Three Strip Technicolor of 1934.

Swell stuff! It's amazing how well preserved these clips are, no fading, scratches or anything else (okay, save for some very slight colour fringing). The "shot yesterday" analogy just doesn't apply. I've seen the complete Service With A Smile short, and it's amazing to see all those cars when they were new.

And, is it just me or does that cop from the first clip looks and sounds like Glenn Miller?

 

fantastic!! very vibrant!

 

Didn't Howard Hughe's technicolor have a lot of blue in it? That second clip looks Howard Hughesly.

 

Forgotten Man, thanks for the links. Great stuff. Plus the Bing Crosby clip has the Cisco Kid himself as announcer.

happyfilmluvguy, you might be talking about two-strip Technicolor. For an example watch "Mystery of the Wax Museum" with Fay Wray.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

Great example of the two strip. happyfilmluvguy, is that the look you were thinking of for the Hughes stuff?
You can see how much more realistic and warmer three-strip is. It's funny that three-strip followed so closely on the heels of the two-strip films.

Thanks for the links again, Forgotten Man. You always have the perfect examples for whatever the topic.:eusa_clap

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

The Hughes process was Multicolor, which was a blue-orange system, and after Hughes got tired of it in 1932, the company went into other hands and evolved into Cinecolor -- the favorite of low-budget producers up into the early fifties. 2-Color Technicolor was brick red-moss green and couldn't reproduce blue at all -- quite a few of the home video releases of 2-color Tech films have been electroniclly tweaked to create blue where none actually existed. The "Rhapsody In Blue" sequence in "King of Jazz" is a good example of this -- when it was filmed, a sort of silvery greyish turquoise was as close to blue as they could get, but the VHS release had an electronically-simulated blue added.

For some reason, 2-color Technicolor reproduces relatively poorly on video -- projected onto a theatre screen gives a much better image. We showed "The Black Pirate" this past summer, and it looked stunning, greenish skies and all.

Great clips, FM!

 

Starlit Days

What fun! I'm pretty sure I saw the Uke Ike part previously on YT and that it was yanked. So dial this one up quickly before it's gone - in fact I'd say the same for all of these. People like this 30s esoterica in just enough numbers that it draws the attention of copyright holders who want it pulled.

PS: It's probably 1935 rather than '34 - I say that based on the tune Love Dropped In for Tea, and on Henry Busse's appearance. He lost a lot of weight that year in order to snag an important LA hotel gig.

 

I think so. I have this image in my mind with a more vibrant blue. Oh well. At least I got to see some of the King of Jazz. I was wondering about that movie.

 

LizzieMaine, I'm trying to picture (no pun intended) setting up a 2 strip or a 3 strip film in a projector. Is it a complicated process?

Are there actually 2 or 3 reels?

 

Hi Tony,

Technicolor is a really complex process. For more information about it see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor

Tony

 

Oh, another thing about Technicolor - Technicolor provided a "Technicolor Color Consultant" to the production company. This person fully understood the color rendering aspects of the process and worked with the production designer to optomize color rendition. Set colors and costume colors were chosen to make specific details "pop" and stand out.

Tony

 

All true - and until 1948 that Color Consultant was Natalie Kalmus, wife of Dr. Herbert Kalmus, Technicolor's inventor. You wanted Technicolor, Mrs. K came with it.

 

Well, I'm not Lizzie, but I can answer that one. Screening a Technicolor film is no different than screening an ordinary film, since it's only one strip of film; it's the camera that takes up three reels. The two-colour system used only one reel that alternately registered the red and green frames.

 

Actually that's Leo Carrillo, who played Cisco's side kick, Pancho. He had such a convincing Spanish accent in the show, but in real life had none at all, as you can tell.
I've spent the last 2 hours just looking at one after another of the film clips that are linked to this one. Wonderful stuff! There are 2 clips of Marilyn Miller, with whom I'm fascinated. "I Wanna Be Bad". Marlene Dietrich, etc.,etc.

 

A friend of mine worked for Technicolor for years, and now retired. I cannot remember what he did, but there is a facility next door to Universal Studios here in Southern California, that he originally worked at, until they moved to a different location. He told me they are about to move again across the street from Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, CA. He knows everything about projectors, film, and is a collector as well. Boxes of reels around his house. He screens films every once in a while. Very interesting to talk to, even if technical talk gives me a headache. :eusa_doh:

 

dhermann1, thanks for the correction. I should probably pay more attention to what I right.

Sincerely,
The Wolf