Going to the cinema today has become a multisensory experience as filmmakers push the boundaries of engaging audiences on a deeper, more immersive level, moving beyond the simple act of watching a film. With technology evolving, sight and sound have been the primary tools of cinematic storytelling; innovators have explored ways to incorporate other senses, particularly smell and touch, into the movie-going experience.
One film in particular, Scent of Mystery (1961), starring Denholm Elliot and Peter Lorre, attempted to create this sensory experience for the first time, calling it Smell-O-Vision. Designed to release scents into the theater at key moments in the plot, as the aromas were often integral to the story. with a character’s distinctive perfume or a villain’s American pipe tobacco providing important clues. Elizabeth Taylor had a brief, uncredited cameo role in the film Scent of Mystery. She played “The Woman of Mystery,” a character who is being pursued throughout the movie, and her identity is a key part of the plot’s resolution.
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Although Taylor’s fragrance for her character, Sally Kennedy, was trademarked and teased for commercial release, the fragrance was never brought to market, and thus, the scent was lost to the silver screen.
Six decades later, the Olfactory Art Keller gallery exhibition, Her Scent of Mystery, centered on the rediscovery and reimagining of Scent of Mystery, the long-lost perfume originally created for the 1960 Smell-O-Vision film of the same name, co-curated by scent historians Jas Brooks and Tammy Burnstock.
A Nadia Roden animated cel from the documentary film, “In Glorious Smell-O-Vision! The True Story of the Godfather of Scented Cinema” (2019)
Brooks and Burnstock partnered with acclaimed perfumer Marissa Zappas to reconstruct the scent using archival research, chemical analysis, and creative interpretation. Inspired by a surviving sample of Raoul Pantaleoni’s lost 60-ingredient formulation, the revived perfume captures what the film’s novelization described as “the girl at the far end of the rainbow:” an unattainable ideal glimpsed only in passing. The reconstructed fragrance is presented in a custom handblown flacon by glass artist Mark Eliott, accompanied by a sample of the original oxidized perfume used in the analysis.
The exhibition presents this reinterpretation alongside archival material that traces the perfume’s curious journey: from cinematic plot point to unrealized product. Highlights include illustrations by Nadia Roden showing the mechanics of the original Smell-O-Vision system, rare promotional items, and evidence suggesting the perfume may have been developed to be distributed by a major perfume house (Schiaparelli).
One original bottle, preserved by Susan Todd (daughter of producer Mike Todd Jr.), hints at a commercial vision that never came to be. Her Scent of Mystery also illuminates Taylor’s connection to the original film. More than a cameo, she was a major financial backer of Scent of Mystery and its Smell-O-Vision technology, reportedly investing between $1.5 and $2 million in the production. Her belief in the emotional power of fragrance would reemerge decades later with her own perfume line.
However, it’s worth noting that other films have used similar scent-based gimmicks. The most famous of these is the 1981 John Waters film Polyester, which used a “scratch-and-sniff” card system called “Odorama.” More recently, the 2011 film Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World also used a scratch-and-sniff card system, which it called “Aroma-Scope.”
In November 2017, the Hollywood Bowl presented a “live-to-film” event for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. As part of a “Smell-O-Rama” experience, audience members were given Scratch-N-Sniff Golden Tickets. These cards contained different scents that were cued to specific moments in the film, allowing viewers to smell along with the movie.
Decades before celebrity fragrances became mainstream, Scent of Mystery envisioned scent as both a storytelling tool and a brand extension. As Brooks and Burnstock suggest, this forgotten perfume marks a singular moment in cinematic history: when perfume, persona, and projection first collided on-screen.
The exhibition is on display at Olfactory Art Keller, located at 25A Henry Street in New York City, and will run through September 20.
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