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1. Color in Movies
   1930’s

   5039 feature films were produced in the United States in the 1930’s. I can’t nail the color total to the exact number, but about 100 movies had color. Slightly over 60 were full color. Of those, about 45 have survived with the color intact. There were quite a few processes being tried. Cinecolor, Magnacolor, Multicolor, Hiricolor, etc. The most popular were the two component Technicolor of the early thirties, and then the vivid three-strip Technicolor, which for the first time produced the entire color spectrum. A huge number of films were produced in color in 1930 and early 1931, generally musicals with again production numbers in color. As with 1929, many are lost or the color is lost. The impact of the Depression caused the studios to abandon color for the most part. I think the only color features in 1932 and 1933 were the WB horror movies Doctor X & The Mystery of the Wax Museum. Three-strip Technicolor was originally restricted to cartoons with Walt Disney signing an exclusive deal with Kalmus. (aside–this deal which gave Disney a leg up on its competition might be viewed as one of the landmark entertainment events of the 20th century. No one else could use the three-strip Technicolor until 1935). In 1934 the three-strip process began to be used in live-action shorts and features, at first only for scenes. The first three-strip feature was Becky Sharp in 1935. After that the dam broke. 4 features in 1936. 7 in 1937. 10 in 1938. 12 in 1939. The impact was tremendous. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind would be among the most enduringly popular films of the whole century.
   In total, 39 films were made in the 1930’s using three-strip Technicolor. Of these 31 were in full color (I include The Wizard of Oz as the sepia scenes were an artistic choice). All survive, I believe.
   Another color feature of the 1930’s is the increasing of color in animation. The first color cartoon was within the feature The King of Jazz in 1930. The first stand alone color cartoon was in the Flip the Frog series, also in 1930. Thought of as a likely rival of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Rabbit, Flip flopped and few modern buffs have heard of him. Color was used increasingly in cartoons during the thirties, but never more than in a minority. Disney’s main rival, the Fleischers, put out mainly black and whites. Betty Boop was in only one color cartoon. Popeye in only three in the 1930’s. Walter Lantz did only ten out of his hundreds of cartoons in color.

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   1. Hey John….the fact that the total in the 1930s is only slightly ahead of the total for the 1920s…..is pretty shocking. I would have guessed too little for the ones in the 1920s….but I would have guessed way too high for the 1930s movies.

      Cinecolor, Magnacolor, Multicolor, Hiricolor and Technicolor. I imagine there was some serious competition going on to become the preferred choice. I guess it was similar to the Beta vs VHS, BluRay vs HD DVD……with Technicolor being the winner.

      Lots of great stuff in this comment….greatly appreciate you sharing it. 🙂

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      1. Cogerson

         “the fact that the total in the 1930s is only slightly ahead of the total for the 1920s . . . is pretty shocking.”

         I agree and disagree, I guess. 78 and 100 are not that far apart. But the full color movies increased a great deal. There were over 60 in the 1930’s and only 9 in the 1920’s.

         I was greatly surprised at the number of color movies in the 1920’s when I first researched them, and shocked that color films (not colorized by hand painting) went back to the teens.

         There a great many more color processes than those I named in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I just listed the major competitors.

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         1. Hey John….good points….I bow to your knowledge….this was a subject I did not think too much about in the past. I appreciated you shedding some light on the subject. It is fascinating that color images have almost been around since the beginning….I imagine some of those pioneers would be amazed to see movies today….recently saw Trolls (hey I have small children)…and the color popped off the screen…..without those pioneers work…that would not be possible. 🙂

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2. Cogerson

   In the last few years one of my interests has been color in movies. I have done research on the internet, including a few academic treatises, and have learned which I decided to share. As there is a lot of info, I’ll do it decade by decade. The totals of feature films each decade come from stats from the British Film Institute, the only source I could find. I think it should be a solid source. Just to a foundation, a feature film for the BFI is defined as a film which runs 40 minutes or more.

   1920’s—There were around 6300 feature films produced in the US in the 1920’s. Of those, 78 had at least some color scenes. The vast majority were a scene or a few scenes. 9 were full color features, I think all in two-component Technicolor. Toll of the Sea in 1922 with Anna May Wong was the first, produced by Herbert Kalmus, the president of Technicolor. The Winner of the Wilderness, a Zane Grey western, followed in 1924. It is a lost film. The Viking, co-produced by Kalmus and MGM came in 1928. The biggest full color feature in the 1920’s was The Black Pirate, produced by and starring Douglas Fairbanks. The number of having some color features exploded in the late 1920’s, especially 1929. Especially popular were musicals done mainly in black and white, but a production number was done in color. Many of these films are simply lost. In others the color segment is lost, or exists only in black and white. The reason for that is that color was expensive not only to shoot, but to reproduce, so the color copies were generally shown only in the major big city theatres. The majority of copies which went out into the hinterlands were in black and white. This was still true years later when I was first around. I remember seeing The Adventures of Robin Hood in the theatre in black and white. I was dazzled in the 1970’s when it came out in restored color. Even Gone with the Wind was sometimes shown in black and white during its initial run.

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   1. Hey John
      1. First of all….thanks for sharing this information.
      2. Your interest in “color” movies has me thinking….that for my classic movie stars….I should list which was their first color movie….seems that would make a Possibly Interesting Fact.
      3. I agree the British Film Institute is a great source.
      4. 9 full length color movies….that is actually more than I would have guessed….I would have said that it (and the ones with a few scenes in color) would be around 10 total.
      5. That makes sense about only the major cities getting it in color….I would imagine…Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington would be some of the major cities that got color.
      6. I recently interviewed my father-in-law who grew up in a movie theater in the 1940s and 1950s….and never asked him about the influence of color movies….but I will do so in the future.
      https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/stories-memories-tiger-movie-theater-in-auburn-alabama/
      7. Very interesting about GWTW and Robin Hood being in black and white….I imagine seeing it later in color was like seeing the movie for the very first time.
      Thanks for this awesome information!

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3. Have you heard of this? “The Robert Clark Account: Films released in Britain by Associated British Pictures, British Lion, MGM, and Warner Bros., 1946‐1957” by Vincent Porter, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Vol. 20, Iss. 4, 2000

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   1. Hey Kevin…..very interesting…..I will have to do some research on that one. Seems I have stumbled across something close to that….but I thought it was for years much later than 1946-1957. When I first started doing these pages….I pretty much ignored worldwide box office grosses…..but as our website has expanded globablly….I have found myself going back and picking up worldwide grosses I ignored originally. This could be a very valuable source of information….thanks for the heads up….it is greatly appreciated.

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4. I watched Selleck last night in a rerun of his 10 episode guest stint [1996-2000] in Friends. He’s always a relaxing guy to observe and my brother in Down Under loves his persoan as well.

   BOB

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   1. Hey Bob…..I agree….he seems to be a pretty down to Earth guy….and that shows up on the big and little screen. Too bad his movie career was not longer….as he would have made a good UMR subject.

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5. 17 JEAN SIMMONS MOVIES WITH INFLATION ADJUSTED DOMESTIC GROSSES DISPLAYED ON PAGES OF OTHER STARS
   The Robe-$570.5 million
   Spartacus – 387.5
   Guys and Dolls- 301.1
   Desiree-235.6
   Elmer Gantry-161.4
   Hamlet- 187.0 /Bruce’s existing figure on Olivier page 151.8****
   The Big Country-149.5
   This Earth is Mine- 136.5
   The Grass is Greener-104.7
   Divorce American Style-95.8
   Young Bess-70.0
   Black Narcissus-55.4
   Angel Face-42.6
   Beautiful but Dangerous/aka She Couldn’t Say No – 32.2
   Until they Sail-32.0
   Rough Night in Jericho-30.5
   The Actress-25.3
   NOTES
   1 Overall adjusted domestic gross of 17 films $2.62 billion Average per movie $154.0 mil approximately

   2 ****My own adjusted calculation based on Bruce’s figures elsewhere. All other 16 figures are the latest updated figures provided by him

   3 To the best of my knowledge the list includes all of Simmons’ Hollywood blockbusters with the exception of possibly The Egyptian and Adrocles and the Lion. Wikipedia gives The Egyptian a rental of 4.25 as compared with Desiree’s 4.5 the same year but I have never seen ANY figure for Adrocles.

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   1. Good work Bob. I’m sure Bruce will get round to Gene Simmons eventually, not sure if he’s much of a Kiss fan though. Simmons was an effectively nasty villain in Runaway, a sci-fi thriller starring Tom Selleck. Jean Simmons is far more prettier though.

      The Robe was a massive hit and that’s just domestic? wow! The first Cinemascope movie everyone back then had to see it, a shame it was so dully directed by Henry Koster, the few action scenes were feeble. The plus points were the crucifixion scene, which sounds great with stereo sound and Jay Robinson as a bonkers mad Caligula.

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      1. Hey Steve…..KISS was huge when I was a kid…..I never knew he made so many movies in the 1950s and 1960s….talk about being well rounded…lol.

         Seriously, I liked his role in Runaway as well…..been years since I have seen that one.

         As for The Robe….yep it was that big….it was among the top rentals of all-time for many years. Burton really disliked that movie.

         Funny comment….thanks for the laugh…..and of course thanks for the comment.

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   2. Hey Bob…..patting myself on the back……all of these pages make it pretty easy to make a list like that. I find it very cool to see stuff like this popping up. I had no idea I had that many if her movies already done. I am sure your Hamlet calculation is pretty close.

      $154 million per movie is pretty stout. Thanks for taking the time to dig out this information from the website. It is greatly appreciated.

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