Let's start with the fact that ONE-EYED JACKS was supposedly the last film actually shot in VistaVision, used throughout it's lengthy shoot in 1960, with a release date of late March of '61. This would have freed up one of the VistaVision cameras to be used as an expensive prop for MY GEISHA which would have been shooting in early '61, with a final release date of February of '62.
However, I do see Widescreen Museum does list MY SIX LOVES as the last film to be shot in VistaVision, released in 1963--
Inasmuch as MY GEISHA was photographed in the 35mm horizontal TECHNIRAMA process (engineered by the Technicolor Corporation) which is VERY similar to the horizontal vistaVision process (engineered by Paramount Pictures with input from the Technicolor Corporation), it is likely that the vistaVision camera on view is simply an extra Technirama-adapted vistaVision camera (perhaps borrowed from the first unit as a prop) which was otherwise used as a backup or second camera in the first unit shooting in Japan at various other times.....and one which hadn't gotten its painted vistaVision logo on the side changed yet.
As for MY SIX LOVES, several of my cameramen friends and I wondered about the vague vistaVision credits and the very late (in time) shooting of the otherwise insignificant movie with this process.
Eventually one of those friends found, at the Academy library, several 8x10 on-the-set stills of cast and crew on breaks during the shooting of MY SIX LOVES---standing beside a standard 35mm BNC camera set up.
So.....until someone finds a horizontal VistaVision negative of MY SIX LOVES in the vaults to prove otherwise.....I think the script book is closed on this film. MY SIX LOVES was NOT filmed in vistaVision.
(Incidentally......I shot all of the 2nd unit footage in the Brian Di Palma MISSION TO MARS on location in Vancouver in vistaVision, and seeing the dailies also projected in widescreen horizontal vistaVision was a spectacular experience. It was a wonderful process---but so was Technirama).
A VistaVision camera was up for auction. The text says: "This VistaVision #29 camera shot the very last film shot in VistaVision: Debbie Reynolds’ My Six Loves (1963)."
The picture of the camera is a hyperlink to the catalog, providing a larger higher quality image. The text also says that the camera comes with a letter of provenance from one Roy H. Wagner, ASC.
So, the plot may have thickened, or this may be a source of the legend.
