COLOR FILMS

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXV, Issue 6, 23 July 1937, Page 1

COLOR FILMS

A REGULAR SCREEN MEDIUM. Film folk abroad are stirred as never before by the possibilities of color as a regular screen medium. The day of its ballyhoo as an extraordinary attraction is passing, giving place to its use as the more natural medium of cinema entertainment. “The day will come,” says Dave Gould, M.G.M.’s famous dance director, “when we will look back on the era of black-and-white as we do now at the silents—with tolerant amusement. That day cannot be more than ten years off.”

Gould's prediction is given more weight by the announcement from Samuel Goldwyn that he would make only color films in future. This marks probably the most important step ever taken in the development of color.

For some time producers affiliated with L’nited Artists have been active in the color field. David 0. Selznick claims attention as being the first producer to make a large-scale film, “The Garden of Allah.” He followed this by starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in the first modern story in Technicolor, “A Star is Born.” Now

Selznick plans to co-star Carole Lombard and Fredric March in “Nothing Sacred,” an original story by Ben Mecht, to be filmed ill Technicolor under direction of AYilliam AA’ellman, who directed “A Star is Born.” Walter AAVinger, who made “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” has now in production “AValter AA T anger’s Vogues of 1038,” a Technicolor musical starring AVarner Baxter and Joan Bennett. To follow this the producer plans a color version of “The Arabian Nights” with a cast headed by Sylvia Sidney, Madeleine Carroll, Joan Bennett and Henry Fonda. Samuel Goldwyn has scheduled for early production “The Goldwyn Follies,” on which he proposes to spend £300,000. In Britain there are two rival systems —Technicolor and Chemicolor. The former, of American origin, has a special plant erected at Denham last year and controlled by the inventor’s wife, Natalie Kalmnss. Alexander Korda is making use of it for “A Bicycle Built for Two” and lor two pictures as yet only under consideration. Victor Saville will direct the first. Then there is the first all-color picture to be made in Britain, “AAUngs of the Morning,” with Annabella and a pretentious cast. This is completed and ready for English and American release. Chemicolor was used in certain scenes in Korda’s operatic film version of “I Pagliacci,” starring Richard Tauber. This system is sufficiently promising to induce William Fox, millionaire former Hollywood mogul, lo emerge from retirement in America and go to Britain to assist Karl Grune, Continental director-producer, in exploiting it.