The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm - Cinerama Lost and Found

Cinerama Lost and Found

Cinerama Inc, now a unit of Pacific Theatres, had long ago abandoned the process, put the machinery and negatives into storage at their old Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, and sold off the remaining Cinerama travelogue prints to be used as sound spacers. MGM held the elements for How The West Was Won, and Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, which they co-produced with Cinerama Inc. When the MGM Library was sold to Ted Turner, all the MGM elements went to the Turner company.

When Turner's Home Video unit released Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm on VHS and Laserdisc, the film was transferred from an anamorphic 35mm element that was a composite of the 3 Cinerama panels. This video seems to be a general release version, missing the Overture, Prologue, Entr’acte and Exit Music from the Cinerama roadshow presentation.

In the late 90s, a grass roots Cinerama revival reached from a specially retrofitted theatre in Dayton, Ohio to the Pictureville Cinema museum in Bradford, England, drawing audiences from throughout the world to see Cinerama films saved or assembled by collectors. Talk of renovating the Seattle Cinerama theatre and Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, with the ongoing ability to show 3-strip Cinerama films, led to discussing the possibility of striking new prints of 3 strip Cinerama features to show there.

While Cinerama Inc, under supervision of former Cinerama Dome manager John Sittig, examined their negatives of This Is Cinerama and discovered they were intact enough to strike a new print, Richard May, then in charge of MGM movies for the Turner organization, was able to report that the negatives for How The West Was Won were all in excellent shape. New Cinerama prints of both features were struck for occasional showings at the Seattle Cinerama, and the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, while the Pictureville Cinema in Bradford continued to show collected prints scheduled at regular intervals.