color 3-D movies in B/W tv prints

[antoniod]

Back in the day of 16mm TV prints, stations that had the early 50s Paramount films in color tended to only have Paramount 3-d films like SANGAREE and THOSE REDHEADS FROM SEATTLE in B/W. Wonder why? Was there a connection between these films having been 3d and some difficulty in making a new color negative? TV prints of other Color 3D films like GOG and TOP BANANA tended to be in B/W as well.

[Jack Theakston]

I don't think there was any reason other than during the period they had been printed, color television was not prolific, and it was cheaper to just do B&W prints. Such was the case for a number of movies.

I've seen 16mm color prints of THOSE REDHEADS (IB) and GOG and TOP BANANA (Kodachrome reductions). REDHEADS both in 16mm and 35mm was possibly one of the worst Technicolor print jobs to my mind.

[Christopher Jacobs]

It wasn't just the TV prints of color 3D films that were made in black and white, but most if not all color films for TV use. And it wasn't just for 16mm TV prints, but also for 16mm nontheatrical and 35mm theatrical reissues. In an 8th grade music class I saw a B&W kinescope of a Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts that had originally been aired (and kinescoped) in color. Years later I saw the same episode in a color kinescope. There were even 35mm B&W prints of a Technicolor classic like THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD playing theatrically for kiddie matinees from the 1960s through the 1980s (I saw it as a kid, and my mother couldn't believe it when I said it was shown in black and white).

[bobfells]

I have b/w 16mm prints of Technicolor films such as SWANEE RIVER (1939), THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZEBETH AND ESSEX (1939), NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE (1940), but only one of them, THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN (1949), optically erased the Technicolor credits.

[Jay Salsberg]

I had a b/w 16mm print of THE BLUE BIRD (1940), and when I asked why Fox would issue such a beautiful film in b/w, I was told that it had something to do with broadcast quality. Apparently (and I'm working from memory) in the early days of TV, low-tech "Mom & Pop" TV stations had difficulty getting good contrast when broadcasting color films through a b/w signal. This was eventually solved by creating low-contrast b/w prints for syndication. It doesn't make sense to me.

[Mike Gebert]

For "three-strip" Technicolor, didn't they make B&W prints from the green matrix because it was the most normal looking in B&W? Then you'd avoid the problem of mid-range tones, say, which were distinguishable in color turning into the same mush of gray. Seems like I read that once, or something like that.

[antoniod]

I'm getting anal here, but here was what made me curious. Station has package of 50s Paramount films. HONG KONG they have in color. QUEBEC, BOTANY BAY, BIRDS AND THE BEES, RED GARTERS, that thing with Leo Genn on the island with sailors and girls, all in color. But the same stations have SANGAREE and ......REDHEADS FROM SEATTLE in B/W! Had the color faded? I'm long familiar with B/W prints of 30s/40s Technicolor films on TV. Wouldn't that also have had something to do with the added expense of printing from 3 negatives? Were Eastman color versions only made in the 70s? (Actually, stations that had the Paramount films mentioned above had 1949s Cinecolor EL PASO in B/W. Was the issue incompatibility with modern stock? I suspect that 1953 3D films were mostly Eastmancolor, and I wonder if changes in the process-if there were any-led to duplication problems?)

[Jim Reid]

I'm sure the distributors had lots of B&W prints of color titles in the warehouse. In the 70s, the station I worked at ran plenty of color movies. We also had a couple of packages of B&W of color titles. I think this was kind of a bargain deal so the studios could get some money out of these unusable prints. Occasionally, they wouldn't have a print to send us, so they would send a color print with instructions to run it in B&W. I would run them in color anyway, until the one night it caught up with me. I was running The War Wagon, with John Wayne. I loaded the color reel 1 and then saw the tag saying to run it in B&W. I ignored it and ran it in color. When I got to reel 2, I found out that it and reel 3 were B&W. The phones rang like crazy!

[Jack Theakston]

As I illustrated in my initial post, there was no problem with printing down to color 16mm for any of those titles.

Films were distributed to TV in packages—it's likely that an earlier package containing REDHEADS and SANGAREE were part of an all-B&W package, whereas later packages may have been available in color. There was no technical limitation of printing either film from their original Eastman Color negative down to an Eastman Color 16mm.

[Hal Erickson]

I had a b/w 16mm print of THE BLUE BIRD (1940), and when I asked why Fox would issue such a beautiful film in b/w, I was told that it had something to do with broadcast quality. Apparently (and I'm working from memory) in the early days of TV, low-tech "Mom & Pop" TV stations had difficulty getting good contrast when broadcasting color films through a b/w signal. This was eventually solved by creating low-contrast b/w prints for syndication. It doesn't make sense to me.

There was no excuse for a bad black and white print of THE BLUE BIRD. This film was withheld from TV syndication until the late 1960s, and was released in a Fox TV package that was advertised on the strength of its color films.

[antoniod]

When I first saw BLUE BIRD on tv, it was a B/W print-in the late 60s (Boston's WHDH-5). Getting back to 3D, why was the 70s reissue print of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON tinted yellow on top of it's red/blue image?(At least the one I saw). It ruined the effect! I guess it was just a coincidence that SANGAREE and REDHEADS had both been in 3D.

[Jack Theakston]

Getting back to 3D, why was the 70s reissue print of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON tinted yellow on top of it's red/blue image?(At least the one I saw). It ruined the effect!

Bad labwork. The negative that was made for was actually made for an in-house party in the '70s, and someone who had probably never seen a Polaroid projection in their life said "Hey, that was great! Let's do a theatrical re-issue!" The neg has probably faded over the years, too, leaving an even more lemony image.

When Universal released it (1972) they really dropped the ball, because it was just about the most RIGHT time to do a real single-strip Polaroid presentation of the film, since many places still had silver screens and equipment from side-by-side releases of thing like THE STEWARDESSES and over/under releases of films like THE BUBBLE, and the cost was relatively low to do installs.

Ironically, CREATURE was one of the first single-strip Polaroid 3D films to be issued—in 1954, it was available with the Polalite single-strip system.