"I said, "My gosh, they've got nothing but money for lights and Technicolor. "" "I don't think there was anything more beautiful on the screen than a close-up of a beautiful actress in Technicolor." "The rainbow arrived on the silver screen  thanks to a man named Herbert Kalmus  who preferred the masters to motion pictures." "A man whose ex-wife received the credit he shunned but richly deserved." "The Technicolor story is a human drama." "Its backdrop, the most beautiful films ever made." "You haven't seen color till you see Technicolor." "It was like a painting." "The great masters understood color." "They understood the interplay of shadow and light." "I think sometimes darkness is more beautiful than light." "As a matter of fact, the great masters painters like Rembrandt he specialized in using as little light as possible." "Most people's eyes are different, in shape." "This eye is quite different to the other eye." "Someone who's learning about painting and gets everything right there's something wrong about it." "It hasn't got soul because it all looks too perfect." "That's the same thing with faces' color." "Sir Isaac Newton gave a scientific explanation  to what all great artists knew intuitively." "That pure white light contains all the colors of the spectrum." "In the light there was color." "There was red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet." "And all together were white light." "So from black to white, there were all these stages." "Each one has its own meaning, each one has its own specific reason to be there." "In 1 855, less than two decades after Louis Daguerre developed the first photographs, physicist James Maxwell employed Newtonian science to add color." "He took three pictures of fruit, one each through green, red and blue filters." "Then projected lantern-slide images of the three on top of each other rebuilding much of the original colors." "At Thomas Edison 's first public showing of motion pictures for a fee customers saw strongman Eugene Sandow flex and Annabelle do her serpentine dance." "Both films were originally hand-painted frame by frame." "Color that faded away long ago." "This restored clip of a film by George Méliès shows how vivid hand-colored images looked." "Actress Lillian Russell startled the world appearing in the first photographic color process, Kinemacolor." "It required special equipment, cost a fortune and gave many people headaches." "Engraver Max Handschiegl  took the skills of his trade and color-tinted scenes in a handful of films, including the burning of Atlanta for D. W. Griffith 's Birth of a Nation." "But these early efforts were no more than mediocre novelties." "Acceptable and affordable color would come  thanks to a chemical engineer from Boston  who didn 't think much of motion pictures." "When a baseball collided with a finger of young Herbert T. Kalmus his father's dream that he'd become a concert pianist ended." "When both parents died by the time he was 1 1 Herbert's chance at a normal New England childhood ended too." "He worked in a Boston chocolate factory and paid his way to study physics and chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." "He had th-- lt wasn't such a deep voice but it was a penetrating voice and these eyes that just latched onto you." "At a school dance, Herbert's eyes latched onto catalog model Natalie Dunfee." "She was brash, opinionated and four years his senior." "They married before Herbert's 1904 graduation." "Kalmus became a professor at mit and formed a research firm  that invented such gizmos as a flash-frame camera  to compute the speed of a moving automobile." "One day, an investor asked the Kalmus firm  to perfect the projection of motion pictures." "Kalmus, fascinated by a bigger challenge, suggested the money go to develop a color film process." "Remarkable because Kalmus found the new medium only mildly amusing." "He wouldn't have said, "This is the American art form. "" "He would not have thought that." "He liked the old masters." "He liked classical music." "And that was his idea of art." "Adapting the name of his college yearbook Kalmus formed the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation." "His first headquarters and lab was a railway car  which he rode to Florida to shoot the first Technicolor film." "Only a single frame exists of The gulf Between  which required the dual lens projection of color-filtered film." "Kalmus himself said any operator had to be part college professor part acrobat." "In early 1920, he brought a new process and an appeal for money  to the founder of Kodak." "George Eastman said no." "He was so depressed and yet this was probably the beginning of a great crossroads in film technology where Kodak went one way and Technicolor went another way." "Dr. Kalmus somehow convinced the makers of Bon Ami cleanser  to give him the money and producer Joseph Schenck  to give him a star and a staff at no charge." "He and Natalie left for the coast." "He didn't really like Hollywood." "In fact, he didn't like California." "He called it a "goddamn burned-up desert. "" "He remained a New Englander." "During production, star Anna May Wong said:" ""This picture will never reach the screen. "" "Based on the story of Madame Butterfly, the film demonstrated a new process  where two dyed strips of film were cemented together." "The Technicolor camera photographed the original scene through red and green filters on black-and-white film." "Color wasn't really added back into the image until the final printing process when the images were dyed red and green and combined to form an approximation of natural color." "During production on The Toll of the Sea Dr. Kalmus secretly divorced Natalie citing irreconcilable differences." "As part of the agreement, she became integral to the company running Technicolor's color advisory service." "And she became a very powerful woman in Hollywood." "She had attended art schools in Boston and Europe and she had a great color sense but that didn't always agree with the art directors at the different studios." "Although they never spoke  the doctor and his ex-wife continued to share homes on both coasts." "She insisted on being called Mrs. Kalmus and spent 35 years taking the doctor to court in an attempt to nullify the divorce." "The novelty of color made The Toll of the Sea a box-office success." "But the process was costly and Dr. Kalmus knew for Technicolor to succeed he needed the endorsement of a bigger star than Anna May Wong." "Douglas Fairbanks became a legend by never sitting still." "But the one role that eluded him was a Treasure lsland-style pirate as depicted by artist Howard Pyle." "Inspired by these drawings, Fairbanks told Dr. Kalmus he'd spend 1 million dollars of his own money  to make a Technicolor feature." "Fairbanks spent four months shooting color tests until he found an acceptable saturation level." "He was more concerned about the background and the trees, and sky, and things rather than what the faces looked like." "He even told Dr. Kalmus, "Oh, flesh tones aren't important. "" "The New York Times called the film:" ""A glorious, chromatic production reminiscent of the paintings of the old masters. "" "The New York premiere had expert Technicolor projectionists ensuring the bonded red and green sensitive film strips didn 't cause problems." "But across the country, untrained operators  were screening the double-thick prints." "After they were glued together and dyed on either side they warped, cupped and scratched because they were so thick." "There was a lot of trouble, and they had to replace those." "Color remained an impractical and expensive gimmick at a time when black-and-white photography had evolved into a respected art form." "Many directors saw color as a creative step backward." "Mammy!" "Don't you know me?" "It's your little baby!" "The Jazz Singer created an instant sensation." "But many filmmakers found talking pictures vulgar..." "Riding his studio 's financial success with talkies Jack Warner cast about for another novelty to bring in the audience." "The screening problems with The Black Pirate had forced Technicolor to develop a new process." "This time two dyed strips of film were superimposed or transferred, onto a single piece of film." "The technology had improved but the quality of movies being made only seemed worse." "When color arrived, everyone was scared." "If it was in shadows, the color was not right." "So the expression of the cinematographer through the language of light and shadows stopped once again." "Everything was light." "MGM had a contract with Technicolor but Louis B. Mayer had so little faith in the process he relegated the novelty to short subjects or brief inserts." "Like this performance of Romeo and Juliet featuring Norma Shearer and John Gilbert  whose career ended with talking pictures." "By yonder blessed moon, I swear." "Which tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops" "Listen, my children, and you shall hear  "The Midnight Ride of paul Revere. "" "Other curiosities include Porky Pig's two-color screen debut and a rare two-color appearance by The Three Stooges." "Also, laurel and Hardy." "And the Marx Brothers, shot during a rehearsal on the set of their classic, animal Crackers." "These pancakes with that old Southern flavor." "To make them, just add milk or water to this famous flour." "It's easy and delicious." "A few advertisers ran two-color spots in theaters but Technicolor remained an imperfect and expensive process." "Dr. Kalmus knew he had to bring the entire rainbow to the screen before his 1 6-year experiment would be a success." "In 1932, Dr. Kalmus announced completion of a camera capable of shooting all-color motion pictures." "Studios, chafing from past failures greeted the news with a collective yawn." "Dr. Kalmus settled on a less ambitious approach." "Kalmus offered his three-color technology to the animation world but was told black-and-white cartoons made money without the added expense." "Independent producer Walt Disney had never used the two-color process." "But when Dr. Kalmus showed him a three-color test Disney scrapped the black-and-white footage he'd already shot on a cartoon called Flowers and Trees." "Impresario Sid Grauman agreed to run the cartoon at his Chinese Theatre prior to the feature Strange Interlude." "The people loved the cartoon." "That was the thing they really applauded." "Not the feature." "So that made a big impression, three-color, for the first time." "The new Technicolor camera ran three strips of black-and-white film simultaneously." "One sensitive to red light, one to green, another to blue." "Each of the three strips is washed in a complimentary color and then all three are superimposed or transferred to a single piece of film." "We build colors as we go at the very last minute which is the only way you get true color." "We also have the ability to control the contrast which is so important in photography." "From the beginning, Technicolor controlled its process and cameras like a mother hen." "You didn't buy them, you rented them." "And you had to take the camera assistants and Technicolor supplied the film." "Starting in the mid '30s it was mandatory." "It was part of the contract that if somebody rented a Technicolor camera to use on their film they had to take Natalie Kalmus." "Natalie Kalmus believed natural, muted colors did not tax the eye as much as bright, man-made colors." "Walt Disney initially agreed that audiences might not accept florid colors for two hours." "So his first feature reflects a more subdued palette." "Three years later, Disney allowed his imagination to override Natalie Kalmus." "Fantasia celebrates the full spectrum of color and showcases the flexibility of the Technicolor process." "I like to think dye transfer is like making a painting." "You are actually creating the color, and that's why the colors are so true." "Even when Walt Disney decided to go color with Dr. Kalmus his brother Roy objected to it." "He wanted to stay with black and white." "It's very good that they didn't." "He was a king and a god in the world he knew." "Two months after he unleashed King Kong on the world producer Merian C. Cooper took on color by forming Pioneer Pictures  with financier Jock Whitney." "Less than a year later, they released the first live-action all-color film." "You ruined me, cucaracha." "I'm going to kill you." "Technicolor was the real star of an otherwise dumb film." "As a critic wrote:" ""Producers may mishandle their medium but at least they will have good colors well-focused to abuse. "" "Here is the screen as you know it, in its customary shades of black and white." "Here it is flooded with the rich reality of natural color." "Becky Sharp director Rouben Mamoulian warned:" ""We must not let our enthusiasm for color overbalance  what we have already learned about film craftsmanship. "" "Natalie Kalmus was also vigilant." "She had made up a scrapbook for each film." "Each scene of the film would have a different page with the fabrics on it the wall coverings, costumes, everything." "They then shot that on film to see how the colors would play against each other." "Some critics came down hard on Becky Sharp, one writing:" ""There is no sex appeal in a gal who appears to be in the last stages of scarlet fever." "The actors all look like roasted turkeys. "" "Becky Sharp was finally judged a failure and the jury remained out on Technicolor." "People used to be unnecessarily prejudiced about color in the sense that they said it was unnatural." "And it simply was that they weren't trained to observe color." "See that little yellow spot on its leg?" "If you touch it, you know what'll happen?" "No, I give up." "What?" "its leg will pop off." "The trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first all-color moneymaker." "Some believed the film improved the case for color by lessening its importance, but the industry remained split on Technicolor's artistic and commercial value." "It would take one maverick filmmaker to remove all lingering doubt." "What are you driving at?" "Actresses who became stars in black and white  were often leery about appearing in color." "They felt it had none of the mystery and allure created by the interplay of shadow and light." "Carole Lombard, never one to mince words called color motion pictures "screwy. "" "Bette Davis labeled color "garish tripe. "" "Well, what do you think of it, honey?" "lt's lovely. lt's beautiful." "But it could have been even better" "With your close-up." "If a black-and-white star did appear in color it was often just for a moment." "MGM shot none of The Women 's leading ladies in color." "Only the models in a brief fashion show sequence." "Still doubtful of the Technicolor process, the studio played it safe shooting the fashion show also in black and white." "Independent producer David O. Selznick rarely played it safe." "In 1936, he partnered with financier Jock Whitney  who had recently dissolved Pioneer Pictures." "Every single film that Selznick International was considering from 1 936 on, I'm sure Jock was saying:" ""David, what about--?" "Can we do this one in color?"" "is your spirit in prison?" "If it is, let me help you free it." "To sell the public on Technicolor Selznick believed he needed major stars." "Merle Oberon looked spectacular, but in 1936 a big star she wasn 't." "The casting of Marlene Dietrich generated its own heat." "The goddess of black and white looking so good convinced other actresses not to be so afraid of Technicolor." "The act of shooting, however, remained an adventure." "Actors stood under wilting lights as technicians held up a color chart nicknamed "the lily" used to properly balance the three-strip camera." "Like, whenever they got through with a good scene one of the assistant cameramen, like the slate-board guy would hold up a color sign and say, "That was a lily. "" "And I didn't know what that meant, so that must have been terrific because that was their expression that the color was good." "With Garden of Allah, David Selznick had scored a critical and commercial triumph." "The film more than made back the added expense of Technicolor." "When a tall actress from Sweden arrived in Hollywood Selznick shot her first screen test for a picture called lntermezzo." "But Ingrid Bergman did not appear in a color film until five years after this test." "Ironically, he didn't make lntermezzo in color." "He ended up making lntermezzo in black and white." "So it was an economic thing because it was very expensive in the beginning to make films in color." "With A Star ls Born, Selznick's second hit in 1937  the major studios began to look at Technicolor as not an expensive novelty, but good box office." "The Adventures of Robin Hood was the top grossing film of 1938." "Illustrations by artist N. C. Wyeth inspired cameramen sol Polito and Tony Gaudio." "They somehow convinced Natalie Kalmus to relax her opposition  to bright colors on the screen." "That light, that color is reflected from the screen arriving on you." "It changes your metabolism." "It changes your blood pressure." "In other words, it's giving emotion." "Are you with me?" "By 1938, Technicolor had 25 feature films in release." "The company turned a sizable profit for the first time in its 23-year history." "Competing systems emerged but quickly disappeared due to the superiority of Technicolor." "Of the major studio chiefs Louis B. Mayer remained most skeptical about Technicolor." "Instead of feature-length films, he produced short subjects." "Shooting these travelogues on location gave photographer Jack Cardiff freedom to experiment with a Technicolor camera." "Cardiff could observe and shoot with his painter's eye." "People, if they're sitting on a lawn, they get green reflections from the grass. lt's a natural thing." "But the average person wouldn't realize it." "They wouldn't notice it." "So color, when they saw it on the screen they said, "Oh, well, it's so exaggerated. "" "Well, it wasn't at all." "MGM also released a series of short-subject color films showcasing its stars and its stars of the future." "One year after La Cucaracha made Technicolor history  1 3-year-old Judy Garland sang the song  then signed a studio contract." "Her next color appearance would be in a Technicolor masterpiece." "The Wizard of Oz was not a full-length color film." "Its opening and closing scenes appeared in sepia or black-and-white film washed in a brown bath." "This made Dorothy's Technicolor arrival to the Land of Oz all the more astonishing." "And when it came from black and white to color, you know when they showed Munchkin Land, I said" "God, I was like everybody else:" ""Oh, look at that. " You know, "Gosh! "" "Toto?" "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." "The production was a masterpiece of design  with color the featured star." "It was exciting because they worried about everything." "They worried about every flowerpot." "They even had a pond where they had to put in bluing to get the right color." "To find the proper color for the yellow brick road art director Cedric Gibbons tried imported paints and exotic dyes." "But he discovered cheap fence paint from the local hardware store looked best in Technicolor." "l've never seen a horse like that before." "No, and never will again, I fancy." "There's only one of them, and he's it." "He's the horse of a different color you've heard tell about." "animal cruelty protectors said no to using real paint on the horse." "The solution: a paste of water mixed with fruit-flavored Jell-O powders." "Constant licking made touchups a necessity." "First we visit the Land of Oz." "And because The Wizard of Oz is being filmed entirely in Technicolor actually billions of candlepower are being poured onto this set enough to light a fair-sized city." "So they had to use all arc lights." "And believe me, it was ablaze." "In the summertime, working on any Technicolor picture was murder." "On-set temperatures of 1 00 degrees were not uncommon." "Cowardly Lion Bert Lahr received special water breaks  to replenish fluids lost to perspiration." "Miraculously, none of the intense suffering ever appears on-screen." "For its next big production, Technicolor found a way to cool things off." "How do I look?" "Awful." "Just awful." "Why?" "What's the matter?" "The tortured production of Gone With the Wind at least had no Wizard of Oz heat problems." "Director Victor Fleming, who went straight from Oz to Tara shot using a higher-speed film one that reduced lighting requirements by half and allowed a more natural look on-screen." "For the role of Scarlett O 'Hara, producer David Selznick knew he needed an actress who looked stunning in color." "Vivien Leigh had only been seen in black-and-white British films." "And he made these color tests of Vivien Leigh that I think were a revelation." "Color reveals the complexion of her skin, the color of her eyes." "You see what a ravishing beauty she was." "I never want you to be anything but completely happy." "But Ashley Wilkes was described by Margaret Mitchell as having a kind of "golden hair. "" "So Leslie Howard sat still for weeks on end until my father found the right kind of gold hair that wouldn't look phony but looked like Leslie Howard's real hair." "Selznick seemed less color-sensitive about Rhett and Scarlett's daughter Bonnie Blue Butler." "They say that when Victor Fleming took a good look at me, he said:" ""Well, first they give me a British Scarlett then they give me a 40-year-old Ashley Wilkes and now, by God, I've got a brown-eyed Bonnie Blue Butler. "" "And Selznick said that if they just dressed me in blue and lit me a certain way nobody would notice that I didn't have blue eyes." "Daddy, let me, let me!" "Natalie Kalmus was around constantly." "She was apparently in everybody's hair much more than anybody wanted her to be." "But she was so protective of the process." "Imagine defying those tycoons of the third floor and saying:" ""You can't see the film till I correct it. "" "I mean, that took some guts." "The growing tension between Natalie and studio filmmakers boiled over on Gone With the Wind." "Her undoing was the color of the walls in this brief scene." "She felt the actors ' costumes wouldn 't stand out enough." "Tests proved her wrong, but Natalie kept fighting." "Selznick contacted Dr. Kalmus  who had his ex-wife removed to Technicolor's plant in England." "He wanted to get away from her so he sent her here, and she became color consultant here." "And she was renowned for these ghastly hats she used to wear." "They really were absolutely ghastly." "Every color of the spectrum, they were." "She thought she was promoting color." "I thought, we all thought, she was doing color a lot of harm." "So-called Gone With the Wind experts say colors in the second half of the film are brighter due to the absence of Natalie Kalmus." "But that discounts the overriding vision of art director William Cameron Menzies  who used color to set the mood and tone of each scene." "He later wrote, "When unpleasant colors were required to enhance the drama  they were used." "The changing colors of daylight were studied more than ever before. "" "You know, the main problem still today they don't really teach you the background of what color means." "They never tell you about the philosophy." "Who will win the Academy Awards?" "The tension grows and grows." "Little else is thought of, little else discussed." "To William Cameron Menzies for his use of color in Gone With the Wind." "To Dr. Herbert T. Kalmus, president of Technicolor a special Oscar for color development." "The father of Technicolor, who disdained awards in Hollywood actually hired a publicist to keep his name out of the press." "Just plain, ordinary sailors picking the queen of the ship." "During the dark years of World War ll  Gls took comfort in images from home." "The combination of beautiful girls and Technicolor proved unbeatable." "Wartime pinup Betty Grable made 27 black-and-white films before Technicolor made her a star." "Maureen O 'Hara became one of many actresses  to be dubbed "Queen of Technicolor. "" "I trust my appearance pleases you." "Lucille Ball walked in and out of 30 black-and-white films before Technicolor showcased her new red hair  whipping her career into shape." "Carmen Miranda 's three black-and-white films bombed at the box office." "Technicolor, a winning personality and fruit made her a star." "An MGM publicist labeled Arlene Dahl:" ""The girl for whom Technicolor was invented. "" "Over a period of time, after making films in Technicolor my eyes became so injured from those hot lights, that I have to wear to this day, I have to wear dark glasses in the sunlight." "People think it's an affectation." "It's not." "I really have to protect my eyes." "Cut!" "Underdog studio Universal, boasting no stable of real stars employed Technicolor to invent one." "King Cobra!" "King Cobra!" "Starring the queen of Technicolor, Maria Montez." "During the '40s, Maria Montez made the same film six times." "And every one was a moneymaker." "Montez, queen of Technicolor." "Twice as lovely, twice as exciting." "Venomous in hate, rapturous in love." "A more daring Jon Hall." "Sabu." "Dashing Jon Hall." "A rascally Sabu." "Jon Hall at his dynamic best." "Shemp Howard." "And Koko." "In wartime Hollywood no studio embraced Technicolor more than 20th Century Fox and no director more than the wildly imaginative Busby Berkeley." "His finale to The Gang's All Here shows off Technicolor at its psychedelic zenith." "The one drug I knew that Busby took regularly was his martini at the end of the day because that was prominent in his hand when they said, "lt's a wrap. "" "Those martinis were lethal." "Tell those reporters to come up." "I'll give them a story." "No Technicolor star worked harder than Esther Williams." "In 1 0 years she appeared in 1 6 extravaganzas becoming MGM's top grossing actress of all time." "Underwater, we had problems getting good color because the water filters out the reds." "So you get a pretty pale skin color." "I got lucky, I had skin that was heavy enough so that you could tan and I could always be the same color because the truth is, Bill Tuttle your makeup didn't stay on." "What the water did, is wash it off." "Many actors bristled at Technicolor's special requirements like standing around while the lily was brought in to balance the camera." "I many times thought, "What is Lana Turner doing right now while I'm holding this damn lily?"" "I know what she was holding." "Nine years after The Gang's All Here Busby Berkeley pulled off another Technicolor spectacular  with Million Dollar Mermaid." "Get out of here before I smash this bottle on that ugly, sneaking face of yours!" "Get out!" "Not everyone  who excelled in black and white considered color a step backward." "Clarence Brown, who directed Crawford and Garbo in some of their finest work and Charles Rosher, who shot Mary Pickford's biggest films..." "Director Brown, wanting to depict a real family's fight for survival in the Florida wilderness, decided no actor would wear makeup." "Cameraman Rosher later said, "I had an inkling of the difficulty involved but I had always wanted to show skin color and texture as they really are. "" "Off-camera, young Claude Jarman Jr." "wore a straw hat  to keep his delicate skin from tanning." "Gregory Peck's ruddy complexion was treated with ice  to hold the redness down." "And Jane Wyman, who had very fair skin spent 1 5 minutes each day under a sun lamp  to achieve a believable outdoors look." "Black-and-white veterans Clarence Brown and Charles Rosher knew what they were doing." "The Yearling won a 1946 Academy Award for best color cinematography." "Writer-director John Huston became a star working in black and white." "But he embraced the creative potential of color." "Shooting in Africa  with a lumbering three-strip camera was compounded by one brave actress suffering from dysentery." "She had a bucket by the side, just out of shot." "In between takes, she'd be vomiting." "And I was worried because her face was getting quite green." "Which even Technicolor would have a job with at that time." "John Huston had a talent for painting and a passion for art." "In 1952, he and cinematographer Ossie Morris set out to capture the look and spirit of artist Toulouse-Lautrec." "Huston and Morris wanted muted pastels, not florid colors." "When John arranged a test screening for Technicolor executives  they became outraged." "And he turned to me and he said, "What do you think, Os?"" "So I said, "Well, John, I think we're doing the right sort of thing. "" "He said, "So do I. " So he said, "Gentlemen, f* *k you. "" "And we walked out." "For their production of Moby Dick Huston and Morris wanted the stark look of 19th-century etchings." "This time, Technicolor fully cooperated." "I went to the London plant when Moby Dick came out." "They wanted the colors more depressing than Technicolor did it." "We made it more depressing." "The people who make the pictures the more they understand about the power of the Technicolor system the more they can get what they want, the more expressive they can be." "Perhaps no one understood the interplay of shadow and light color and movement better than director and painter, Vincente Minnelli." "Because he shot his greatest works on a studio set he conjured his visions with absolute control." "Every moment he was thinking some" "Another vision through again, and making an idea." "Even in the quiet dinners together he would always be thinking." "But he had an enormous eye for the beauty and excitement of color everything, with terrific force, I think." "And I think that he lasts very well, don't you?" "And he always had a picture with him." "He used to cut up more art books... ." "It was a crime, what he did to art books." "He'd cut all this-- And paste them all over his office walls." "Anything to do with what he planned to do, you see." "Of course, you notice right away, a difference in the lighting." "The use of shadows and a much more artistic approach to the way the film looks." "Minnelli was a... ." "He was born for that, you know?" "I couldn't even explain." "How is an artist born?" "What makes an artist great?" "Well, he was one of them." "Since 1936, Technicolor had maintained a plant just outside of London." "Beginning in the war years, the Archers under director michael Powell and producer Emeric Pressburger engaged in what Martin Scorsese called:" ""The most subversive period of filmmaking at a major studio in history. "" "Powell credited his visual sense to avant-garde artist Henri Matisse." "He nicknamed aging color consultant Natalie Kalmus "nuisance. "" "He would much more trust a cameraman than he would an outsider like Natalie Kalmus who I think he was pretty strict with and threw off the set at one point because he felt they knew better than she did." "Jack Cardiff, who cut his teeth shooting Technicolor travelogues had a renegade spirit that complimented Powell's surreal style." "A Matter of Life and Death was a wartime morality tale  with a heaven depicted in black and white  the earth in glorious Technicolor." "One is starved for Technicolor up there." "It is actually a character in the movie, Technicolor." "And particularly in A Matter of Life and Death it becomes a character in the film." "I had a silly idea, if you like that when they're playing table tennis, and it's a bizarre, magic atmosphere I said to Michael, "Suppose instead of using the real-looking amber sun I use the lemon sun to make it sort of slightly weird?"" "He said, "Do it, do it. " immediately, never questioned it." "They called it the "enchanted cottage" because it was so big." "But the things they did with it, in A Matter of Life and Death for example, all those incredible shots of the ceiling of the hospital as David Niven is being wheeled in." "The way they moved that camera around when it was so big is amazing." "For actors, Technicolor always presented challenges." "In this scene, Kim Hunter gets David Niven back  when the spirits see she's willing to ascend the stairway to heaven so her lover may live." "In order to get that shot, he had to light it in such a way that as I was running down the stairs to David the lights were so bright, there was at one point I couldn't see the stairs at all and I missed the last 1 0 or 1 5 of them." "Went:" "Absolutely flat out on the floor." "The Black Narcissus tells the story of nuns  trying to establish a convent in India." "Jack Cardiff created his vision entirely on a sound stage in England." "He wrote, "To enhance the dream-like strangeness and sensuous beauty I exaggerated my effects." "In the dawn sequence where Sister Ruth goes mad I used soft greens in the shadows because the juxtaposition of green and red is suggestive of tragedy." "Like in Van Gogh 's The Night Café. "" "For years, people wondered why a Technicolor film made in England had a softer, richer look to those made in Hollywood." "Everybody figured out that it's just that English skies are always covered with fog and rain so the light is diffused." "And it was simple diffusion of light, which all cameramen now use." "But it was really the atmosphere in England that was creating this different look to the colors." "For the ballet sequence in The Red Shoes Jack Cardiff invented a device which could change camera speeds in the middle of a shot, allowing a magical sense of weightlessness." "Natalie Kalmus called The Red Shoes the best color film she'd ever seen." "Seven thousand miles away her ex-husband and Technicolor founder felt the same way." "Natalie Kalmus received more credits than perhaps anyone in film history." "And it is her name that is most identified with Technicolor." "In fact, when my mother said she was going on a date with Dr. Kalmus of Technicolor I just assumed his name was Natalie." "I thought he was Dr. Natalie Kalmus." "Divorced since 192 1, Natalie spent 30 years appealing demanding a bigger piece of the Technicolor pie." "In the formative years of the company, Natalie Kalmus contributed mightily  to the aesthetic use of color holding her own in a male-dominated world." "But by the late '30s, art directors found her taste old-fashioned and manner inflexible." "Although her credit appeared on virtually all Technicolor films until 1948 her dictates went unheeded." "Natalie Kalmus was 87 when she died in 1965." "In 1949, the doctor finally found personal happiness  when he married journalist Eleanor King, becoming stepfather to Cammie  who 1 0 years before, had played Bonnie Blue Butler in Gone With the Wind." "Also in 1949, Technicolor's virtual monopoly came to an end  when Kodak introduced Eastman Color Film, a single-strip negative  which made every camera capable of shooting in color." "The Kodak film was simpler and cheaper." "But in the beginning, some found the quality of color inferior." "Every color that we put on lips came out sort of a liver color." "We got to be known as "liver lips. " So I got 30 different shades of red lipstick and I put them on my arm, like this:" "Stripes." "And held it in front of the camera." "All came out brown." "The first time Arlene DahI saw herself in Eastman Color, she wasn 't pleased." "I was spoiled." "I was used to Technicolor." "The producer felt the same way, so he took it to the Technicolor labs to redo the Eastman Color and fix it in the Technicolor labs." "Oh, you loaned yourself to me to make love, but... ." "But you didn't really need me." "You're afraid to be in love my way." "The era of glorious Technicolor came to an end with FoXfire  the tale of a New York socialite falling for an Arizona Indian." "It was the last American film to employ the mighty three-strip camera." "Once perfected, single-strip film became the industry standard." "Technicolor adapted its dye-transfer system of color separation  to make prints from the new Eastman negative." "Technicolor remained a leading processor of motion pictures." "The competition posed by television forced the movie industry  to invent new ways to maintain its audience." "Because television was black-and-white  the push for all-color films seemed a smart move." "But theaters across America continued to shut down." "In 1960, Dr. Kalmus sold Technicolor to ballpoint pen magnate Pat Frawley  who promptly diversified the company beyond film processing." "Then Dr. Kalmus told me one day, even after that he came to my office and said he was sorry he let it happen." "That even at his age he would like to have stayed on and contributed more." "Dr. Herbert Kalmus died on July 1 1, 1963 at the age of 8 1." "Twelve years later, Technicolor management phased out  the dye-transfer process he perfected and some say, has never been equaled." "In 198 1, director Martin Scorsese said:" ""Most of the prints made during the 1950s on the Eastman Color process are already faded. "" "The chemical formula was so complicated that it would decay rather quickly, so films' prints were fading within five years the negative was fading within maybe 1 5 to 20 years and fading badly." "I mean, into oblivion." "In response to Scorsese, Eastman Kodak said it had the technology  to prevent color film from fading." "But Hollywood didn 't see the value in paying for it." "That attitude changed with the industry boom of the '90s  when thriving cable and home video markets made studio libraries and their preservation good business." "Archivists couldn 't help but notice  that Technicolor prints showed little signs of age." "I'm astounded how anything can live since 1 944 that went into a can and sat on a shelf in as perfect mint condition that that is." "In 1994, Technicolor announced its plan  to return to an updated version of the dye-transfer process created by Dr. Kalmus." "Four years later the company showcased the new process with fresh prints of a Technicolor classic." "If you believe in quality, then I believe you have to go the way of film." "And there's nothing in the digital world..." "RON JARVlS president, Technicolor Worldwide Filmgroup ...nothing on the horizon, that will come close to this process or even a film process." "We still can see Snow White, Gone With the Wind, Becky Sharp, The Red Shoes thanks" " Because they were done in Technicolor." "Because Technicolor is the only system that doesn't fade."