The studios used to do all sorts of weird things to avoid even letterboxing opening/closing credits at times. Some films had their credits totally redone with video generated titles for example.

I have a really old Laserdisc of The Black Hole that is squeezed for the entire film! (Ernest Borgnine was never so thin!) You can actually unsqueeze this and it looks good on a 16:9 television, although still cropped a bit.

Of course later there were the "squeeze" LD's that mostly came out in Japan, that gave your lonely 1990's widescreen set something interesting to do. If only there was a squeeze LD of THX in existence.