Cinecolor - History

History

The Cinecolor process was invented in 1932 by English-born cinematographer William T. Crespinel (1890–1987), who joined the Kinemacolor Corporation in 1906, and who went to New York in 1913 to work with Kinemacolor's American unit. After that company folded in 1916, he worked for Prizma, another color film company, founded by William Van Doren Kelley. He later worked for Multicolor, and patented several inventions in the field of color cinematography.

Crespinel founded Cinecolor, Inc. (later Cinecolor Corporation) in 1932 as a response to the success of the Technicolor Corporation, which held a partial monopoly on motion picture color. William Loss, a director of the Citizens Traction Company in New York, was its principal investor. The company bought four acres of land in Burbank, California for its processing plant. Crespinel retired as president of Cinecolor in 1948.

The company was largely founded on the patents and equipment of William Van Doren Kelley and his Prizma Color system, and was in direct competition with Multicolor, which folded in 1932. At that point, Cinecolor bought its equipment. Although limited in tone by comparison, Cinecolor's chief advantages over Technicolor were that color rushes were available within 24 hours, that the process itself only cost 25 percent more than black-and-white photography (the price grew cheaper as larger amounts of Cinecolor film stock were bought), and could be used in modified black-and-white cameras.

Before 1945, Cinecolor was used almost exclusively for short films. From 1932 to 1935, Cinecolor was used in at least 22 cartoons -- including Max Fleischer cartoons for Paramount and Ub Iwerks for MGM -- the period when Walt Disney held an exclusive contract with the Technicolor for the use of three-color Technicolor for animation. Among the notable animated short subjects series made in Cinecolor were Ub Iwerks' ComiColor cartoons, a number of late-1940s Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and many of Famous Studios' late-1940s Popeye the Sailor cartoons. (The 1940s cartoons were more than likely actually produced in Technicolor but had their original releases processed by Cinecolor, since when viewed side-by-side with 1930s Cinecolor entries, there is a very noticeable difference in how many different colors are used.)

The first feature-length pictures released in Cinecolor were the documentary feature Sweden, Land of the Vikings (1934) and the independently made western The Phantom of Santa Fe (1936, but filmed in Multicolor in 1931), followed by Monogram Pictures' release The Gentleman from Arizona (1939). No other Cinecolor features followed until 1945. Low-budget companies such as Monogram, Producers Releasing Corporation, and Screen Guild Productions were Cinecolor's chief employers. A 1945 PRC Cinecolor release The Enchanted Forest was the highest grossing film of that studio. The commercial and critical success of the film led both major and minor studios to use Cinecolor such as MGM's Gallant Bess (1946). The system could produce acceptable color pictures at a fraction of what Technicolor cost. Most features made in Cinecolor were westerns, because the primary colors in those films were blues, browns and reds.

Cinecolor was also prominently employed in processing Paramount's Popular Science series of short films -- although later prints were made by Consolidated Film Industries under their Magnacolor process. Hal Roach Studios made all four of its features in Cinecolor in 1947–1948, becoming the first Hollywood studio to do an all-color schedule. The last American feature released in Cinecolor was Allied Artists' Pride of the Blue Grass (1954).

Republic Pictures began using CFI's Trucolor from the end of 1946 for a variety of films ranging from Westerns, travelogues, and epics of the life of Richard Wagner (Magic Fire) and the battle of the Alamo (The Last Command). Trucolor differed, however, in that it used a dye-coupler already built into the film base, rather than the application of chemical toner.