See No Evil, Hear No Evil

STEWART HARMONY G2 ACOUSTICALLY TRANSPARENT SCREEN

- Michael P. Hamilton

A MYRIAD of boulevards dissects a tract of former citrus groves, referred to long ago as Hollywoodland. Of these thoroughfares, singularly, there is Hollywood Boulevard, known the world over for a century of broken dreams. As lore recounts and contemporary tales of woe reveal, there is little left to ponder beyond what should have been after most fame-bound aspirants leave.

But Tinseltown can also yield success stories, such as in 1947 when an unknown named Roy C. Stewart answered a casting call—of sorts—and quite literally became a Hollywood screen legend. By 1956, Roy had earned an Academy Award for Technical Achievement, garnering the second one in 1964. Roy and Stewart Filmscreen, as they say, were Hollywood gold. No other screen company has been similarly feted, and to this day, Stewart can boast of providing a screen for your home identical to one used to put the final touches on an Academy Award winner.

Which brings us to another Hollywood hopeful: Stewart Filmscreen’s new Harmony G2 Acoustically Transparent (AT) projection screen. AT screens using a perforated surface to pass through sound were introduced during the development of sound enhancement to movies. At first, films were synchronized to discs resembling 78 RPM shellac pressings that contained musical accompaniment, but sound on-disc eventually yielded to Movietone’s superior optical sound-on-film process. To optimize dialogue localization for the new “talkies,” theater speaker systems migrated behind AT screens.