For an all-too-brief period in the early 1950s, three-dimensional (3-D) movies enjoyed a huge popularity among American moviegoers. Motion picture images are by their nature flat and one-dimensional. In a 3-D film, an illusion of depth and perspective is created with the help of special glasses. Use of these special glasses results in an image's foreground appearing to stand apart from its background. In a 3-D film, an animal could be made to appear to leap off the screen and into the audience. A knife-tossing villain or spear-throwing warrior could appear to be actually hurling the weapon at the viewer.

In the early 1950s, movie ticket sales were falling fast as Americans in great numbers were moving from the cities to the suburbs (see entry under 1950s—The Way We Lived in volume 3), where there were fewer movie houses. Television (see entry under 1940s—TV and...