I've got alot of stuff on 16mm and 35mm. I dont run anything on any projector until it has been checked, and inspected. There's no reason that your P&G copies should be jumping, other than the seller not checking his prints.

In the case of a 35mm print, alot of footage can be damaged FAST. 35 runs at 90 FEET per minute!

These 16mm prints were transferred to DVD via VHS tape an undetermined number of years ago. I have no idea where or when the seller got his copies, but they do look light years better than some bootlegs I've seen of, say, "Our Miss Brooks", which have been taken from 80's VHS tapes of Channel 50 (Chicago) broadcasts which have snippets of old commercials, Channel 50 voice-overs during the credits, and a picture almost completely washed out in white. "Miss Brooks" is another great old sitcom which seems to be tied up as regard to the rights, although I have a public-domain disc containing 3 episodes which must have slipped through the cracks of pretty good quality.

Back to the original topic:

Republic Pictures used to own BONANZA before the Paramount takeover. They pulled the original camera negatives from cold storage and made new print negatives from them. Thats why Bonanza looks so good today. Bonanza was shot on Eastman film, and the processing was done by Consolidated Film Industries (CFI) Some have claimed that it was shot in Technicolor, but it was not. Never.

The show, Walt Disney's Wonderful World Of Color was shot in Technicolor, and thats why they seemed to POP on the screen. I've seen a couple of Technicolor prints of the shows, and they are stunning, after all these years. Eastman stuff before 1983 simply fades to pink over time.

Okay. Yes the Superman episodes I was referring to had that colorized look, kinda like Shirley Temple colorized films, only I saw these in the late 50's on friends color sets. (It may have been in early 60's, looked like only two colors, faded red and blue.)

Yes, Superman had at least 3 seasons of color episodes. We had a library of film prints when I worked in TV eons ago.

Here is an example of the color I saw, except my memory is that the red was much more faded. My impression was thinking this was a strange black and white show with a funny tint.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3...0/colortst.jpg

That looks like it could be a really faded print.

Yup. I found a U Tube video of a promo clip from the 1957 season, screen grab just after Superman "flies" though the window and just before bullets bounce off his chest. LOL :-) This is color quality I remember seeing.Attachment 174591

Seems like I remember it being rather "Uneven"-Sometimes the color was WAY too saturated, sometimes, it was really washed out...Face tones tended to be orangy, & Noel Niell's hair was FIRE-ENGINE red...The whole thing seemed like a bunch of 15-yr old 1957-style nerds "playing" at "Color Television"...

The multi-color card Superman is holding was, in the old 3 strip Technicolor days, called the "Lilly." It was held up in front of the film camera each time a new roll of film was loaded into the magazine. The color card or "Lilly," much like video color bars for setting up electronic color TV cameras, was used in processing the film and provided a guide for the color lab.

-Steve D.

Very interesting.

The recent low fade TV prints of Superman were beautiful. Their owner has done alot to make the shows look vastly better.

You'll note on SUPERMAN color shows, the color is fine unless there is a fade or dissolve and whatever shots are the "before & after" are much degraded due to the disintegration of the opticals. So, the color varies within a show for every shot that is NOT hard edited...

:boring:

You often see the image degrade as an optical effect starts and ends. It depends on how much effort the lab put into their work.

I've seen color prints where the colors would shift to green or purple at the shot changes. It depends on the labwork.

I've been in the film business for about 38 years. I've handled thousands of miles of 16mm and 35mm films, negatives, sound negatives... You name it.

I recall reading an article in college discussing Superman, The Lone Ranger, & the Cisco Kid. All had color episodes. The article talked about the fact that Fredrick Ziv, I think the distributor, found that he could shoot 16mm color for about the same price as 35mm B&W. Thinking that there was going to be a huge demand color programming, he decided to shoot the shows in color.... way ahead of his time. I remember seeing all three shows in color on WGN on Sunday mornings back in the 70's.

Probably used a lower cost color negative stock as opposed to shooting high-end Technicolor.

...And NOT having to deal w/ol' Natalie Kahlmus...That woulda been worth a lot, right there. Every thing I've read about her, she must have been a Fire-Horse on Wheels...(grin)

Eastmancolor was the preferred inexpensive stock back then.

I used to see commercial 'spots' printed on Technicolor film stock, and Kodachrome stock, too.

I dont recall color Lone Ranger shows. The ZIV shows went color early-on. My TV station had library prints of MANY TV series... New prints, and they were stunning for the most part.

EDIT: There were color Lone Ranger shows. Eastmancolor.

You must give Natalie Kalmus credit where it is due. In the early days, it was thought that "garish" Technicolor would be hard on the eyes. Being the wife of Herbert T Kalmus, Technicolor's inventor, she saw what hot colors could do. You gotta admit though, films produced during her tenure were lovely.

Yeah, Bruce, they were a PAIR...Of WHAT, I dunno, but they were a Pair, alrite...And, yeah, Nat DID see to it that Technicolor's high standards were religiously & strictly followed. We used the same basic principles in 4-color process printing. Still used today, as for as I know, for the simple reason-It WORKS.

"Glorious Technicolor" by Fred E. Basten, 1980, makes for an interesting read for the history of Tech. I picked up a copy at a used book store for $12.00.

Technicolor used Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta as its primary colors, with a B/W contrast on the base print. Thats why the soundtrack is nearly always black and white on a Technicolor print. They used cyan soundtracks early on, but they could never get past the low quality of the playback.

Technicolor has a very interesting history. I've got the book, Glorious Technicolor, in my collection library.

As of right now, I have 185 Technicolor prints in my collection. They are as beautiful today as the day they were printed... some are over 50 years old!!

I have that hard to find book as well. Great history of the Technicolor Co. up to the 1980 publishing date. It does mention that Natalie Kalmus became such a pain in the a** to producers, directors and DP's, she was finally shipped off to Technicolor in the U.K.

-Steve D.

Your film collection sounds fabulous! Since you have worked in the Television industry, I dare say there is probably a very interesting book in you just waiting to be written!

My first TV job: An independent station in a southern city.

Sometimes, we were amazed that the transmitter was still running at the end of the day.

When the studio to transmitter microwave link would go down, I'd run tapes out to the transmitter site, start the tapes and the engineer would switch from the stand by slide to the tape. I loved seeing stuff I copied on the air.

The station paid me to spot check features before air time. So, every night, I'd take usually 2 features home and screen them with my Pageant AV-255S built in 1959. I had a long living room-dining room, and it was a perfect 10 foot image on a smooth white wall!!

When I worked there, 90% of programming was film. 6AM to 2AM. There were two of us doing film inspections.

My boss was a photographic genius. He taught me. It sunk in. Here I am.

Thats the book.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program, on NBC

Thanks for posting that picture with the test card - I have been trying to find anyone who knows what colors were used on the Technicolor Lilly. Were they always the same, or changed for different productions?
This image may not answer it, but it's the closest thing I have seen.

It's hard to believe Superman was shot on 3-strip, but
1) I wonder if that is a real Technicolor lilly
2) (in case prints were made on dye imbibition, which I also wonder about for a TV series); or
3) maybe it's an adaptation of the lilly idea for processing of Kodak film.

We could have used you here in Chicago during the sixties. Our first UHF station used to run "Our Miss Brooks" and "December Bride" back-to-back, from 16mm prints. Once, the "Bride" print had the middle and end sequences mixed-up on the reel. Apparently no one inspected that print. Also, you could hear the projector clacking away while the muddy sound came through, as though a mic had been placed by the projector speaker. (That was a standard feature of that station). Does anyone remember "Science Fiction Theater"? that show , in it's first season, had the introduction (by Truman Bradley) and the closing in black-and-white, while the main story was presented in color. In the second season, the show was completely black-and-white.

No. 3 is the correct answer!

Do you or anyone recognize the card? Who supplied it? What is the text/logo that appears on it?

I can guarantee that Superman, the TV series, was not shot in Technicolor.

I remember Science Fiction Theatre.

We got syndicated prints (like December Bride and Our Miss Brooks) that were all put together wrong fairly often. Some TV stations could care less how they handled the films when they returned them to the distributor.

I vividly remember a Dick Van Dyke show that had a section spliced in upside down, and backwards sound. It never happened again, either.

I've been curious as to what color processes were used on some of these early shows. Screen Gems shows usually credit Pathe (Eastman). Universal is the only studio (to my knowledge) to employ Technicolor. Who did the color on, say, "The Lucy Show"? The restored DVDs look superb. How about "The Joey Bishop Show"? I saw a DVD of this and the color was not the greatest. Early shows like "Superman", "The Cisco Kid" and "Science Fiction Theater" were not really high-budget productions. Could they have utilized Cinecolor? By the late forties it was a three-color process. Or Republic's similar Trucolor? Were there any other lower-budget color processes available then?

All of the color prints of The Lucy Show I've handled were processed by Consolidated Film Industries (CFI) Laboratories of Hollywood, along with the B/W shows. They did the labwork for I Love Lucy, too.

Universal did use Technicolor, but by the 1970's the prints we got of their TV shows were on Eastmancolor stock, as Technicolor stopped the IB process in 1975.

Superman, The Cisco Kid, and Science Fiction Theatre were shot in Eastmancolor.

Trucolor was by Consolidated Film Industries. Printed on Eastman film stock.

EDIT: Changed the ending date for Technicolor from 1972 to 1975. Thats what I get for using my memory!!

By the 1950's, NO FILM was shot in the original Technicolor 3-strip separate b/w negative for each color camera system. Eastman color negative was used for just about everything. Technicolor (for Color by Technicolor) productions would then make separation masters from the Eastman negative, for making Technicolor prints by their exclusive IB process. It was the quality of the dyes in the prints that "made" technicolor so nice. Later Technicolor became just another (but high quality) lab for Kodak films. Therefore you can have the situation where the original Eastman color camera negatives are faded into oblivion, yet have perfect beautiful Technicolor IB prints still around.

Universal's "Foxfire" produced in 1954 and released in 1955 was the last American made film shot in 3 strip Technicolor*. However, in 1975
Technicolor processed its last domestic film in the 3 strip process (a re-print order of Disney's "Swiss Family Robinson") and closed its dye transfer plant in Hollywood*. The term "Color by Technicolor" in the credits ment that Technicolor handled all stages of the lab work. "Print by Technicolor" indicated that Technicolor was only responsible for the final-release prints.
Today, the word "Technicolor" generally appears alone in the credits.

*Source: "Glorious Technicolor" by Fred E. Basten.

-Steve D.

Thanks, Steve. I updated my previous post with the year 1975.