Tweet Films that should have been shot in color

Hello All
I am new to this site so forgive me if this topic has been discussed before-Every time that I watch MGM's Ziegfeld Girl -1941-it just kills me that this film was not shot in Technicolor-I know that it was a costly process and it seems that MGM wasn't too enthused about color since they only released three color films in 1941.The success of the 20th Cent Fox Betty Grable Technicolor musicals was just starting so ZGirl might have just been ahead of the curve.....it is a shame. Any other films come to mind that scream for color????

Were it not for the onset of WWII, "How Green Was My Valley" was planned as Fox's answer to "Gone with the Wind," with an epic runtime, and shot in technicolor on location in Wales. Seeing what Ford did with "The Quiet Man" a decade later, I think the original result would've equaled, if not surpassed what was ultimately produced

However: the magnificent wedding scene with it's finally, devastating shot, would not have worked in color I don't think. So I'm torn...

The show numbers in Ziegfield scream for color, but perhaps somewhat less so the remainder of the picture. But every scene in Marie Antoinette shouts, yells, pitches a tantrum for it...considering, especially, MGM's extravagantly expensive (& probably unnecessary) effort to replicate down to the last stitch those 18th C. costumes.

The show numbers in Ziegfield scream for color, but perhaps somewhat less so the remainder of the picture. But every scene in Marie Antoinette shouts, yells, pitches a tantrum for it...considering, especially, MGM's extravagantly expensive (& probably unnecessary) effort to replicate down to the last stitch those 18th C. costumes.

I understand that MARIE ANTOINETTE (1938) was in fact planned for Technicolor, the costumes and sets were painstakingly color coordinated. At the last minute a decision was made to switch to b/w. Here's an original color herald suggesting what might have been:


Another MGM epic, MAYTIME (1937) actually began filming in Technicolor but was halted due to the death of Irving Thalberg in Sept 1936. When filming resumed, a number of script and cast changes had been made including the substitution of John Barrymore for Paul Lukas. Alas, Technicolor was also replaced by b/w. I have a suspicion that a few color scenes were used (in b/w of course) in the montage scene showing the years going by and MacDonald's arrival in NY.

The Astaire/Rogers CAREFREE (1938) was planned for a Technicolor sequence for the "I Used To Be Color Blind" sequence. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) began filming in color and some color footage survives but it may be home movies taken on the set rather than production footage. Karloff is green in this footage but then that was the skin color of choice for lobby cards:


I don't know whether Laurel & Hardy's BABES IN TOYLAND (1934) was planned for color but for me it is the most persistent example of a film that screams out for color. It is available in a colorized version and it's not bad as this process goes.

Concerning a Ziegfeld Girl I do have a few pages of a kodachrome photo spread that were featured in I believe Look magazine as prelease publicity-the shots are of the Minnie From Trinadad number and the costumes are wonderful. Yes Marie A would have be great in color especially with a young Ty Power. Garbo in Camille is another what if example-there were kodachomes taken on that film as well. It is interesting to think what direction MGM would have taken had Thalberg lived.....
I know that SHE was planned in color as well as Last Days of Pomeii.

Re MARIE A, at least Ty Power got the Technicolor treatment the following year in JESSE JAMES (1939). Other MA stars were not so fortunate, especially Shearer.

1949's "Prince Of Foxes" should have been released in color. This picture's black and white print quality looks like scenes from the film were originally shot in color. Leon Shamroy, the movie's Director of Photography, won an Oscar for color photography for 1942's "The Black Swan," also starring Tyrone Power. Six of Shamroy's previous seven DP assignments at 20th Century Fox were for Technicolor movies, according to IMDb. The one exception, 1947's "Daisy Kenyon," was a borderline film noir movie that glossy Technicolor could have hurt. Chances are, studio boss Zanuck analyzed the cost versus box office benefit of releasing "Prince Of Foxes" in Technicolor and decided completing the movie in color was a bad business move. So "Prince Of Foxes" ended up a black and white production.

Yankee Doodle Dandy should've been in color instead of Cagney's Captains of the Clouds. You can see the Marie Antoinette costumes in color in Ice Follies of 1939. Extras wearing the outfits are used as a kind of human backdrop during the ice skating finale.

Other MA stars were not so fortunate, especially Shearer.

That unfortunate fact I'd never stopped to consider--the Queen of the (Biggest) Lot never photographed in color, even a decade after its introduction. I don't think color would have made The Women a better picture (because, as far as I'm concerned, it's so good it's hard to imagine any improvement), but it might have been interesting to compare the looks of Norma & Joan, & all the rest, side by side in "glorious Technicolor." Color certainly didn't improve the remake.

This topic made me think of the reverse...imagine GWTW in black and white? Unthinkable.

Re Bob Fells comments on MAYTIME:
I was working in MGM's film services department just before Turner bought the library. I had seen the comments about MAYTIME having been shot in color, but eventually completed in B&W. Having access to the production files, I went over them carefully to see what I could find out, but there was NO mention of color photography in anything I found.
I wonder if that was wishful thinking at the time, or who knows? Is there any documentation about it? There is also nothing in a list of Technicolor productions which I got from UCLA years ago, but it has some inaccuracies.

Re Bob Fells comments on MAYTIME:
I was working in MGM's film services department just before Turner bought the library. I had seen the comments about MAYTIME having been shot in color, but eventually completed in B&W. Having access to the production files, I went over them carefully to see what I could find out, but there was NO mention of color photography in anything I found.
I wonder if that was wishful thinking at the time, or who knows? Is there any documentation about it? There is also nothing in a list of Technicolor productions which I got from UCLA years ago, but it has some inaccuracies.

Richard,

I trust your sources more than I trust my sources. My info comes from the book, The Films of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, published at least 30 years ago or more. What impressed me about the "color" info was that the author produced several photos of the "lost" MAYTIME and the makeup (rouge on cheeks) and tone of the photos certainly suggested a b/w version of original color material. So I had no reason to doubt the author's claim - until now. I wonder if it makes a difference in the recordkeeping that the "lost" MAYTIME was scrapped and started over from scratch?

Hello All
I am new to this site so forgive me if this topic has been discussed before-Every time that I watch MGM's Ziegfeld Girl -1941-it just kills me that this film was not shot in Technicolor-I know that it was a costly process and it seems that MGM wasn't too enthused about color since they only released three color films in 1941.The success of the 20th Cent Fox Betty Grable Technicolor musicals was just starting so ZGirl might have just been ahead of the curve.....it is a shame. Any other films come to mind that scream for color????

The Wicked Lady. It screams for saturated, lurid technicolor.

Yankee Doodle Dandy should've been in color instead of Cagney's Captains of the Clouds. You can see the Marie Antoinette costumes in color in Ice Follies of 1939. Extras wearing the outfits are used as a kind of human backdrop during the ice skating finale.

Actually, the Captains of the Clouds Technicolor location photography is what makes the film for me.

According to MacDonald bio by Edward Turk --Hollywood Diva--- Maytime was started in Technicolor then scrapped at a cost of $800,000! Then filming resumed with a new director

Re the color MAYTIME, I found a little more info. The Thalberg version was entrusted to Edmund Goulding and one of the MacEddy sites has a candid photo of them all together, as well as a production photo from "Tosca" that was scrapped. I found a color photo of Mac in her pageboy costume for the "Huguenots" sequence in MAYTIME but of course this doesn't prove that the scene was filmed in color:

When I first watched On With The Show (1929), I had somehow forgotten that the Technicolor version has not survived, and found myself furiously attempting to mentally conjure up the usual bilious shades of pink and green to complete the picture. Without the colors, a film like that is a little bit like a Vitaphone short without the sound: the film's clearly been designed to showcase something, but the crucial thing we're missing is the thing it's attempting to showcase. If anyone were to propose a colour restoration of this film - or a recreation, which I guess it would have to be - I would be supportive of it.

I always thought that Yankee Doodle Dandy would have made a good color film.

When I first watched On With The Show (1929), I had somehow forgotten that the Technicolor version has not survived, and found myself furiously attempting to mentally conjure up the usual bilious shades of pink and green to complete the picture. Without the colors, a film like that is a little bit like a Vitaphone short without the sound: the film's clearly been designed to showcase something, but the crucial thing we're missing is the thing it's attempting to showcase. If anyone were to propose a colour restoration of this film - or a recreation, which I guess it would have to be - I would be supportive of it.

You said it! A supreme favorite of mine, even in its diminished condition. All those flamboyant costumes were obviously intended to be seen in vibrant color. Never thought I'd be driven to say a good word about "colorization," but in this special case, it's truly demanded.

But the grand climax of Glorifying the American Girl has been even more badly injured by loss of its oiginal color. That remarkable spectacle at the end of it--the literal recreation of a Ziegfield stage show in all its glorious excess--was manifestly designed to show off the color of those exotic costumes, which in B&W merely look dingy.

Bob,
At this late date, or even 25 years ago when I was looking at the file, anything could have been scrapped.
I just don't see any reason that MGM would dispose of paperwork on the early version, if there was actually anything produced. They were really good at keeping old files, as well as having film library records of negative disposal.
Maybe someday, sometime, something will turn up that clears this up.

That unfortunate fact I'd never stopped to consider--the Queen of the (Biggest) Lot never photographed in color, even a decade after its introduction.

Norma was photographed in colour in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and probably appeared in the now-lost colour segment of Pretty Ladies (1925). Various sources also suggest that The Actress (1928), another lost film, had a Technicolor scene--La Shearer may have been in that one, too. I've also seen early 40s Kodachromes of her.

The Technicolor portions of Glorifying the American Girl exist--UCLA preserved the original studio print in 1988 or so.

-HA

The Artist (2012), could have a few 2 color technicolor scenes.
Anyway the whole film was shot on color film stock. Perhaps in future video editions they add some color scenes as extras.


Today B&W films can be colorized in film resoltuion, with a very larger pallete han the old Turner colorization.
The problem is that the sets of most B&W films was not planned to color, but for B*W. If you turn the TV saturation off while watching a technicolor film as Gone WIth The WInd, the B&W will not look great, cause many high saturated colors do not photograph well on B&W.
In a similar way, many B&W films do not look very well after get colorized, caused it use a lot of light grays or dark grays, that do not get saturated very well, and so the B&W film can't be colorized to look like a technicolor.

Another problem is the original B&W gradding scene to scene, that many people and studios insists that need to be not altered while colorizing. As consequence many scenes that look very bright, flat or contrasting, in a B&W film, are not "corrected" to a apropriated balance to get adequate for a nice look for colorization.

Norma was photographed in colour in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and probably appeared in the now-lost colour segment of Pretty Ladies (1925). Various sources also suggest that The Actress (1928), another lost film, had a Technicolor scene--La Shearer may have been in that one, too. I've also seen early 40s Kodachromes of her.

The Technicolor portions of Glorifying the American Girl exist--UCLA preserved the original studio print in 1988 or so.

-HA

Forgot about the Revue. (Possibly because by eyes were mesmerized by Jack's Brillo Pad hairpiece.)

Can't decide whether my reaction to news of the survival of that original print should be elation...or disgust that UCLA chooses to dog-in-the-manger it. I think seeing the finale of this picture as it was intended would be one of those Transcendental Experiences I've read about.

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) began filming in color and some color footage survives but it may be home movies taken on the set rather than production footage. Karloff is green in this footage but then that was the skin color of choice for lobby cards:

SON did NOT go into production in color. Tests were shot and color was nixed. The Kodachrome home movies were taken on the set by Karloff for his birthday. Properly color timed shows the makeup to be blue-gray, the color Jack Pierce always insisted it was.

I would like to see ALL the Melies and Chomon films colorized. In Melies’ own Star Catalogue, he says about the blazing ending of THE INFERNAL CAKEWALK: “This view has beautiful new effects and much improves with colors.” When I look through the Flicker Alley filmography that accompanies their WIZARD anthology, I see that ALL the films are listed as having been released in color as well as black-and-white(!). So the filmmaker’s intent is clear. Also, in “The Cine Goes to Town”, the author states that films did not constitute a “finished product or commodity; instead, they encouraged exhibitors to purchase and exhibit whatever combination of tableaux would best suit their programs”; and exhibitors also sometimes colored the films using their own color workers (apparently Edison’s company bought Melies’ early CINDRILLON and colored it, then decided they would never do that again because they almost went blind in the process!)

Therefore, although I understand that for a museum’s purpose, and as MoMA directly states (in the EDISON-THE INVENTION OF THE MOVIES collection), they don’t want to color films because they don’t want to “false-ify history”, I think that for entertainment purposes, it would be adequately “authentic” to color the films of early cinema; especially those films that exist in part color and part B&W, like THE MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN and THE PALACE OF ARABIAN NIGHTS. The print I’ve seen of the little Chomon movie EXCURSION INCOHERENTE was obviously originally in color, and cries out for color (and for a great soundtrack by Rodney Sauer and his youngest assistants).

Wasn't there posted around here a few frames of ON WITH THE SHOW in its original color? It was found in a toy projector in England, I think. Remarkably vivid color, too.

[Mike Gebert]

Although I certainly enjoy color movies for their garishness in that era (eg., The Adventures of Robin Hood), I can't shake a certain prejudice that real movies up till about 1950 are in black and white, and color is kind of cheesy (except for Powell & Pressburger, I guess), all rouged up and colored like a box of Chiclets. So the idea of Yankee Doodle Dandy turned into the kind of color that you find in Don Ameche movies set in South America, say, is as awful and sacrilegious as any of the other usual colorization horror ideas like Kong or Kane.

For me, the proper question is, what movies in color would be better desaturated? Dr. Cyclops comes to mind as one that would be better in shadowy black and white; Nothing Sacred has two stars who were iconic in black and white, much less distinct in color; On The Town, like all New York movies before Dog Day Afternoon, should be in black and white; The Caine Mutiny would be much more dramatic in sleek, shiny blacks and whites than dull beige and peach skin.

Laurel and Hardy's film "Swiss Miss" (1938) was planned to be in color and color test footage was shot at Lake Arrow-wood, Ca. It was deemed too expensive and finished in black and White. The second film I thought of was "Them" (1954) which was planned for color and 3D and at the last minute Warner's wanted to have an old fashioned look and went with black and white and 2D instead.

The Films of Errol Flynn states that VIRGINIA CITY and THE SEA HAWK were both intially planned for color.

My vote for a film that should have been in color is another 1940 production, LILLIAN RUSSELL.

Yes...Alice Faye AND Weber & Fields in Technicolor. The movie did show biz history a service by showcasing the latter team as their vintage selves in such a slick production. Within two years both would be gone.