What are you listening to?

[LizzieMaine]

Its all in the delivery of the song and Eddie Cantor does it in a superb way. .... and yes "Whoopie" is a classic, colorized and all! Fun movie!

One of my favorite movies -- and it's not colorized at all, it was shot in two-color Technicolor. It's one of the best-preserved existing examples of that process, and it's a pity it's not available on DVD yet.

The orchestra in the film, by the way, is led by George Olsen -- it's tough to get more roaring-twenties-Broadway than that.

 

[MissMittens]

Yes, it was one of the early color movies. If I remember correctly, the two-color process was also known as two-reel color, and was shot on regular monochrome film but two reels were run simultaneously by one camera, one with a green lens and one with a red lens, and when they were developed, the red was dyed green and green was dyed red, the two were sandwiched together by some sort of emulsion, and then run through a projector. It's one of those "How did they even come up with that????" technologies

 

[LizzieMaine]

That was one variation, but Technicolor was a single camera system -- one strip of black and white film was used with a prism splitting the light into two beams, and directing it thru red-orange and blue-green filters. You got a negative with two frames of the same shot, with different greyscales corresponding to the color filters -- which could be reconstructed into a color print.

There were rival two color processes like Cinecolor and Multicolor that used two strips of negative, and three color Technicolor used three strips of film and three filters in a single camera. These processes actually hold up better than modern color film because the color is a matter of optics, not chemistry.

 

[MissMittens]

That was one variation, but Technicolor was a single camera system -- one strip of black and white film was used with a prism splitting the light into two beams, and directing it thru red-orange and blue-green filters. You got a negative with two frames of the same shot, with different greyscales corresponding to the color filters -- which could be reconstructed into a color print.

That's quite something for the time period. Even now, it begs the question "how the heck did they think of that?" for sure.

I think you're right about the difference between optics and chemistry....somehow movies in Technicolor seem to stand out versus the modern day equivalents. I have a couple of "double-run 8" cameras from the era I have yet to play with to see what they can do.

 

[martinsantos]

Woulderful the records of Eddie Cantor! Liked a lot! I didn't know any records of him. He got a fan.

Lizziemaine: I agree that some colors process hold better the colors - no one can do as the discontinued Kodachrome. But colors in film is a matter of chemistry. There were a few process just optical, with color patterns... But they never worked well. All about color couplers, developers, etc, are matter of chemistry, I think.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

[video=youtube;0rvLeCMTofE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rvLeCMTofE[/video]

 

[MD_SPencer]

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet Plus
Recorded May 11, 1961.
Listen to them Swing!

On Vinyl, of course.

 

[Fletch]

Subway Song - Tom Lehrer, 1965*. The Kingston Trio's MTA was only the second song inspired by the Boston transit system. This one's a lot funnier, and you can sing it in 35 seconds.
*He wrote it as a 16yo Harvard freshman in 1944 but could not record it for a loooong time. Listen and hear why.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Woulderful the records of Eddie Cantor! Liked a lot! I didn't know any records of him. He got a fan.

Lizziemaine: I agree that some colors process hold better the colors - no one can do as the discontinued Kodachrome. But colors in film is a matter of chemistry. There were a few process just optical, with color patterns... But they never worked well. All about color couplers, developers, etc, are matter of chemistry, I think.

Technicolor was always an optical process -- it was always shot on black and white film, and it was printed by dye-transfer using special raised matrices made from the black-and-white negatives. A true Technicolor print is basically a lithograph made with fadeproof dyes, not a photographically-developed print, so it doesn't fade like Eastmancolor or Deluxe Color or any of those other fifties-era processes.

Unfortunately, true Technicolor is no longer used, either for shooting or for printing. The last cameras were retired in the sixties, and the last printing lines were scrapped in the '90s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Radio to wait for the Alka Seltzer to kick in by...

It's November 7, 1939, we're tuned to WABC, 860 on your dial, and the Columbia network is bringing us the new, modern sound of Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, from the Terrace Room of the Hotel New Yorker. This is not your mama's Whiteman ensemble -- it's smaller, tighter, and features a whole new collection of arrangements. Vocals by the Four Modernaires, just to prove Pops is right up to the minute.

(I once stood in the rain in front of the Hotel New Yorker, desperately trying to hail a cab and trying to ignore the pain in a toe I'd broken after getting my foot stepped on in a stairway because the stupid elevator didn't work. Ah, happy days.)

 

[martinsantos]

Mss Lizie,

I'm not any specialist about cine color techniques... I know about photo color techniques only. In my front a book about the Ansco color photo system from 1948.

Technicolor, anyway, looked to me very similar to old dye transfer process. And so difficult as that! Of course, the very very best - and the most expensive.

And some dyes are just terrible. ALL slides made with the then famous Ferraniacolor are just horrible, no colors (ever no image) at all. Ansco usually is very well. Kodachrome is always perfect. The best Ektachrome are from the 60s. Agfacolor was a great film in its day - now almost all are bluish. I'm writing about slides because they were in movie stock and is what I know.

But color rendition is, always, a matter of chemistry. Some dyes fade, others do not fade. Some have better rendition in part of the color spectrum - some get beautiful red, other about greens, and so on. I understand this as color is a matter of chemistry.

The only "pure" optical color process is by color patterns... Like old Dufaycolor. Never heard about this in movie stock, anyway.

Merry Christmas!!!

Martin

Technicolor was always an optical process -- it was always shot on black and white film, and it was printed by dye-transfer using special raised matrices made from the black-and-white negatives. A true Technicolor print is basically a lithograph made with fadeproof dyes, not a photographically-developed print, so it doesn't fade like Eastmancolor or Deluxe Color or any of those other fifties-era processes.

Unfortunately, true Technicolor is no longer used, either for shooting or for printing. The last cameras were retired in the sixties, and the last printing lines were scrapped in the '90s.

 

[Wally_Hood]

Yesterday, Town Hall Tonight with Fred Allen, guest star Jack Benny, from 12/22/37. Skit is Santa Sits Down, in which the jolly old elf is disgusted with his treatment at the hands of folks and refuses to make his trip on Christmas Eve. Towards the end there's a news flash interruption announcing the assassination in Algiers of Admiral Darlan; at first I thought it was an Allen joke, but it's for real.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

[video=youtube;Wywch1Kbhfk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wywch1Kbhfk&list=MLGxdCwVVULXcLMXLvx2CLwoxQ0jjzz5_3&playnext=23[/video]

 

[Fletch]

I hate to do this to you Wally, but Adm. François Darlan wasn't assassinated until Christmas Eve of 1942.

The date confusion might be due to a rebroadcast of an earlier script, especially at Christmas time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, that script was rebroadcast every year up thru 1942. The original 1937 broadcast --which I'm in the processing of remastering for a future commerical release -- has no interruption. Evidentally someone is circulating a composite recording, since in 1942 Allen's program was the "Texaco Star Theatre."

 

[Fletch]

She sees all - she knows all - she gets in everywhere...

 

[MissMittens]

[video=youtube;Wywch1Kbhfk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wywch1Kbhfk&list=MLGxdCwVVULXcLMXLvx2CLwoxQ0jjzz5_3&playnext=23[/video]

Lawrence Welk....a couple of years back I did a show with his keyboard player Bob Ralston. He needed singers for an organ tour, and I set him up with two really good singers I know. Super nice guy, tons of Welk stories to tell. He does a show at his house every Sunday he's not touring in California, it's an open door kinda thing

 

[MissMittens]

Yep, that script was rebroadcast every year up thru 1942. The original 1937 broadcast --which I'm in the processing of remastering for a future commerical release -- has no interruption. Evidentally someone is circulating a composite recording, since in 1942 Allen's program was the "Texaco Star Theatre."

Do you know where to find Bing's 1942 Christmas broadcast?

 

[MissMittens]

Currently listening to Kay Kyser Hello Mr Kringle......he's a rare artist actually. The first music millionaire I believe, was all over the radio and even some early TV from what I understand, but as soon as he made his million, he disappeared completely. It has what I think could be classified as the first "rap". The irony.....

 

[Berlin]

Frank Sinatra - Violets for your furs