ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. Happy New Year, beautiful nerds. It is now the impossibly futuristic sounding 2025, and we are ringing in the new year with our 20th edition of Mini-Stories, featuring tales about Cold War neon signs, Japanese fire escapes, the marvels of Smell-O-Vision, and more. But first, we must wake up from our holiday slumber. Brace yourselves.
[ALARM CLOCK]
ROMAN MARS: I live in a house with seven other people. I’m going to let that sink in for a second. That is a lot of humans under one roof with a lot of different schedules, which means a lot of alarms going off anywhere from 6am to–I don’t know–10am. There’s the one that’s like–
[CHIMES]
ROMAN MARS: But it goes for, like, an hour because it doesn’t actually wake anyone up. And then, the one that really, really gets me is the duck.
[QUACKING]
ROMAN MARS: Now, everyone has their own way of waking up. Personally, I don’t really need an alarm because the fear, dread, and obligation of middle age keeps my consciousness right at the edge of alert at all times. But in my house, this morning chorus of quacks and bird songs exists because almost everyone sets their alarms early, often much earlier than they actually need to get up. And that’s because they are building in time to abuse the worst feature of their alarm, a feature so cursed and diabolical that it defeats the very purpose of any alarm. I’m talking, of course, about the snooze button.
ROMAN MARS: The snooze button is a bad solution to a conundrum that’s existed for millennia. People need to sleep, but they also have things to do. In ancient Greece, Plato jolted himself out of bed with a system where a set amount of water slowly dripped into an airtight pot until the pressure was so high it would let out a piercing sound, kind of like a teapot. And during the Industrial Revolution, some towns had gigantic whistles which summoned workers to the factory. Around the same time, a whole job existed for people who would go around knocking on doors and windows to wake people up. But once the alarm clock entered the household with sounds like this–
[1920’S WESTCLOX BIG BEN DELUX ALARM CLOCK]
ROMAN MARS: And this–
[WESTCLOX 15396 CLASSIC TWIN BELL WIND UP ALARM CLOCK]
ROMAN MARS: A backlash was inevitable. It was only a matter of time.
GE TELECHRON AD: You can sleep soundly depending upon the snooz alarm clock, the GE Telechron! [SINGING] It wakes you each morning and then lets you snooze, continues to wake you just as you choose…
ROMAN MARS: In 1956, GE invented the world’s first alarm clock with a snooze button. On top of the clock, there was a big old fat bar labelled “Snooz”. That’s S-N-O-O-Z. And it could not be missed. One smack of the clock, and presto. You just bought yourself a little more sleep.
GE TELECHRON AD: [SINGING] Year after year, I stay right by your bed. I waken you promptly. A tap on my head will let you snooze longer, my face lights up, too. By day or by night, I’m so easy to mute. So visit your General Electric…
ROMAN MARS: The first snooz alarm clocks were built to let you snooze for 10 to 15 minutes. But mass production required some standardization. In the 1950s, a double digit snooze was too complicated to program into the gears of a clock at scale, so GE cut as close as they could with nine minutes. A nine-minute snooze was the choice. After millennia of trying to get ourselves out of bed at a certain time, the snooz alarm dared to ask, “Do you really have to get up right now?” And across the country, people more or less said, “No, I don’t.” The clock was a major hit. And as technology improved, a few competitors ended up offering alternatives to the nine-minutes snooze, like the Westclox Drowse alarm clock…
WESTCLOX DROWSE AD: Do I want five minutes more sleep or ten? Five.
ROMAN MARS: The Westclox alarm clock gave people the option of snoozing two different amounts of time, depending on if you hit the “Drowse” button on the left side or the right side.
WESTCLOX DROWSE AD: Gee, I could use 10 minutes this time. Man, you just can’t oversleep with this new Westclox…
ROMAN MARS: The Drowse button didn’t have that sweet, sweet simplicity. Nobody wants to wake up and think about how much longer they want to sleep. People just want to sleep more. And the snooze button gave us that. Or at least, that’s what we thought. Despite the fact that many of our phones are still factory preset to snooze for nine minutes, today we all know deep down that the snooze button doesn’t really give us meaningful sleep. And it also doesn’t let us rise. Instead, it catches us at our weakest moment, when we are least capable of making decisions, when it’s far easier to slap a button than to put two feet on the ground. In the end, the key to waking up might just rest in not giving yourself any other options. And the key to more sleep? Let me know when someone figures that out.
I’m here with 99PI editor Kelly Prime for a rare appearance on-mic. So, Kelly, what do you have for me today?
KELLY PRIME: Hi, Roman. So, I want you to imagine this very classic Americana neon scene.
ROMAN MARS: Okay.
KELLY PRIME: So, like, if you imagine pictures of Broadway or vintage Las Vegas, the street just lit up with signs sort of competing for your attention… Can you picture that?
ROMAN MARS: Absolutely. I can picture that.
KELLY PRIME: Okay, great, because that’s not what I’m talking about.
ROMAN MARS: Okay. Well, I’ll erase that from my mind. Okay.
KELLY PRIME: That’s the neon that you and I are probably more familiar with, but I want to tell you a story about a different neon aesthetic. It’s one that was created in the Eastern Bloc right in the middle of the Cold War. And they basically took that flashy, commercial, Americana style of neon, and they twisted it to make this new socialist style that’s completely unique to this specific place at this specific moment of history.
ROMAN MARS: Huh. Okay. Tell me more about it.
KELLY PRIME: So, the story starts in the mid ’50s, about a decade into communism in the Eastern Bloc. At this point, people were starting to push back to rebel. And so Soviet leaders got together and they were like, “We have to work out a plan to quell some of this political unrest.” And their plan was basically neon. [LAUGHS] It was called “Neonization.” It was the state sponsored program.
ROMAN MARS: Okay. I’m in. Tell me more.
KELLY PRIME: Okay, Neonization was a government program meant to push the idea of… a brighter future.
ROMAN MARS: [CHUCKLES] Since this is your first time recording with me, I will allow you that one once. But another one of those, and I’m pulling the plug.
KELLY PRIME: We’ll see. The concept was like, “Okay, things are bleak. We get that. But shh, don’t even worry about it. Look at these lights!”
DAVID HILL: So, what they decided to do was change the landscape, turn things around, brighten up everything…
KELLY PRIME: That’s David Hill. He’s the director of the Neon Museum in Warsaw, which is dedicated to documenting and preserving Cold War era neon signs.
DAVID HILL: The proponents certainly argued, “This will placate the public. This will bamboozle them. This will make people happy again.”
ROMAN MARS: So rather than provide things–substantive things–in their lives to actually make people happy, they just decided to put lights in front of them.
KELLY PRIME: Exactly. Yeah. Great use of resources.
ROMAN MARS: Okay. Okay. And so why neon specifically? Why not murals or–I don’t know–anything else?
KELLY PRIME: So, the thing is that Eastern Europe actually had a history with neon, and this was especially true of Warsaw. So, before World War II, Warsaw had been just, like, another modern European capital with everything that entailed, including bright, shiny lights.
DAVID HILL: It was a shimmering pearl. It was very famous for its neon signs, from 1926 onwards. So it had this connection to neon.
KELLY PRIME: But the war just basically destroyed all of them. As you can imagine, these very delicate glass tubes would not fare well in all the bombings that happened. But even though they were gone, people in Warsaw still had a really positive association with them. It really represented modernity and just generally prosperity, like, before things were destroyed. So, the socialist government knew that, and they figured they could sort of leverage that association to foster goodwill towards the current regime.
ROMAN MARS: So, the communist government came up with this plan to neonize the city to make everyone happy. So, what’s step one in this process? Like, how do they start?
KELLY PRIME: So, one of the first things the government did was to hire some of the best artists in the nation. And, like, some of these people actually were already talented neon artists and electricians. But many of them weren’t. These were groundbreaking visual artists who were used to working on paper and canvas. They didn’t necessarily have any pre-existing experience working with neon. So, the only thing that was really limiting their imagination was the bounds of the material.
DAVID HILL: They would just have a piece of cardboard and just draw lines all over it and then later realize, “Well, that that’s not really possible. We can’t make that. It’s too zigzaggy or…” You know whatever the restrictions were.
ROMAN MARS: Okay, so given that–given that their imagination is sort of wild and is unfettered by the constraints of neon but there are actual physical constraints of building something in neon–what exactly did the artists end up making?
KELLY PRIME: I’m so glad you asked because I’ve been very into these since I discovered them. And I think the best way to go about it is just to show you some examples. So, the first one I’m about to ask you to look at was made to decorate a flower shop. So, just describe what you’re seeing here.
ROMAN MARS: So, I’m seeing very bright neon. And it’s a green kind of vine. Lots of flowers of a couple of different colors. And the flower petals are not uniform. They’re kind of scribbly?
KELLY PRIME: Exactly. They’re, like, scribbly. It looks like a sketch pad–like someone has been doodling but on an entire building with neon.
DAVID HILL: This was designed by a graphic artist, Zofia Kaszubska now Koshubska. So, she created this as a young graphic designer for a pavilion that sold basically carnations and roses. Nothing fancy there, except the building was covered in butterflies and flowers and grass. It was enormous. It went on for meters. We’re talking 20, 30 meters.
ROMAN MARS: Oh yeah, so these are big.
KELLY PRIME: They’re huge. These are huge. So, they’re not like a Budweiser sign hanging in the window of a bar. They are not that.
ROMAN MARS: 20, 30 meters. That’s a hundred feet of squiggly flowers.
KELLY PRIME: It’s crazy.
ROMAN MARS: Yeah.
KELLY PRIME: So, the next one I want to show you is actually… The scale is not the same, but it is one of my favorites. It’s a pink mermaid, and she’s holding up a sword and shield. The mermaid with the sword and shield is the symbol of the city of Warsaw. And she’s hovering over an open book.
DAVID HILL: Wherever you saw this beautiful pink mermaid sitting on an open book, she would denote your public library. So, “Bibliotheca Publicina.” Wonderful. So, you’d see this symbol all over the place in Warsaw.
ROMAN MARS: That’s so cool. This thing is beautiful. It’s hard to imagine neon over municipal buildings.
KELLY PRIME: Exactly.
ROMAN MARS: I was in Saugerties, New York, like, literally yesterday. And there was a pink, neon framing of this old industrial bridge. And I was just mesmerized by that thing. And just that sort of juxtaposition of neon and, you know, pretty mundane municipal design and decay was lovely. It was a revelation to me. I loved it.
KELLY PRIME: Yeah, I want more of that. And that was very much the thing here–very much the thing. By the late ’60s, Warsaw had hundreds of thousands of these signs across the city. But what’s really striking to me is the fact that all of these neon signs had this cohesiveness to them. You know, if you cast your mind to that, again, American scene of a street covered in neon, what you’re going to see is a big sort of mishmash of color. But in Poland, that was not at all the case.
DAVID HILL: We’re looking at something as a very well thought out, coherent project. And I think that delivered a slightly different aesthetic–a different feeling–as if, my God, the city is a city of neon. It’s a city of light. And it all seems to work together. It all seems to be harmonious.
KELLY PRIME: And a big reason for that is the fact that this Neonization process was run by the state. There was actually a central body that commissioned and signed off on every single sign.
ROMAN MARS: You’d think they’d have better things to do.
KELLY PRIME: Yeah. No, I guess not. And all these signs were specifically designed to complement each other. So, no one piece was approved unless it fit into the style of the whole.
DAVID HILL: You can see how seriously the authorities took this, in that eventually the chief city architect’s title was abolished and it became the “chief city graphic designer.” So, there was less importance on architecture and more placed on Neonization and the urban aesthetic–the design.
ROMAN MARS: So, after all this Neonization, Warsaw is covered in neon, but did their ultimate goal actually bear fruit? I mean, were people actually happier? You know, did they convince the people of Poland that everything was okay?
KELLY PRIME: Well, first of all, it’s hard to say how people in Poland felt about Neonization in general. Certainly the signs were really beautiful, and it’s easy to appreciate their beauty. But it’s also safe to say that this tricked exactly no one into thinking that, you know, life under communism was really great. By the early ’80s, things had in fact gotten so bad that the socialist government instituted martial law. And that really took a toll on Warsaw’s neons.
DAVID HILL: These neon signs were switched off. The authorities said, “Well, you don’t need them. You’re under house arrest. Why would you want to go out in the evening?” So, they were basically switched off. And they were really the first rather obvious victims of this new political revolution that brought in democracy.
KELLY PRIME: And what happened next you probably know. Communism in the Eastern Bloc didn’t last. In 1989, Poland’s communist state was officially replaced by a new democratic government. And when that happened, that was really the end for Warsaw’s Neons.
DAVID HILL: The new democratic Polish government looked at the symbols from this period of occupation, as they saw it, and neon was the obvious target. And so, they set about destroying as many neon signs as they could in what they called the Great Recycling Scheme, rather quaintly. And we lost so many neons.
ROMAN MARS: Wow, the Great Recycling Scheme is quite a euphemism.
KELLY PRIME: Yeah, people were paid to go out into the city, find the neon signs, and destroy them.
ROMAN MARS: So, are any of the original signs left up? I mean, those pictures you showed me–are those contemporary or were all the signs destroyed?
KELLY PRIME: So, those pictures I showed you are contemporary. Those are photos of some of the few signs that did manage to survive all this time. But most of Warsaw’s neons were either broken or taken down. And eventually the remnants of Neonization just kind of faded into the backdrop of the city rather than being what they once were, which is, you know, a focal point of it. But I will say that, in the last 20 or so years, there has been renewed interest among the residents of Warsaw in those signs and their history.
DAVID HILL: I do have some really good news, and that is that Warsaw is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. Neonization has returned.
KELLY PRIME: Today, people come from around the world to see what’s left of Warsaw’s neons. And David says that there are now new neon signs all over Warsaw, and some of them are directly referencing the work of Poland’s great neon artists.
DAVID HILL: You see these fantastic places that young people hang out. And you look and you think, “I’ve seen that before. That’s a neon design by Jan Moharski, this famous Neonizer and Polish poster artist.” And there it is on the streets of Warsaw, reinvented for the modern age–reinvented for the young people.
ROMAN MARS: Well, thank you, Kelly.
KELLY PRIME: Thanks, Roman.
ROMAN MARS: And if you’d like to see some examples of these Polish neon signs, we’ll have some pictures on our website.
Coming up, our digital director, Kurt Kohlstedt, figures out how to escape from a burning building in Japan–news you can use. And our pal, Gillian Jacobs, talks to us about movies you can smell. That’s after the break.
We are back with digital director Kurt Kohlstedt. Kurt, what do you have for us?
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Yeah, so I wanted to tell you about this small design element that I first encountered in Tokyo. I was walking around, and I started to notice these red stickers that were shaped like perfect equilateral triangles and stuck to the windows of a bunch of different buildings. Here’s a picture to show you what I’m talking about.
ROMAN MARS: Okay. So, let’s see. Yes, it’s a red triangle–the tip pointing down–and it’s centered right in the middle of every window that I see. Like, it doesn’t seem accidental or put on by the people, you know, haphazardly on the inside.
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Right, there’s a certain consistency to it. There’s one upside down red triangle every couple of windows. And then, you know, once I noticed them, I started to see these stickers everywhere–not just in Tokyo but then later in Osaka and Kobe and Kyoto…
ROMAN MARS: You know, now that I’ve seen these pictures, I have to admit, I didn’t see these when I was in Japan. So, what’s up with all these stickers?
KURT KOHLSTEDT: So they’re called “fire department access stickers.” And you shouldn’t feel too bad about missing them. It really helped that I had one smack dab in the middle of my first hotel room window in Tokyo. So, I did some research and I found out that, in an emergency, the red triangles indicate to firefighters where to lean their ladders. And then on the inside, they have explanatory text that tells people in the building where they should go and expect to find rescue.
ROMAN MARS: Do the triangles indicate that the windows are somehow different or that they’re just the gathering point of a rescuer meeting rescuee?
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Yeah, so I looked into that. And some of what I read indicated that these windows could be opened more easily, either by firefighters from the outside or people from the inside. And one account indicated that they might be built out of more breakable glass, too, so that you can shatter them in an emergency. And then I noticed, under my window in my hotel room, that there was this metal stick, which could be used. It clearly wasn’t there to open the window. I got to wondering, “Is that so that I can smash the window?” And I confess I did not test the theory. And so I cannot confirm if that’s why the stick was there.
ROMAN MARS: Well, regardless of whether these arrows are indicators of any structural or physical difference about these windows, this is a place where you can go to get out of the building in an emergency.
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Yeah, exactly. It’s a meeting point.
ROMAN MARS: I guess I’m just kind of surprised that I missed these stickers. Like, are they only on certain kinds of buildings, or are they just all kind of high up?
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Well, yeah, you’re on the right track there. Height is the key determinant because, if you think about it, smaller buildings, including houses that only have a story or two, obviously wouldn’t need these at all. And on taller buildings, they’d only be needed within a certain height range because, of course, if a window is too high to be reached by a firefighter ladder, it would be dark to encourage people to congregate there, frankly.
ROMAN MARS: I see. There’s only a narrow band where these are functional. They have to be high enough that you wouldn’t just get out by yourself on the first floor or second floor but low enough that it’d be possible for a firefighter’s ladder to reach you.
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Yeah, exactly. And from the regulation accounts that I was reading–of course in translation and secondary sources–it appears that It’s about 100 feet where these things cap out.
ROMAN MARS: Okay, so that’s the reason why I missed them. It’s within 20 feet to 100 feet.
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Totally. And they’re really, I mean, quite small. So, unless you’re looking for them, they’re easy to miss, too, right? And, you know, this actually all kind of led me back to this little journey of discovery that I took when we first met, which was over a decade ago now, if you can believe it.
ROMAN MARS: I mean, I can’t believe it. It has been a while. I can’t imagine the show before you, so it’s one of those things. So, what did it remind you of, though?
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Well, we had this lunch together in Oakland, and we were walking around. And you pointed out this little black box next to a building entrance and then another and another and so on. And they all had these little, red, reflective stripes.
ROMAN MARS: And those are, of course, Knox Boxes, which we’ve talked about a couple of times. And if you don’t remember those episodes or didn’t read the book that Kurt and I coauthored, those contain a set of keys for the building. And then all those Knox Boxes are held by firefighters. So, if there is a crisis, they can open up this box and therefore have all the keys to the building and then get in and out more easily.
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Yeah, exactly. And so, you were there for me 10 years ago, drawing my attention to something and then filling in the backstory. So, this is me returning the favor.
ROMAN MARS: Well, that was fun, Kurt. Thank you so much.
KURT KOHLSTEDT: Yeah. Thank you, Roman.
ROMAN MARS: Up next is actor and frequent 99PI contributor, Gillian Jacobs. Hey, Gillian. Welcome back.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Thanks so much for having me, Roman.
ROMAN MARS: It’s great to have you back. So, what do you have for us today?
GILLIAN JACOBS: Well, I wanted to talk about a very particular and peculiar movie. Roman, have you ever seen the film Scent of Mystery?
ROMAN MARS: No, but I like the way you say Scent of Mystery.
GILLIAN JACOBS: I feel like it can only be said like that.
ROMAN MARS: So, tell me more about Scent of Mystery.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Well, no judgment for never having heard of it because it’s a very obscure movie from 1960. But as you may be able to deduce, it is a mystery film about a mysterious woman in danger. It has Peter Lorre, wine barrels, Spain, bad Spanish…
SCENT OF MYSTERY: Señor, uh… Por favor, uh… Young lady, uh… In a big hat! ¡Mucho sombrero! ¿Dónde?
GILLIAN JACOBS: The reason I want to talk to you about it today is because my friend Joan saw it when it first came out in theaters and is still talking about it because of something unique about Scent of Mystery.
GILLIAN JACOBS: So what do you remember about that day and about the movie?
JOAN: Okay. So much about the movie. I think we got popcorn because, you know, this was a big event for us to go downtown.
GILLIAN JACOBS: So, back in 1960, when Scent of Mystery first premiered, Joan was a kid living in Chicago. And it turns out she and her siblings were part of a very small group of moviegoers who got to see it exhibited in its full, intended experience, which was demonstrated by this one scene in particular.
JOAN: So, all of a sudden, as I’m sitting there, the main character who… Some chase thing is going on. And the main character all of a sudden goes into a flower market. And this gush of sweet smell comes in our face. And neither of us can breathe. And, of course, I had to rush over and get away from the smell.
ROMAN MARS: A gush of sweet smell. I’m not sure what part of that phrase I find the most objectionable. What kind of smell are we talking about here?
GILLIAN JACOBS: So, as it turns out, what Joan was experiencing in that movie theater was Smell-O-Vision. Roman, what do you know about Smell-O-Vision?
ROMAN MARS: I mean, not much other than the name. I’m sure it has something to do with the technology that allows you to smell a movie as you’re watching it. But I didn’t think there was much more to it than that.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Oh, Roman, buckle up. It was the brainchild of American film producer, Mike Todd Jr. And Mike Todd Jr. was the son of, you guessed it, Mike Todd Sr., who was a hugely successful theatrical impresario and husband of Elizabeth Taylor.
ROMAN MARS: Oh, okay. Wow.
GILLIAN JACOBS: So, Mike Todd Sr. was this big ideas guy who loved gimmicks and doing things on a grand scale, like his hit, Oscar-winning film, Around the World in 80 Days. It was chock-full of cameos and stars and, as you could guess, shot around the world. But then, Mike Todd Sr. tragically died in a plane crash in 1958, leaving his son, Mike Jr., to run his production company when he was only 28 years old. And Mike Todd Jr. wanted to continue his father’s legacy of spectacle. And in this moment of uncertainty, he remembered this technology that his father was intrigued by and had actually considered implementing in Around the World in 80 Days–this thing called Smell Brain.
ROMAN MARS: That needs some work.
GILLIAN JACOBS: I know. So, Smell Brain was this device invented by an Austrian osmologist named Hans Lobb. And it was essentially a conveyor belt full of vials containing smell cues. And when prompted, the Smell Brain would pump the scent cue to each seat in the theater individually, using a series of tubes.
ROMAN MARS: So, it was like this synced smell experience in matching what it was on the screen?
GILLIAN JACOBS: Exactly. Mike Todd Jr. remembered the Smell Brain and Lobb and thought, “Okay, I’m going to invest all of my money and the resources from my dad’s production company because what moviegoers really want is to smell the movies.” And this is with no market testing to support it–just the firm belief people would be so excited by the idea of sniffing stuff while watching a movie that they would rush to theaters.
ROMAN MARS: Well, history is made by dreamers, so… Go for it.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Absolutely. Mike Todd–he’s a marketing guy, so he decides to rebrand Smell Brain with a more attention-grabbing name: Smell-O-Vision. And he decided the way to debut this Smell-O-Vision technology was to produce and self-finance the first ever and only film made with the smell cues in mind during production, Scent of Mystery.
ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Yeah. The title is extremely on the nose.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Wah wah!
ROMAN MARS: Oh, sorry. I actually didn’t mean that. Okay. So, what was different about the film Scent of Mystery from other films? Like, like how did it showcase the Smell-O-Vision technology?
GILLIAN JACOBS: Oh, so deploying scents in the movie-watching experience actually goes as far back as the silent era. So, maybe a theater would show a film that had a scene at the Rose Bowl. And the theater owner would put a cotton ball soaked with rose oil in front of a fan to enhance that experience for the audience.
ROMAN MARS: So, some audiences got to experience the smell of movies before they even heard them?
GILLIAN JACOBS: Yes, but in those pre-Smell-O-Vision experiences, the smell cues were created by the theater owners and not necessarily how the filmmaker intended the movie to be experienced. Smell-O-Vision and Scent of Mystery were going to be different because it was the first time the scents were going to be intentionally embedded into the production of the film and the smells would be critical to the plot.
ROMAN MARS: So, how does a smell-driven plot even work?
GILLIAN JACOBS: Okay, so, like I mentioned before, there is a mysterious woman character, and everyone’s trying to figure out who this mysterious woman is. And every time you see this mysterious woman, you would smell her perfume. So, the smell of the perfume was pumped into the audience. And then that smell is key to figuring out her identity.
SCENT OF MYSTERY: And you thought there might’ve been one other perfume sense of mystery, magnifique. Irresistible…
GILLIAN JACOBS: In that scene that you just heard, you would actually smell the perfume that you saw on screen. But, dear listeners, you’re just going to have to use your imagination. Sorry. So, Mike Dodd Jr. was so convinced that Smell-O-Vision was going to revolutionize cinema that he marketed it as a seismic advancement. Ads for the movie read, “First, they moved. Then, they talked. Now, they smell.” Anyway, to really try and get butts in the seats, Mike Todd Jr. convinced his stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor, to appear as the aforementioned mysterious woman. And Eddie Fisher, who was Elizabeth Taylor’s then husband, even contributed the title track to the film, which actually did really well.
EDDIE FISHER: [SINGING] A strange excitement in the air. A fragrant perfume lingers there. Why does the lady always wear the scent of mystery?
ROMAN MARS: I’m guessing–since you mentioned that the Scent of Mystery was the first and only Smell-O-Vision film–the technology behind Smell-O-Vision was not a raging success.
GILLIAN JACOBS: No, not at all. Sadly, no. According to audiences at the time, including my friend Joan, the technology didn’t really work all that great.
JOAN: I think I spent the entire time going, “I don’t smell anything. I don’t smell– Do I smell anything? I don’t smell anything.” And we thought the whole thing was kind of a bust.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Some of the smells were too strong, sometimes the smells came late, sometimes you couldn’t smell anything at all, and it cost a ton of money to install. So, there were only three theaters in the United States running it in full Smell-O-Vision. So, the film flopped and lost a ton of money. They later tried to recoup some of their losses by rereleasing the film under the title Holiday in Spain, sans Smell-O-Vision. I tried to watch it for journalism, but it was not good. The film, Scent of Mystery, and the name Smell-O-Vision became a joke in Hollywood–just another goofy gimmick that didn’t work.
ROMAN MARS: In hindsight, that seems inevitable. But I imagine, in the moment, that still felt sad to, you know… Everyone likes innovation and to move things forward.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Absolutely! And to that point, even though Smell-O-Vision died, the idea of it lived on in different forms. In 1981, John Waters directed a film called Polyester. For that, he produced scratch and sniff. And you would get a cue on screen when to, you know, scratch your smell cue, um, which allowed you to do the Smell-O-Vision in a more low-tech way. Spy Kids 4? Father of children, Roman, have you watched Spy Kids 4?
ROMAN MARS: I don’t know about 4, but I’ve certainly seen a couple of them.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Okay, well, you missed out because Spy Kids 4 did their own scratch and sniff cards called Aroma-scope. And recently, companies like iSmell and OPhone have tried to introduce smells into computing mobile phones. And the latest and greatest is smells for video games. And it seems like people will never let go of the dream of smelling their media content.
ROMAN MARS: You know, I’ve been through different iterations of this, where, like, 3D has come and gone in different ways. And I just feel like mostly we’ve come to the idealized form–big screen, a bunch of people in a dark movie theater looking at it… Like, to me, that doesn’t really need to be improved very much. But are you craving more, Gillian?
GILLIAN JACOBS: I’m not craving smells. I’ll say that.
ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHS] Fair enough. Thank you so much.
GILLIAN JACOBS: Thank you.
ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Jayson De Leon, Kelly Prime, Kurt Kohlstedt, Gillian Jacobs, and Vivian Le. Edited by Christopher Johnson and Neena Pathak. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real and George Langford.
Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Emmett FitzGerald, Gabriella Gladney, Lasha Madan, Jeyca Medina Gleason, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.
We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California. You can now find us on the social media site BlueSky. We are having some fun there. You can also connect with 5,000 other 99PI fans on our Discord server, where we talk about The Power Broker, architecture, and all kinds of fun stuff. There’s a link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.
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