What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [73]
Yet Todd had more than a showman’s interest in special effects: he helped invent and commercialize several movie-making technologies. Todd’s Broadway hit, The Hot Mikado, was playing at the 1939 World’s Fair, and while keeping an eye on the show he met Fred Waller, who was demonstrating an eleven-projector wraparound movie film system called Vitarama. Cinerama, a three-camera, wide-screen format that was projected onto a specially shaped screen, was another Waller invention, and Todd became an investor in it. Expense and complicated technology were no barrier for Todd; his enthusiasm and salesmanship persuaded movie distributors to pony up and install the new equipment. He made a splash with This Is Cinerama (1952). Audiences thrilled to a sequence filmed on a roller coaster at Coney Island. It was the IMAX of its time, and eventually led to today’s Panavision system.
Mike Todd may have noticed another promising technology at the World’s Fair: Hans Laube’s Odorated Talking Pictures. It’s not clear whether Todd and Laube actually met there, but somehow Todd caught the scent bug. By 1954 Laube was back in America, trying to bring aroma to movies and television. That year he gave a demonstration to Todd and the producer decided to invest in the new system.
In his 1954 application for a U.S. patent, Laube described a device in which odor canisters were placed on a turntable. An electronic scent-track on the motion picture film triggered the turntable, which rotated the desired canister beneath a pickup nozzle, which sucked up scent and pumped it into the theater through tubes attached to the seatbacks. The liquid fragrances were filtered to remove the heavier notes and prevent the scents from lingering too long. To help clear the air between smells, one canister contained an “odor neutralizer.” The odors could be played in a fixed sequence or the scent-track could advance the turntable to any desired canister. Laube’s idea was that theaters would receive a standard set of odors; if a movie had unusual scent effects, a custom set would be shipped along with the film reels.
By 1955 Laube’s career was gaining momentum. He gave a private demonstration of his system at the Cinerama-Warner Theatre in New York, using a short version of My Dream. It must have been a success, because he persuaded the Stanley Warner Corporation, which owned the rights to Cinerama, to fund further development. To secure international rights to his invention, he filed a European patent application, and then applied for a second U.S. patent. In May, Laube married for the second time after a month-long romance. In July he received shares in a newly formed company called Scentovision, Inc.
In September 1956, Scentovision held another private demo for industry executives at Mike Todd’s Warner Cinema in New York. The 16 mm film ran for eight and a half minutes and used seventeen aromas. Motion Picture Daily hinted that Laube’s system would be installed in a top theater within nine months, and that Scentovision was negotiating with film producers who wanted to use the process. In November 1957, Laube and a partner were issued U.S. Patent 2,813,452, “Motion pictures with synchronized odor emission,” and were mentioned in the New York Times.
MICHAEL TODD’S first movie, the 1956 blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days, capitalized on his marketing strategy of heavily hyped limited openings, and heavily marketed accessory items (the movie’s soundtrack album was the first nonmusical soundtrack to earn big money). Early in 1957 he married Elizabeth Taylor—the third marriage for each of them—and a month later the newlyweds attended the Academy Awards, where 80 Days won the Oscar for Best Picture. With movie profits rolling in, Todd was looking about for his next project, and he felt the time was right for a push into smellies.
Things were finally looking good for Scentovision. Hans Laube had a patent, a prototype system, and a company to promote it. Mike Todd