City Manager John Carpenter (center) and Joe V. Gerbrach, manager of the Ames Theatre company (right), are looking over the new anamorphic lens required for cinemascope projection.  L. W. Felder, (left) here making the installations in the Collegian theatre, is explaining the difference in the lenses.  Gerbrach is holding the old-style lens.

CINEMASCOPE DEBUTS HERE WITH 'THE ROBE' WEDNESDAY - First silent, second sound, now CINEMASCOPE - the theaters of Ames have kept abreast of the new changes.  The latest improvements have been added regularly in Ames.

Now CinemaScope which will make its Ames debut at the Collegian theater Wednesday with the showing of "The Robe," will use one of the latest and most startling of the new innovations - the anamorphic lenses...  The theater will be closed this afternoon and Tuesday afternoon for installation of a stereophonic sound system, an integral part of the CinemaScope process.

According to Joe Gerbrach, Collegian manager, CinemaScope differs from ordinary wide screen presentations in that it is photographed especially for a wide screen, using a special lens which compresses the picture to the width of standard movie film.  The process is reversed by the use of a special spreader lens on the projector.  The technique allows new groupings and effects as well as adding to the illusion of reality.

Stereophonic sound also adds greatly to the realism of CinemaScope films.  Three microphones are used on the set, and what they pick up is transferred to separate sound tracks on the film.  The sound is reproduced by three speakers spaced behind the screen so that sound emanates from the source of action.  Eleven sidewall speakers in the theater are also used, literally surrounding the audience by sound.

Mayor J. P. Lawlor turns the switch for "sound" on an instrument panel in the Collegian theater projection booth.  His honor had the honor for the first "test run" of "The Robe."  "The Robe" opens tonight and is the first CinemaScope production to be shown here.  During the past week the projection equipment of the theater has been completely modernized for handling both regular and CinemaScope projection.  New and additional sound equipment has been installed, which has been designed to give theater-goers a completely new concept.

Next week, Ames moviegoers will get their first look at a new film era, Cinemascope, the new motion picture process which has caused a revolution in Hollywood studios even greater tan that created 27 years ago when motion pictures found their voice, at the Collegian theatre, when Twentieth Century Fox's Cinemascope production of "The Robe" in technicolor makes its debut on Wednesday and plays a full week.  This long-awaited film event which stars Richard Burton, Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and Michael Rennie with a cast upwards of 5000 is historically significant.  It is the most elaborately painstaking giant project yet attempted by Hollywood in the super-colossal field at an overall cost of $5,000,000.

Construction began in the office of art director George Davis with the first sketch, moved slowly stone by stone until the final phases for the greatest dress rehearsal in motion picture filming was staged before the anxious eyes of the producer, Frank Ross; the director, Henry Koster and chief of production Daryl F. Zanuck at the Twentieth Century Fox studios.

Sound stage after sound stage rebuilt the glory that was Rome, the tragedy that was Jerusalem, in the famed story of the man who crucified Christ and gambled for His Robe.  All told there were 31 sets holding 10,000 props - each a replica of an authentic museum piece - to tell the tale that touches on all areas of the far-flung Roman Empire.  The set for the Crucifixion, inspirational focal point for the whole drama, alone cost $55,000 for a scene that took only six pages in the script, four days to shoot and 15 minutes in the final film.  Gasps of awe involuntarily escaped from visiting spectators when they glimpsed the barren hill with its three crosses starkly silhouetted against the 550-foot panoramic background that shows Jerusalem and the surrounding hills and valleys.

These same visitors could wander through the streets and catacombs of first century Rome and the by-ways of Jerusalem that were extended through eight of the studio's 16 sound stages as well as 40 per cent of the 30-acre backlot.  These stages required twice the candlepower to light than was used in the actual city of Rome at the time of the story.

Whereas the Calvary set inspired a respectful and thoughtful silence, the setting for a Roman bath and adjacent tavern brought out a volley of exclamation on its modernity; the sets of the ancient slave market and the summer palace of Tiberius on the Isle of Capri drew exclamations of praiseworthy comment, but it remained for the Emperor Caligula's palace in Rome to overwhelm them with its magnificence.

So massive and beautiful was this set that even with the 659 people that were employed on it, it seemed no more crowded than a summer resort in mid-January.  Two hundred twenty-five feet long and ninety-five wide, it was a mass of marble walls, heavy candelabra, columns and multi-colored draperies.  At the south end was the throne area with the throne an exact replica of the original in the famed Paris Louvre Museum.

Everything about and including "The Robe" has the hand-made look.  Wardrobes for the thousands in the cast were either of hand-woven fabrics dyed in ancient processes or faded to irreproducible shades; sculptors, woodcarvers, jewelers, cosmeticians worked eagerly to make the actors "genuine" Roman citizens.

Behind the cameras to record these efforts in the new screen process was 3-time Academy Award winner, Leon Shamroy, noted for his color photography.  CinemaScope makes possible the feeling of participation - goal of the earliest Greek dramatists.