Early color films

[mickeeteeze]

Over the holiday season,I had the good fortune to receive both "Wax Museum",and "Dr. X",two "two-strip Technicolor" films from the early thirties. They were both Warners pictures made in the same year,same director, many of the same actors. I did some "net research" and discovered that,supposedly, Warners made about 20 or so of these early talkie color films(1932-34).

Anyone know whats available out there on DVD ???

Would appreciate any info, if anyone knows.

Thanx.

[BixB]

Actually mickee Warners (and other studios) produced an impressive number of color talkies starting in 1929 and earlier if you take in the silent era. Warner's produced what has long been considered the first all color-all sound movie in 1929, ON WITH THE SHOW. While the other studios produced Technicolor films, Warners produced more than all the majors combined during this period. GOLD DIGGERS OF BROADWAY, SALLY, VIENNESE NIGHTS, SONG OF THE WEST, 50 MILLION FRENCHMEN are to name but a few of the ones Warner's produced during this period. Sadly only a few of these films survive in color and in most cases don't exist even in BW copies. Technicolor maintained the negatives for all films produced in their process and in the 50's systematically destroyed the two-color process negatives in their vaults saying they were unprintable.The survivors that are with us are primarily prints turning up from other sources. The two you mentioned were considered lost for years until copies were found in Jack Warner's private collection in the 1960's. Two survivors, VIENNESE NIGHTS and UNDER A TEXAS MOON reside at the UCLA Film Archive but so far Warners and TCM have stubbornly not taken the effort to retrieve them for showings on TCM or DVD release.

[mickeeteeze]

Thanx so much for that info. I kinda figured many were lost. I actually seem to have much of what is available.

It would be fascinating if more of this stuff were to turn up.

Thanx, again.