Metro Holds The Western Fort

Escape From Fort Bravo (1953) Is A Wider Wide West

A promoting plus for Fort Bravo was the spectacular "curtain of arrows" that sped Act Three, a then-new slant on outdoor action that got positive word-of-mouth and helped toward $3.8 million in world rentals. Also a spike was William Holden's Best Actor for Stalag 17 and movement toward a career peak. His was the 50's hero always doubtful of systems and status-quo, so Bill questioning cavalry protocol would go without saying. Fort Bravo was the customarily uneasy mix of stunning locations (Death Valley and Arizona/New Mexico sites) matched with studio exteriors, campfire voices reverberating off soundstage walls. This would be the first Metro production composed for widescreen, having been location-shot for a 1.75 ratio (later reviews indicated 1.65). Dore Schary demonstrated the result at an exhibitor conference in May, 1953, the rush to expanded screens well on and studios cheating a little by blowing up standard images and fobbing them off as wide. The same conclave that sampled Fort Bravo also took helpings of Take The High Ground, Young Bess, and Julius Caesar with the forced width treatment, consensus being that even though heads were clipped here and there, the economic value of advertising wide pics would trump aesthetic loss.