The Dawn Of Technicolor


With so little two-color Technicolor surviving, it’s almost depressing to even talk about it, but the examples we do have are so fascinating to look at --- so unusual in the way they reproduce color --- that I for one can’t get enough of them. This trade ad from 1930 is misleading in that the images imply a fuller range of colors than the movies themselves could actually deliver, but this sort of puffery was only to be expected from a company still trying to establish an exhibitor (and public) demand for Technicolor. Golden Dawn, pictured here, is today only available in black-and-white, and most of the others mentioned in the ad are gone altogether. These creaky old shows, a lot of them musicals and operettas, would no doubt be hard to get through for any audience other than dedicated buffs, but I suspect that, with color, they’d spring to life readily enough. I still remember seeing Mystery Of The Wax Museum at a college showing in 1975, and what an absolute thrill it was to see this long-thought-lost horror film (in color too!) for the first time. TCM has shown a handful of two-color samplings over the years. It’s always fun to turn on the end of a feature and have some oddball MGM short turn up --- The Devil’s Cabaret comes to mind. That’s the one where a satanic Charles Middleton presides over a distinctly pre-code, muti-hued Hell. They’ve also shown Dixiana, pictured here with Bebe Daniels, though Song Of The West, our split-screen photo illustrating color vs. black-and-white, appears to be a lost film.