never used commercially. Also in 1953, CinemaScope was introduced by 20th Century Fox (who again had forgotten their own 1929/30 Fox 70mm Grandeur widescreen cameras). Due to Cinemascope's compatibility with standard 35 mm projectors CinemaScope was commercially successful quickly and was the most prevalent widescreen format at the time. But CinemaScope had problems with image distortions and excessive grain. So, in 1954, Douglas Shearer, Director of Recording at MGM, approached Robert Gottschalk, president of Panavision, with a proposal for the development of a new widescreen photographic system. Shearer asked Panavision to develop a system that would retain the widescreen format (either in a 65mm or 70mm negative), eliminate the distortion effects, allow for a high-quality transfer to 35 mm, and permit a non-anamorphic transfer to 16 mm and 35 mm projection prints. The success of Paramount Pictures' 1956 widescreen VistaVision Biblical epic The Ten Commandments convinced MGM that it should not develop its own widescreen system but rather should license the CinemaScope process from Fox and build on it. As it happened, someone remembered the old 1930 Fox Grandeur 70mm cameras. The first cameras used for MGM's new widescreen process were not new, rather they were those four original 1930 Mitchell FC 70mm cameras built for the forgotten 70 mm Fox Grandeur system a quarter century earlier. Panavision and the Mitchell Camera Company retooled these cameras to meet the 65mm specifications submitted by MGM. New anamorphic optics were built by Panavision which were very different from CinemaScope lenses which used optical ground glass elements set in a frame to create the anamorphic image. The problem with these lenses, however, was that whatever was in the center of the image tended to be stretched wider than whatever was at the edges. In close-up shots, this distortion was particularly noticeable. (Actors' faces became so noticeably distorted that the problem was known as the "anamorphic mumps".) Placement of a dioptre lens in front of the anamorphic lens could correct this problem, but itself created problems with focal length, required increased light on the set, and had other issues. To avoid the "anamorphic mumps", Panavision did not use an anamorphic lens. Its new system used two prisms set at angles to an anamorphic 70 mm camera lens to reduce the "anamorphic mumps" effect. This not only solved the problem, but led to a less clumsy, more easily focused camera that required less light. Panavision