The Fedora Chronicles - The Golden Age Of Hollywood: The Glory Of Color

The Glory of Colour

The Last Days of Pompeii (1926) (Pathecolor process)

When early films were shown in 1896 colour films were exhibited too. They were coloured by hand frame by frame : a slow and intricate process. The increasing length of films and the demand for prints soon made this impractical.

The Pathecolor stencil process originated in 1905 had long been in use for colouring postcards. It used a series of prints one for each colour in the film. Many films were bathed in dye to provide a general wash of colour. This helped promote a general mood : blue for night, red for fire, green for landscapes.

George Albert Smith an English pioneer developed the Kinemacolor process in 1906 which used red and green filters on a rotating disc in front of the film.

In 1915 the Technicolor company was founded by Herbert Kalmus, D.F.Comstock and W.Westcott. Films either completely or partly in the two colour Technicolor process included The Ten Commandments (1923), Ben Hur (1925), Douglas Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926) and the early sound musicals : The Broadway Melody, On with the Show and GoldDiggers of Broadway (all 1929).

Ben Hur (1925)

Walt Disney was the first to use three colour Technicolor in the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees (1932) before the first feature length film in the process : Becky Sharp (1934) directed by Rouben Mamoulian. The colours and textures of natural settings were first captured in Technicolor in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). Most of the early colour films have been forgottten because they were mainly box office disasters. The Dancing Pirate (1936) the first three-colour Technicolor musical, The Garden of Allah (1937) and God's Country and the Woman (1938) were typical box office disappointments for the new technology.

David O' Selznick who produced The Garden of Allah (1936) hit back with two classic colour films : A Star Is Born (1937) and Nothing Sacred (1937). Warner Brothers first big Technicolor picture was The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), despite being a superb film with plenty of swashbuckling action it failed to recoup its substantial cost of $1.5 million.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) was MGM's most expensive film up to that time and wasn't a commercial success on its original release. This didn't encourage the biggest studio in Hollywood to change its attitude that "if our films make more money in black and white what do we need colour for?" even though the monetary bonanza of Gone with the Wind (1939) was just around the corner.

Gone with the Wind (1939)

20th Century Fox had a more positive attitude and averaged five or six colour films a year in the late 30s and early 40s. This was the first real commitment to colour by any of the major studios. It wasn't till the 50s that a substantial move into colour occurred. Colour was perceived as an important weapon in the battle against Television, in the long run it was probably the most successful one.