to its use and say that no other city between Chicago and Los Angeles will see it. Extensive alterations have been made at the Ambassador.

Produced to test the process, "This is Cinerama" has proved sensationally successful in New York, where it opened Sept. 30, 1952, and in other cities, where it has run many weeks. The film is comprised of several episodes. Some are intended to be spectacular and thrilling, others colorful and some are musical.

Among the episodes are "The Roller Coaster," a ballet performance at La Scala in Milan; "The Fourth Wonder of the World;" Handel's "The Messiah," sung by the Long Island Choral Society; "Venetian Boatman," "Kilts and Tartans," "Toreador," "Spanish Rhythm," songs by the Vienna Boys Choir; the finale of Act II of , 'Aida," and "America the Beautiful," sung by the Salt Lake City Tabernacle Choir.

Cineram~s described as a multi-dimensional process which involves the simultaneous projection of three synchronized films on as many sections of a semi-circular screen. It was invented some 15 years ago by Fred Waller. Lowell Thomas is credited with being the first to conceive its possibilities and Merian C. Cooper with contributing most toward making it practical.

Source: St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 7, 1954