1952, Spyros Skouras, president of 20th Century Fox, presents the Eidophor

To combat the dragon of television, which keeps millions of moviegoers at home, Film Magnate Spyros Skouras, president of 20th Century Fox, has devised a big new weapon. Eidophor (meaning image-bearer in greek) is a swiss invention which takes a televised signal from an electronic scanner and projects it in color onto a regular movie screen of any size.

It is still going through the experimental stage but got generally favorable reactions when it was shown to industry and government bigwigs and to the press at a demonstration in New York in the summer of 1952 (image below). Skouras is so optimistic he is sinking over $3 million in the project. He hopes to get Eidophor machines intalled in hundreds of theaters, then put on special sports events or fancy musical shows - "bringing Oklahoma! to Kansas" - which combine the glitter and polish of a Hollywood Technicolor production with the freshness of live action. They will, Skouras believes, make people flock back to the movie palaces with the conviction that what they see on their poor little TV sets at home are dull gray things indeed.