This adapted excerpt is from "OOPS: 20 Life Lessons From the Fiascoes That Shaped America," by Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger, which will be published on March 14. Copyright 2006 by Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger. Published by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers.
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In 1960, when the romantic whodunit "Scent of Mystery" opened in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, audiences were treated to more than just sights and sounds. As the projector droned, a device known as a smell brain pumped 30 different scents--wine, freshly baked bread, pipe tobacco, a salty ocean breeze--through a network of tiny tubes to movie viewers' seats.
This was the debut of "glorious Smell-O-Vision," the masterwork of Hans Laube, touted in publicity accounts of the day as a "world famed osmologist," and the flamboyant, gimmick-loving Hollywood producer Michael Todd Jr. While "Scent of Mystery" wasn't the first attempt to employ aromas in filmmaking, it was by far the most technologically intricate. Beyond that, it was the first--and apparently the only--motion picture that relied on smells as integral devices in the plot. And Laube and Todd had high hopes. Ads for the movie proclaimed: "First they moved (1895)! Then they talked (1927)! Now they smell!"
The history-making nature of Smell-O-Vision aside, audiences and movie critics were unimpressed, and "Scent of Mystery" quickly evaporated at the box office. Today it's remembered, if at all, as a bit of trivia on movie-buff websites.
Yet Laube and Todd's attempt to lead moviegoers by their noses presaged a postmodern culture in which the manipulation of scents has become a powerful tool in shaping consumer behavior, with manufacturers assaulting the nostrils with chamomile-scented carpeting and rosebush sofas and wristwatches and mobile phones that smell faintly like coffee. Synthetic aromas have become so ubiquitous that some people consider them environmental hazards. Laube and Todd, in fact, were visionaries.
Almost since the invention of the motion picture, filmmakers have sought to exploit senses in addition to sight. Some tricks, such as the THX system that provides high-quality sound in theaters, have been successful. Others, such as Sensurround--a violent motion-simulating technology featured in the 1974 film "Earthquake"--fell flat.
The sense of smell has tempted filmmakers for a long time, with good reason. The olfactory neurons in the nasal cavity, which detect chemical components of aromas, and the brain's olfactory bulb--a clump of cells that identify nerve impulses as being triggered by jasmine, say, rather than rose petals--are capable of sensing and distinguishing about 10,000 scents. Research has shown that scents can stimulate physiological responses before people even realize what they're smelling.
It was no accident that ancient Greek festivals such as the Eleusinian mysteries were replete with potent smells, including burning incense and flowers. In the 19th century, stage dramatists sometimes used aromas as special effects in plays. They scattered pine needles to suggest the odor of a forest, or cooked food in the theater to simulate the aroma of a restaurant onstage.
The use of smells in the movie industry, in fact, actually preceded the introduction of sound. In 1916, proprietors of the Family Theater in Forest City, Pa., dipped cotton wool in rose oil and put it in front of an electric fan during a newsreel about the Rose Bowl game. Similarly, in 1929, a Boston theater put lilac oil in the ventilating system to get audiences in the mood for "Lilac Time," a love story set during World War I. That same year, when "The Broadway Melody," one of the first Hollywood musicals, premiered in New York, perfume was sprayed from the ceiling.
In the early 1940s, Hollywood experimented with using compressed air to force various artificial scents through air-conditioning systems. In 1943, a theater in Detroit showed "The Sea Hawk," a swashbuckler starring Errol Flynn, with aromas such as the smell of tar from a sailing ship to add ambience. Also on the bill was "Boom Town," a drama in which each character was given a distinctive scent: tobacco for Clark Gable, pine for Spencer Tracy, My Sin perfume for Hedy Lamarr.
