Interview with Dr. Wentworth Fling, the man who brought Cinerama out of the laboratory

Abstract

I first met Dr. Fling in 1996 at the reunion of Cinerama staff at their original studio in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. It was a one-day affair staged by the producers of The Cinerama Adventure documentary. Dr. Fling was eighty-three years of age and remembered as much about his work there fifty years ago as if it had been yesterday. His name is in the closing credits of This Is Cinerama, and after inventor Fred Waller's passing became Executive Vice President of Cinerama, Incorporated, the firm that built and installed Cinerama equipment. In our conversations, it became clear that he was one of the most articulate, intelligent, and focused technical people I had ever met. He toppled prevailing myth after myth about the Cinerama process, how it worked, why it died, and why it is so often misunderstood. I conducted a brief interview then, but in the spring of 2002 had the good fortune to interview him at great length by telephone. He is now 89. He has been sailing with his wife and making 16mm home movies since being forced out of Cinerama in 1962. The following article was edited from nearly five hours of taped interview.