Screen Guilds Magazine (July 1935)

Color Over Hollywood C OLOR is going to do a number of interesting things to the poor help¬ less actor. As the producer of “Becky Sharp’’ and 44 La Cucaracha” I am naturally an unbalanced enthusiast for color. But I must start by warning the actors of Hollywood—as well as the producers— that there is more dynamite in this be¬ guiling new medium than there was in sound. Color is liable to wreck the face and fortune of capable actors who get into the hands of incapable art directors and cameramen who don’t understand the business of lighting and shooting color scenes by any method postdating the black-and-white chrontos of 1914. Put players into hideous costumes set against inharmonious backgrounds ; let blue silk ribbons, pink curtains and fidgety green parrots steal whatever is left of the scenes; photograph the whole thing in the blank white light of Biograph days-—and some innocent star will be¬ come poison at the box office. O N the other hand, under proper and intelligent handling, color brings rich gifts to the acting profess¬ ion. It is going to take five or ten years off the age of many a feminine star. The flush of youth—via Max Factor— will suffuse and soften the little harnes¬ ses, wrinkles and sags of time. Glow will succeed contour as an asset. The public will suddenly discover new at¬ tractiveness in its heroines, new vigor and warmth in its heroes. Many a_star whose course has passed the perihelion will find herself on the up-grade once more. Some feminine stars are going to suf¬ fer, however, no matter with what mir¬ aculous skill they are handled. Un- gentlemanly Technicolor definitely pre¬ fers^ brunettes. They are easier to print. Shadows, dark colors always come out best. Thin, subtle, palid shades make tremendous demands on this new art. Natural blondes, like Ann Harding sur¬ vive this acid test magnificently. Mir¬ iam Hopkins never looked so beautiful as in “Becky Sharp.” But let plati¬ nums beware! And as for these lovely ladies who have molded strange new personalities out of black-gashed mouths, Arc-de-Triomphe eyebrows and antennae eyelashes — black-and-white caricatures from some aphrodisian in¬ ferno—what they are going to look like in color I haven’t the faintest idea. Ex¬ cept that you won’t be able to recognize them without a guide book. That will By Kenneth M acgowan prove, perhaps, the screen’s deepest debt to Technicolor. A S for the writers, they are going to find color a challenge and an oppor¬ tunity. Like the playwrights of the theatres, they are going to be able to ask for effects in lighting and back¬ ground which will reinforce immeasur¬ ably the mood of their scenes. They will find themselves less dependent—though still dependent enough, God Knows!— on the abilities of the players. They will be able to envelope a somewhat tepid heavy in a flood of murderous color which will make him far more of a men¬ ace than he ever was before. They will be able to lay more love scenes in gar¬ dens of a moonlit loveliness that no player can dim. They will find their talents challenged to devise movements from scene, to scene, excuses for change of light and background, that will per¬ mit varying color to add intensity to the dramatic mood of their dialogue. And, of course, they will find new bat¬ tlefields on which to meet defeat at the hands of their immemorial antagonist, the producer—pardon me, the super¬ visor. Color Should Be “Organized” On the Screen I FEEL that the color film stands in the same relation to the black-and- white film that the opera does to the spoken play. In the one case color is added to the story; in the other music is added. Both are added for a reason: to enhance the dramatic values of the story. You have only to remand your¬ selves how; immeasurably the story of the Grail is enhanced by the music of Parsifal to sense the extraordinary power that color may eventually exer¬ cise in filmls. Many of the critics of ‘ ‘ Becky Sharp ’ ’ have felt that the color should be more subdued. The critics, in this case, are wrong. Color in color pictures does not need to be subdued, any more than m,usic in opera needs always to be played pianissimo . To ask for a color picture without color is like asking for July, 1935 an opera without music. Color has to be organized on the screen just as music has to be organized in an opera or sym¬ phony. Music has to be handled by musicians or we get no music. Color must be handled by colorists or we get no color. T HE Technicolor Company has per¬ fected a marvelous new instrument. This instrument must now be played upon. Through its use every screen in every motion-picture theatre all over the World is about to take on a new and thrilling life. Color on the screen means that an indescribably powerful influence is about to be brought to bear on all forms of art—on dress, on interior decora- By Robert Edmond Jones tion, on painting, on architecture, even on music. It means—well, there is really no telling what it all means. For we are moving toward a time, not far dis¬ tant, when our eyes are to be opened once more to the loveliness of the world We live in. Perhaps you will say this is only empty enthusiasm. But I do not think so. For this marvelous Technicolor camera is not a dream, but an actual fact. Here is an instrument, newly perfected, so sensitive to every shade and tone of color that at times it seems almost psychic. There is literally noth¬ ing in the entire gamut of color that it (Continued On Page 15) 7 •