Facts About "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T"
(American Cinematographer Jan. 1953)
Frank Planer used reflected, ultraviolet, and fluorescent light in revolutionary new ways in photographing Kramer's fantasy film.
A fantastically creative masterpiece of wild imagination has opened the eyes of all
Hollywoodeyes which over a long period have become accustomed to spectacle in
virtually every shape, shade and form.The picture in question is the Kramer C
ompany’smusical extravaganza in Technicolor,The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. conceived as
an entirely new and vital approach to entertainment via movies.
Director of photography Frank Planer, ASC, added a new touch to the filming of "5000 Fingers" when he devised anew means of changing lighting and color before the very eyes of the moviegoer by interspersing use of ultraviolet and fluorescent light. Another innovation was the use of the new cone lights, developed by Columbia Studios’ electrical department and described in American Cinematographer for June, 1952 (Pp.248). Cone lights are said to produce the broadest and most distant "shadowless" light ever attempted in motion picture production . Planer found them made to order for lighting the sets of this production.
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. comes to the screen as a vision, the dream world of a nine-year-old boy. It is painted his way, not Rembrandt’s way. The sets are crookedly fantastic as a small boy would draw them. The entire picture is wildly imaginative, as only a small boy can imagine. And contributing most effectively to the overall pictorial effect is Frank Planer’s unique lighting for the Technicolor photography.
Briefly the story concerns a typical American boy whose mother has her heart set on him becoming a piano virtuoso. His teacher is Dr. Terwilliker (Dr. T.) who shares the mother’s view that the lad will learn to play the piano, "even if I have to keep him at that keyboard forever!" One day when the lad would rather be outdoors playing baseball than practicing his piano lessons, he falls to daydreaming. Dr. Terwilliker becomes an ominous ogre with 500 little boys trapped in his vast piano courtyard. here the boys are destined to sit at the giant keyboard practicing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year5000 fingers practicing the scales in unison.
The lad seeks to escape from Dr. T, and what he encounters in weird and fantastic
dream situations makes for one of the most entertaining pictures of the yearand made
for Frank Planer perhaps the most challenging assignment in color photography of his
entire career.
To begin with, Planer faced something radically new in sets from the standpoint of
lighting. According to him, "5000 Fingers" utilizes more sets than any picture in his
recollection; at one time sets for the production occupied every sound stage on the
Columbia lot.
Largest set in the film and one of the biggest ever to grace a motion picture screen
was the giant piano courtyard of Terwillikerland, which occupied all of stages 8 and 9
at Columbia Studios. Its biggest feature, of course, was the longest piano keyboard
ever built.
Stretching the length of the immense courtyard which featured weird staircases,
entrances to bottomless dungeons and topless staircases, the piano completely
dominates the scene. The courtyard set, one of the costliest ever built on the
Columbia lot, was constructed mostly of battens covered with white muslin, 3500
square yards of it, instead of the conventional wallboard. The reason, of course economy. But this placed a tremendous burden on director of photography Planer, for unlike with sets of solid construction, he faced innumerable problems in lighting. The muslin, being translucent, precluded placing lights in rear of the sets, unless certain areas were carefully goboed or backed up with wallboard flats, black backing material
or both. In lighting the narrow staircases, special cutouts were moulded before the
lamps in order to funnel the