Vtg 1940 3D Tru-Vue Historic Michael Todd Burlesque Circus N. Chicago Film Strip

Description

Vintage 1940 3D Tru-Vue Historic Michael Todd Burlesque Circus Chicago Film Strip Reel #1301
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I have been collecting 3D media for the last 30 years and finally decided it's time to part ways with some
of my favorite things.
This is Tru-Vue reel #1301. The black and white filmstrip reel contains 14 different 3D stereo images of
Michael Todd's Burlesque Circus in North Chicago as it was in 1940. They are for viewing within a Tru-
Vue viewer stereoscope (not included). The reel is in it's original red & silver box and is copyrighted
1940. Today these reels are very interesting historic stuff, and all in eye-popping 3D!
This very rare 3D film strip includes:
Many views of the dancing girls and burlesque performers
The sensational acrobatic LaLage act
Paul Remos' Penguins
Lester and Stanley act
Actress, Murial Page as "Little Egypt"
Comedy King, Professor Lamberti and the luscious, Bea Mathews (who looks really good in 3D!)
Backstage with Miss Matthews and Miss Page
The Chorines resting inbetween shows
Michael Todd posing with two dancers
The reel
is in excellent condition. I have personally gone through it with white gloves to inspect every
frame and every film cog and it is immaculate. For those interested in viewing these I would suggest
pulling them slowly through the viewer rather than using the advance. This is how the cogs get torn.
The box
is in excellent condition as can be seen in my photos
-  One of the nicest ones I've seen! Pretty nice for a small box that has been around for
almost 70 years! I have tried my best to photograph every aspect of the box and film. Please check my
pictures out and if you have any questions, please email!
Thanks for looking!
About Michael Todd from IMDB:
Film producer Michael Todd was one of the major contributors to technical innovation in the film industry in the 1950s. Having worked with Fred Waller and Cinerama, he got tired of the three-panel format, left the company and tried to find the process for making "Cinerama coming from one hole". He joined forces with the American Optical Co. and developed a system using 65mm cine cameras at 30 fps and wide angle-photography (approx 150 degrees). The system was named Todd-AO after its inventors and was by far the best big-screen system ever seen, when it was introduced with Oklahoma! (1955). The Todd-AO prints used 70mm film with a 2.2:1 ratio. Sound was six-track magnetic only, with five channels behind the screen and one surround channel, with Perspecta coding (a switch stereo device) The 70mm Todd-AO productions were premiered through Magna Theatre Corp., which also co-produced the pictures. Due to the non-standard speed, the first two Todd-AO pictures (the other was Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)) were parallel-shot in 35mm CinemaScope with 24 fps for general release, but for the third production, South Pacific (1958), the Todd-AO pictures were all shot in 24 fps. Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958, but his system lived on, adopted as the wide superformat of 20th Century-Fox, which used it all through the 1960s. During that period a number of alternate processes developed, of which Superpanavision became the most used.
Todd had previously (1946) produced an elaborate Broadway musical version of "Around the World in 80 Days." Despite mammoth production values, a Cole Porter score and a cast headed by Orson Welles as Phineas Fogg, it was a notorious, costly failure, losing nearly all of the money invested in it.
Father, with Elizabeth Taylor, of daughter Liza Todd Burton. Killed, along with journalist Art Cohn, when his private plane went down in a blizzard just outside of Albequerque, New Mexico. The plane's ironic name was "The Lucky Liz".
In 1957, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his Oscar-winning film Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Todd staged an elaborate party at Madison Square Garden for his then-wife Elizabeth Taylor and hundreds of guests. The evening eventually deteriorated into a giant food fight. The party was treated as a serious news event by CBS, which sent Walter Cronkite to cover it. The next day newspaper critics tore the event to shreds. It became what Cronkite considers the low point in his career.
He was preparing a lavish film version of "Don Quixote" at the time of his death. Todd's version was never made.
The biography "The Nine Lives of Mike Todd" reveals that he briefly was suspected of murdering his first wife Bertha, who died mysteriously in 1946, freeing the way for Todd to marry his mistress, Joan Blondell. Blondell later claimed that Todd fleeced her.
His biographer, Art Cohn, died with him in the plane crash that took Todd's life. The biography was nearly finished and was completed by Cohn's wife and published as "The Nine Lives of Mike Todd" in 1958.
In the 1940s, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee fell in love with Todd, who was then famous as a Broadway theatrical impresario. Todd produced two Broadway shows starring Lee, "Star and Garter" and "The Naked Genius" (the latter of which was written by Lee). Gypsy married William Alexander Kirkland in 1942 in an attempt to make the already-married Todd jealous. They divorced in 1944.
His penultimate show was entitled "Michael Todd's Peep Show", running at the Winter Garden Theatre, from June 28, 1950 to February 24, 1951, for a total of 278 performances. The music and lyrics for this musical revue, which featured female nudity, were by 'Prince Chakrband Bhumibol', who became the King of Thailand! In Art Cohn's posthumous biography of Todd, "The Nine Lives of Mike Todd", it is revealed that the naked girls featured in the show's mermaid sequence had difficulty getting the blue dye, used in the water, out of their pubic hair.
Todd twice went bankrupt, once when he filed for bankruptcy for over million as a young man and his construction business (which specialized in soundproofing Hollywood sound-stages, among other lines of business) folded during the Great Depression, and the second time around 1950, when his huge gambling losses and massive debts linked to his lavish lifestyle overwhelmed him. He remained ensconced in a splendid Hudson Valley estate in Tarrytown, New York with his second wife Joan Blondell, living the high life and spending like a pasha, as his second bankruptcy suit wound its way through the federal court system. When creditors' objections threatened to land him in jail due to apparent fraud (Todd had destroyed evidence of his gambling debts so as not to implicate his friends),
Todd withdrew the suit and agreed to pay back his creditors. Subsequently, Todd owned over three-quarters of the gross profits of Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), a spectacular that racked up over  million in rentals in its first release (approximately 5 million in 2005 terms), a huge sum for the time exceeded by very few films. Despite the fact that he was again rich, and richer than ever (worth about -8 million at the time of his death, or about million in 2005 terms), many observers at the time predicted that the profligate Todd would manage to bankrupt himself a third time. He never got the chance, dying in a plane crash in 1958. His widow, Elizabeth Taylor, still owns his share of the Oscar-winning film.
He had committed himself to provide financial backing for Laurence Olivier's most cherished project, a film of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", shortly before his fatal plane crash. But after Todd's death, the funding didn't come through and Olivier was forced to abandon the project.
Todd's premature death wiped out his plans for two future films: "Don Quixote" and "The Man Who Would Be King.".
About Tru-Vue from the UK Viewmaster website:
TRU-VUE Inc., Rock Island, Illinois USA manufactured the viewers and over 400 different 3D film
reels. The company was founded in 1931 and after the 1933 "Century of Progress Exposition" in
Chicago grew and flourished through the 1930's and 40's. The original viewers used 35mm
filmstrips, generally containing 14 stereo views, which were pulled through the viewer using a lever
(visible at the bottom of the left-hand photograph below). In 1949 Tru-Vue sold over a million reels
of film!.  The quality of the 3D presented is generally very good, although the films need to be
handled carefully. Film-strips and viewers were made between 1933 and 1952. Ultimately the Tru-
Vue company was acquired by Sawyers View-Master in 1952, who wanted the rights to Disney
licences held by the company.
Copyright © 2018 TDM Inc. The photos and text in this listing are copyrighted. I spend lots of time writing up my descriptions and despise it when un-original losers cut and paste my descriptions in as their own. It is against ebay policy and if you are caught, you will be reported to ebay and could be sued for copyright infringement and damages.