Here's a copy of another article about Mo Henry that I found at: http://
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1346/is_10_47/ai_92042075

Taming the bear: for its 50th anniversary, Cinerama is let out of its cage -
Buzz - Mo
Henry restores "How the West Was Won"
Los Angeles Magazine,  Oct, 2002  by Ed Leibowitz

LAST NOVEMBER, WHEN MO Henry, perhaps the most respected negative cutter in
Hollywood, pried open a canister holding How the West Was Won, she discovered a
family connection. "There was some old paperwork inside it," she says, "and I
saw my
dad's handwriting." Mo couldn't remember her late father, Mike Henry; who was
MGM's chief negative cutter, having worked on the 1962 blockbuster. But a call
to her
mother confirmed it. "Here I was," says Henry; "basically getting ready to
dismantle
the work that my dad did 40 years ago."



Warner Bros., which now owns How the West Was Won, had retained Henry to
restore
it. The movie was the last spectacular filmed in Cinerama, the grandiose,
unwieldy
film format that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. With its
seven-track
surround sound, Cinerama was grandfather to THX and Dolby; with its three-
projector, 126-foot-wide screen, it was great-uncle to IMAX. Introduced in 1952,
it
was prone to so many logistical difficulties and cost overruns that it lasted
only ten
years--vanquished by 65- and 70-millimeter wide-screen, its saner if less
spectacular competitors.



Today only two commercial theaters in the world can exhibit Cinerama.
Refurbished
as the centerpiece of the new Arclight Theater complex in Hollywood, the 1963
geodesic Cinerama Dome was designed for Cinerama but never took delivery of the
proper cameras for the declining format, and so never in its history did it
screen a
Cinerama film. Only recently did the Dome salvage a set of projectors from a
defunct
Cinerama palace in Hawaii. The Dome will begin its first Cinerama program this
month, in time for the anniversary The other venue is Seattle's Cinerama
Theater,
owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen (who funded the West restoration).



The 40-year intermission presented even more challenges than a normal
restoration. Henry, who has assembled the likes of Spider-Man and Harry Potter
and
the Sorcerer's Stone, typically proceeds under the guidance of a film editor and
director when splicing a film. Even when she's undoing a studio's callous edit,
as she
did for Apocalypse Now Redux, she might enjoy Francis Ford Coppola looking over
her shoulder, telling her what he wants. On West, she was on her own.



Every difficulty was compounded because she was, in reality, cutting three
separate
films--except that Cinerama's right, left, and center panels would all be
running
simultaneously, making the smallest discrepancy seem cataclysmic. Then there was
the problem of the missing Technicolor printer, which had automatically
processed
the original movie's cuts and dissolves but was long ago scrapped, and no museum
pieces were available. Primed for this defunct printer, the West negative had
none of
the usual cuts of a finished movie--it was just one long reel. "I literally had
to read
the script to figure out where the fades and dissolves were supposed to be,"
Henry
says. "`Okay, does this character walk off the screen to the left? And after the
dissolve, is it a boat or a wagon train?'"



She had more luck finding a synchronizing machine for Cinerama-grade six-
perforation film. "I had a friend ask George Lucas to look in his garage,
because he's
such a pack rat," she says. "Then I found out that another friend of mine, who
had
purchased all the equipment from the MGM lab, had one." Because Cinerama
requires
projecting three strips at once, Henry had to hold all three negatives over the
light
box to see which way Karl Malden's raft or James Stewart's canoe was supposed to
go.



Remarkably, Henry was blessed with a place to review her progress. Inside a
bland
warehouse in Hollywood, she found one of the stranger screening rooms in town.
There, Jon Truckenmiller, vice president of engineering at the Crest Digital
Media
Complex, has built a complete Cinerama theater in miniature, outfitted with
three
enormous projectors, seven-track surround sound, and 16 mismatched theater seats
that were salesmen's samples at left at Pacific Theaters' home office. "Cinerama
is the
bear of all bears," says Truckenmiller, who built the theater last year when he
was
piecing together a serviceable print of the first Cinerama feature, This Is
Cinerama--
which will be shown at the Dome as part of the celebration. (The Dome will
screen
West later this year.)



Despite all of Cinerama's unwieldiness, Mo Henry can't believe how little
negative
cutting has changed since 1962. "It hasn't evolved at all," she says. Nor will
it likely
have a chance to. She believes that her metier may end within five years. As
digital
video replaces film, film cutting--and virgin film stock--may become as obsolete
as
Cinerama. And Henry's work will be ever more rooted in the past. "Restoration
will be
a career then," she says, "instead of just a job."



COPYRIGHT 2002 Los Angeles Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group