CinemaScope Four: M-G-M MOVIES Light Up the Screen

M-G-M (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was generally regarded as Hollywood's number one movie studio. Easily the world's largest and most glamorous, the studio, under the leadership of Louis B. Mayer, often boasted that it had "more stars than there are in heaven" under contract. This was true. By the mid-1950s, however, the movie industry found itself under serious threat from television. Hollywood's answer, spearheaded by Mayer's ally, Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox, was to invest in large-screen systems that would make the home TV screen seem puny and second-rate. Fox's CinemaScope system, initiated by "The Robe", was a huge success. M-G-M quickly followed suit. This book examines 110 of the wide-screen movies (most of them identified as CinemaScope) that M-G-M produced and/or released. Titles include Bad Day at Black Rock, Brigadoon, Designing Woman, Far From the Madding Crowd, Gigi, Guys and Dolls, King of Kings, Lust for Life, Moonfleet, The Reluctant Debutante, Rose Marie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Silk Stockings, The Swan, Viva Las Vegas; as well as Ben-Hur, High Society and 2001: A Space Odyssey.