Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.
Method
As a bipack color process, the photographer loaded a standard camera with two film stocks: an orthochromatic strip dyed orange-red and a panchromatic strip behind it. The orthochromatic film stock recorded only blue and green, and its orange-red dye (analogous to a Wratten 23-A filter) filtered out everything but orange and red light to the panchromatic film stock.Crespinel, William T. (1933): As to Cinecolor. In: American Cinematographer, 14, pp. 355, 380-381. https://filmcolors.org/timeline-entry/1297/#/infobox/37340
Since the distance to the two film emulsions differed in depth from a single emulsion, the camera's lens focus had to be adjusted and a special film gate added to accommodate a bipack negative.Belton, John (2000): CinecoIor. In: Film History, 12,4, Color Film (2000), pp. 344-357. https://filmcolors.org/timeline-entry/1297/#/infobox/37341
In the laboratory, the negatives were developed and the orange-red dye removed. The prints were made on duplitized film and developed as black and white positives. One side containing the red-orange filtered recorded and the soundtrack was toned blue-green; the other side containing the blue-green record was toned red-orange.Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press, pp. 102-106. https://filmcolors.org/timeline-entry/1297/#/infobox/37342
Cinecolor could produce vibrant reds, oranges, blues, browns and flesh tones, but its renderings of other colors such as bright greens (rendered dark green) and purples (rendered a sort of dark magenta) were muted.
History The Cinecolor process was invented in 1932 by the English-born cinematographer William Thomas Crespinel (1890–1987),Social Security Death Index who joined the Kinemacolor Corporation in 1906 and went to New York in 1913 to work with Kinemacolor's American unit."William Crespinel, 96; Pioneer in Color Films", New York Times, June 24, 1987, p. B10. Passenger list of the S.S. Carmania, Port of New York, 3 February 1913, p. 16. After that company folded in 1916, he worked for Prizma, another color film company, founded by William Van Doren Kelley.World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, State of New Jersey, County of Bergen, Draft Board 3, 5 June 1917. He later worked for Multicolor and patented several inventions in the field of color cinematography.Gate for Multiple Films, 1930; Method and Apparatus for Placing Sound Records in Color Photography, 1930; Method of Producing Films in Natural Color, 1930; Colored Photograph and Method of Making Same, 1932.
After leaving Multicolor, Crespinel co-founded the Colorfilm Corporation of California in 1932. By May 1932, the name of the company was changed to Cinecolor, Inc. (later Cinecolor Corporation). 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.
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, and Cinecolor then bought its equipment.
Cheaper alternative to Technicolor Although its color spectrum was limited by comparison, Cinecolor had several advantages over Technicolor: color rushes were available within 24 hours (Technicolor took four days or more); the process itself cost only 25% more than black-and-white photography (the price lowered as larger amounts of Cinecolor film stock were bought), and it could be used in modified black-and-white cameras.Gene Fernett, Hollywood's Poverty Row 1930-1950 (Coral Reef Publications, 1973), pp 15-19.
Before 1945, Cinecolor was used almost exclusively for short subjects. From 1932 to 1935, at least 45 cartoons were filmed in Cinecolor, including the first season of Rainbow Parade cartoons for Van Beuren and the Comicolor cartoons by Ub Iwerks (1933-1935) for independent distributor Pat Powers. Notable Cinecolor cartoons were Betty Boop in Fleischer Studios' Poor Cinderella (1934), two Merrie Melodies cartoons, Honeymoon Hotel (1934) and Beauty and the Beast (1934), two Ub Iwerks cartoons from 1934, Davy Jones' Locker and Hell's Fire, and Ted Eshbaugh's The Snowman (1933).
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 and starring Multicolor executive Wallace MacDonald). A short-term burst of feature-film activity in 1939 -- yielding the RKO Radio release Isle of DestinyMotion Picture Herald, "Increased Use of Color Seen for 1940-41 Season", Aug. 3, 1940, p. 44. and the Monogram Pictures release The Gentleman from Arizona -- was not enough to keep the company solvent, and Cinecolor went into voluntary bankruptcy in 1942.International Projectionist, "Cinecolor Now Rated as a Formidable Factor", September 1946, p. 32. An upsurge in commercial and industrial films made in color improved the company's balance sheet, and in 1942 home-movie distributor Castle Films expanded the Cinecolor line to the 16mm and 8mm film formats, reprinting the Ub Iwerks ComiColor cartoons until 1951.Scott MacGillivray, Castle Films: A Hobbyist's Guide, iUniverse, 2004, p. 203. Cinecolor emerged from bankruptcy in October 1944, with all creditors paid in full. Its stock price (only four cents a share in 1943) jumped to $8.50 in 1946.
Lower-budgeted companies such as Monogram, Producers Releasing Corporation, and Screen Guild Productions were Cinecolor's chief contractors in the mid-1940s. A 1945 PRC Cinecolor release, The Enchanted Forest, was the studio's highest-grossing film of the year, and PRC's series of Cinecolor westerns with Eddie Dean attracted attention among exhibitors. Screen Guild's Scared to Death (1947) featured Bela Lugosi in his only color film.
The commercial and critical success of those films led both major and minor studios to use Cinecolor as a money-saving measure. Cinecolor 35mm film stock cost about 25% less than Technicolor (in 1946, 4.5 cents a foot for Cinecolor vs. 5.97 cents a foot for Technicolor). International Projectionist noted that "Cinecolor's service charges are also lower than Technicolor's, and the cost differential on a standard feature will exceed $50,000 by the time prints have been made, an important sum for a low-budget picture."International Projectionist, as above. When more producers opted for Cinecolor, the company was able to reduce the cost of printing, which made Cinecolor an even more attractive option.
Mainstream success Cinecolor enjoyed a popular vogue in the mid- to late 1940s. Cinecolor's erstwhile principal investor, William Loss, was now the company's vice president and general manager, and he promoted Cinecolor to Hollywood producers. The first and only producer to adopt an all-Cinecolor policy was pioneer comedy producer Hal Roach, who reopened his studio after the war and henceforth made all of his theatrical featurettes in Cinecolor. Roach's erstwhile distributor, MGM, also experimented with a Cinecolor feature, Gallant Bess (1947).Time, "Movies: Profit Through Loss", Sept. 23, 1946.
Technicolor, Inc. was struggling in the late 1940s, faced with anti-trust charges from the United States Department of JusticeMotion Picture Daily, "Technicolor Cited in D. of J.'s Program", Mar. 1, 1948, p. 1. as well as labor unrest as the backlog of work piled up. When delays at the Technicolor plant affected the Warner Bros. Cartoons release schedule, the studio began using Cinecolor for its popular animated cartoons in 1947, as a short-term solution.
Other short-subject productions went the same route: many of Famous Studios' late-1940s Popeye the Sailor cartoons; Columbia's Phantasies of 1947-1949, and Paramount's Popular Science series of live-action shorts. Later prints of the Popular Science reels were made by Consolidated Film Industries using its two-color Magnacolor process. In 1946 Consolidated's movie-studio subsidiary, Republic Pictures, introduced its own two-color process, Trucolor, which used a dye-coupler already built into the film base, rather than the application of chemical toner.
The Warner-Pathé newsreel made headlines in the trade when it introduced Cinecolor in its first January issue of 1948. Both the Tournament of Roses parade and the Rose Bowl football game were photographed in Cinecolor. This same footage was featured in the new Warner-Pathé Canadian News, making its screen debut on Jan. 9, 1948.Canadian Motion Picture Digest, "Warner-Pathé Canadian News Filmed in Cinecolor", Jan. 17, 1948, p. 11.
With Roach, MGM, and Warner going ahead with Cinecolor, other studios followed suit: Columbia (The Gallant Blade, 1948) and Eagle-Lion (Northwest Stampede, 1948, and its Red Ryder westerns, 1949). Most features made in Cinecolor were outdoor adventures and westerns, because the main color palette in those films consisted of blues, browns, and reds, and so the system's limitations were less apparent.
Expansion In October 1947 Cinecolor bought a film production company, Film Classics, to promote its color process in its own feature films. Joseph Bernhard, president of Film Classics, became vice president of Cinecolor.Motion Picture Herald, "Cinecolor Takes Film Classics," Oct. 18, 1947, p. 20. Seven months later, Cinecolor president and founder William Crespinel stepped down, and Bernhard assumed the Cinecolor presidency on May 15, 1948.Boxoffice, "Color Films to 70% Soon, Joseph Bernhard Predicts," April 24, 1948, p.20. Entering the production field proved to be a risky move, as Film Classics' original productions weren't successful enough to sustain the studio, which left the scene in 1951.
Meanwhile, on the technical front, 1948 was important for the Cinecolor Corporation, which introduced a new supersensitive negative stock that cut back on the on-set lighting costs by 50 percent and camera film magazines. Combined, they reduced the cost of shooting in Cinecolor to only 10 percent more than black and white.Boxoffice, "New Sensitized Film Cuts Lighting Costs," July 17, 1948, p. 43.
SuperCinecolor Cinecolor's Alan Gundelfinger developed a three-color process called SuperCinecolor in 1948, but studios did not begin using it until 1951. Six of the first seven SuperCinecolor features were made by Columbia,Variety, Aug. 16, 1950, p. 1. beginning with When the Redskins Rode (1951); the one non-Columbia production was Drums in the Deep South (1950), released by RKO. Other films of note that used the SuperCinecolor process were Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952), Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953), Gog (1954), and Top Banana (1954). The latter two were both also filmed in 3-D.