Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

Painting the Shadows The romantic story of a brilliant scientist, his Titianhaired wife, and the rise of Technicolored pictures By George Gordo n N! He invented Technicolor! "EARLY ten years ago, after appalling labors in his laboratory, a learned gentleman named Dr. Herbert T. Kalmus stood his beautiful redhaired wife in a brightly lighted room and turned a new kind of movie camera on her. Laboriously and with great care, the resulting film was developed. And on the screen the beautiful Titian hair of Mrs. Natalie M. Kalmus showed beautifully Titian! And thus, with a mop of pretty red bair, began the romantic story of the Technicolor process of photographing motion pictures in natural color — a tale as thrilling as any that could be conjured up by the imagination of an inspired fictioneer. The coming of talking pictures gave Technicolor its big push. Today it works miracles! Did you know that by proper costuming and lighting the Technicolor camera can take off or put on twenty pounds in the case of any player it chooses? Well, it can, and you can page Clara Bow or Molly O'Day! What price grapefruit now? For instance: It is a well known scientific fact, proven by the Einstein and other theories, that Russians like their chorus ladies plump. So when Director Alan Crosland, making "Song of the Flame," was faced with a whole chorus of slim .American girls supposed to be Russian ladies, he was horrified, and near a stroke. But the witchery of Technicolor, by the proper use of color schemes, put no less than twenty pounds on each of these slender maidens, and in the picture they look as plump and buxom as any Muscovite could wish. THE use of color has put rouge back in the dressing rooms of the studios. Black and white pictures called for flat and uninteresting makeup, but the rouge pot is called into play again. Facial makeup photographs, in Technicolor, just as the eye sees it — so a player can almost walk from the street to the color picture stage and pass inspection by the head man of the makeup department. This leads to droll happenings around the stages. In one all-Technicolor subject a row of bronze statues lined the background of a scene. When the rushes hit the screen the figures were nothing but a row of smudges. They just didn't take. But the color heroes were not daunted. They grabbed their trusty boxes and rushed to the Technicolor's first star! Do You Know — that Technicolor photography, by proper lighting and costuming, can reduce a lady twenty pounds, or put on that amount.' — that light blue eyes, impossible to photograph in black and white, are Technicolor's best subject? — that yellow will not photograph in natural color, but that if you add a little red, it will? And that then it will be orange? No? Well, you'll know even more if you will read this story on the Romance of Technicolor! rescue. A dab of rouge on the bronze cheeks, a dab of makeup here and there, and the next time the statues stood out nobly, in full view. Had you any idea that a pair of light blue eyes almost automatically barred their possessor from the black and white screen? They did, and many a blonde and blue-eyed Ziegfeld doll baby fell before the old time camera because of the pale orbs so fetching off screen. Pale blue eyes are the Technicolor camera's particular dish, and if there's one thing it likes more than another it's a dazzling blonde. We refer you to Marilyn Miller in "Sally." Dennis King, star of stage operetta, pouted at the thought of Technicolor when he went to Paramount to make "The Vagabond King." They coaxed him into making a test. When he saw the first rushes — which showed his blond coloring and blue eyes to perfection — he went overboard for the color idea with a splash, and is now happiest before the new camera. THE Technicolor camera plays weird tricks. Frank Fay has fiery red hair. It has a tendency to fly in the breeze, so somebody suggested he use a little brilliantine to make it lie down. He did and when the Technicolor rushes were run his hair was a brilliant green. Ten years ago Dr. Kalmus made his first Technicolor camera. It took over a year and cost SI 40,000. Today the learned doctor is president of a S35,000,000 corporation that makes the cameras, rents them out, furnishes technical experts and develops the colored film — the slowest and trickiest process in the whole parade from raw stock to the picture on the screen. But the doctor and his work are only half the glamorous story. His devoted and handsome wife, the aforesaid Natalie M., is one of the most romantic figures of the day. And it is a far cry from the day she was her husband's first model to the early months of 1930. Now she is expert supreme on all technical questions of light and color in the astonishingly complex and varied art of photographing in color. Natalie M. Kalmus works almost with ferocity. Sixteen hours a day is nothing to this amazing woman. She has developed the art of using color to express varieties of dramatic feeling to the highest [ PLEASE TURN TO PAGE 84 ] 67