Premier of The Robe 1953 Grauman's Chinese Theater Los Angeles CA 1953-2012
by David Lee Guss
Title
Premier of The Robe 1953 Grauman's Chinese Theater Los Angeles CA 1953-2012
Artist
David Lee Guss
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
In 1947 there were only 14,000 TV sets in the U.S. In seven more years there were 32 million. Television had clearly replaced motion pictures as the most popular medium of entertainment.
RKO Radio stopped making movies in 1956, a year later completely selling off their studio facilities while Duke's home studio for years, Republic, sold their production facilities to CBS in 1959.
As film goers had lost their habit of regularly going to the movies, 20th Century's Fox's founder and head, Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979), gambled in 1953 on a wide screen process called Cinemascope. The Biblical epic "The Robe," only temporarily stopped the theater hemorrhaging.
Television did not completely convert to color until the mid 1960's while by 1952 75% of all feature films were lensed in color.
Duke's first wide screen film was the William A. Wellman directed "The High and the Mighty" (1954). All his subsequent films were shot wide screen, while his final black and white films were released in 1953, "Trouble Along the Way" and "Island in the Sky." Neither did well at the box office.
And finally in 1953 Hugh Hefner published his first issue of "Playboy;" edited on his kitchen table with a loan of 8 thousand dollars. 50,000 issues sold. Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) was on the cover.
Duke never acted with Marilyn but his contemporary, Clark Gable, did with "The Misfits" (1961). Some say the difficulty of the shoot with her mental instability and constant tardiness hastened his death.
Monroe died in 1962 the year considered the end of the studio system which had so nurtured John Ford and Duke. 1962 was also the year of Ford's last acknowledged masterpiece, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," which starred Duke, James Stewart and Lee Marvin.
Marvin talks about working with Ford and Wayne.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI1qBAVrjIs
@2013 David Lee Guss Film homage, JW, Grauman's Chinese Theater, The Robe, premier, 1953, 1953-2012
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April 17th, 2013
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