Sidney W. Pink

Sidney W. Pink (March 16, 1916 – October 12, 2002) was an American movie producer and occasional director. He has been called the father of feature-length 3-D movies. He is also noted for producing early spaghetti westerns and low-budget science-fiction films, and for his role in actor Dustin Hoffman's transition from stage to screen.

Life and career

Sid Pink was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After playing the film producer in his high school's production of Merton of the Movies, he realized this was the profession he would ultimately pursue, calling it his life's ambition.[1] He worked as a projectionist in a movie theater owned by his wife's family and earned a degree in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

In 1952, Pink produced Bwana Devil, a feature-length color film that was the first widely-shown 3-D film to use the polarized 3-D method rather than the red-and-blue-glasses anaglyph 3-D occasionally used for short films. It was made using the Natural Vision system, which employed two separate but interlocked cameras and required two specially modified projectors. The film premiered in late November and started a brief but intense 3-D fad that peaked in mid-1953, faltered in the fall, rallied, then faded away almost completely during 1954.

In 1959, Pink produced The Angry Red Planet, using a new film processing technique he named CineMagic to create an unreal, otherworldly "Martian" effect in some sequences. In 1961, he supplied the original story for Reptilicus, a giant-monster-on-the-loose film he co-produced and co-directed in Denmark at Saga Studios.

In 1966, Pink discovered Dustin Hoffman in an off-Broadway stage production in New York City and cast him in the lead in Madigan's Millions, which was filmed in Italy and Spain. The film was not released until 1969, two years after Hoffman achieved stardom with his role in the 1967 film The Graduate.

In the early 1970s Pink owned a chain of movie theaters in Puerto Rico and Florida.

All told, Sid Pink produced a total of more than 50 films. He died in 2002 in Pompano Beach, Florida, following a long illness.

Partial filmography

References

  1. ↑ Pink, Sidney (1989). So You Want to Make Movies: My Life As an Independent Film Producer. Pineapple Press, Inc. p. 3. ISBN 0-910923-77-9.
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