Screenland (May-Oct 1929)

4 SCREENLAND (01 TALK News and Views from the Sound Studios A lan Crosland, who directed "On /A With the Show," the first all' /\i color, all-talking production for -4 -^-Warner Bros., is an expert on color photography, despite the fact that this film is the first color production over which he presided. A careful study over a period of many months of the color camera makes him one of the few authorities in the picture business on this new and engrossing subject. (( lAarjorie White, of musical comedy, arrives in Hollywood with a Fox contract and a fox fur. Is there such a thing as fox appeal7 (Our error; it's sable!) "With color photography the latest rage of filmdom, Hollywood studios have run up against an extraordinary situation," he said. "There are but ten cameras in the world capable of producing color. Eight months are required to build a color camera. Even the ordinary motion picture camera is three months in the building. Instead of the one strip of film used in the latter, the technicolor camera operates with two. One is green and one is red. They pass simultaneously before the eye of the camera, each recording the colors to which it is sensitive. In the final process, the two films, are printed on one. "In the old days bright, harsh colors were attempted and as a result the films were a strain on the eye. Through a long series of experiments, suitable combinations have been evolved until the technicolor process reaches its highly satisfactory state of development in 'On With the Show.' As a general rule, colors with white in them are the most amenable to photography. "New colors continuously are being added, however. For instance, yellows were seen for the first time on the screen in 'On With the Show." It had been believed even by the technicolor people themselves that yellows would blur, but their cameraman and mine solved the problem in this picture. The brilliant red of the coats of the chorus in the fox-hunting number also is a new color. Still another is the blue of the sky in the final stage sequence. Never before have you seen real blue on the screen. There have been green blues, but no genuine shades. "Cameramen worked three days photographing different bolts of colored silks to find out which shade would produce that tint. The expense of photographing a picture such as 'On With the Show' in natural colors runs $250,000 more than the same film in black and white." & ^ * Guests at Hollywood dinner parties order their menu ahead of time. Lo the poor hostess! Few people eat real meals in Hollywood today. All because of the 18day diet in vogue. At a dinner party given by Monte Brice eight different meals were served to as many people. Each one was on a different day of the diet. Some had hard-boiled eggs; one fortunate man was on the steak day and carried his half pound of red meat about proudly. Brice was on the lamb chop day, Dorothy Dwan was unfortunate enough to be at the sliced orange and cup of tea stage. Mrs. James Gleason and Robert Armstrong were both at the shrimp cocktail place on the list, and Mildred Webb was eating cold chicken! ^* £ & The longest perambulator 'shot' in the history of sound motion pictures was filmed for "Taming of the Shrew" which is to bring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fair banks to the screen as co-stars. Through a maze of streets on the huge set, built as an exact reproduction of the fifteenth century Italian city of Padua, the cameras and sound equipment picked a pathway continuously for a distance of more than 500 yards, a record in the making of sound-recorded productions. Not a bit of colorful activity on the busy thoroughfares was lost by Director Sam Taylor. The 500 extras, rehearsed for days C[ Richard Keene isn't high-hatting us, he's just dressed in his best for his part in "Why Leave Home?" Richard is a popular juvenile from Broadway.