A Hollywood Journey

28. Cinerama Dome

Hollywood, CA

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Designed to present widescreen, 70mm Cinerama films, the Cinerama Dome theatre opened its doors on Nov. 7, 1963 as a leading first run theatre. A radically new design for theatres, this geodesic dome was developed by architect, engineer and author R. Buckminster Fuller. This type of theatre cost half as much as conventional theatres of comparable size and was built in half the time. It took 16 weeks to build and consists of 316 precast concrete panels, mostly hexagonal, in 16 patterns, each weighing some 3200 pounds or 1,500 kilograms! It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, an American epic comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer about the pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers was the first film featured here. The film also marked the dawn of 'single-lens' Cinerama. The dome has an 86-foot (26m) wide screen with advanced acoustics and 70 mm film capability. Historical preservationists were outraged when the Dome became part of the Pacific Theatres' proposed plan to remodel the theatre and build a shopping mall with an attached cinema complex in the late 1990s. The three-projector process originally used in 1964 was resurrected, and the Dome was spared from remodeling. After a 2-year closure in 2002, the Dome was reopened as part of a 14-screen complex under ArcLight Cinemas, a division of Pacific Theatres. Essentially unchanged, its only one of three such theatres in the world today. In May 2005, the Dome made its digital projection debut with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. In 2009, the theatre was the first to feature XpanD 3D technology for James Cameron's Avatar.