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I think it is a quixotic endeavour to believe we can undo the exigencies of post war publishing and produce now the book Tolkien would have wanted fifty years ago. It is revisionary history.
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Bb,
You have said it very well in just a few words. Taken as a whole, I do not see the string of these revisions, even those dating from 1974 on, as "marring" Tolkien's core text or meaning. But neither do I see them as a great restoration of his original vision. That can never be totally captured.
As to whether the publishers would have come out with these books without the movie, I am fairly certain they would have, even lacking PJ. From the sixties onward, Unwin, Harper, and Houghton Mifflin (to say nothing of a host of others like Easton, the Guild, and the Folio Society) periodically issue new "deluxe" or special commemorative editions, many with slipcovers, for both Hobbit and LotR and even now for HoMe. I have several, for example, commemorating the 25th and 50th anniversary of the Hobbit when there were no thoughts of any movie. It's possible the print run would have been smaller--1,500 instead of 2,500--but I do think the publishers would mark this occasion just as they've marked others in the history of the book, as collectors scamper to snarf them up.
As you may be able to tell, I have caught a bad case of the "collecting bug".
