The Tech­ni­col­or cou­ple who changed the look of cinema

There are few scenes in the his­to­ry of film more icon­ic than the moment in The Wiz­ard of Oz when Dorothy opens the sepia-toned door to reveal the vibrant, mul­ti-coloured won­der­land of Oz. The sci­ence-fic­tion writer Arthur C Clarke once wrote that ​“any suf­fi­cient­ly advanced tech­nol­o­gy is indis­tin­guish­able from mag­ic,” and in this instance Tech­ni­col­or deliv­ered both the tech­nol­o­gy and the magic.

There were actu­al­ly two wiz­ards behind this par­tic­u­lar cur­tain: Her­bert Kalmus, who co-found­ed the com­pa­ny and patent­ed the three-strip process in 1915, and his wife Natal­ie, who was cred­it­ed as colour con­sul­tant on every Tech­ni­col­or film between 1934 and 1949. He brought the techni‑, she brought the ‑colour, and togeth­er they formed a de fac­to monop­oly for over 20 years.

It was the per­fect busi­ness mod­el: Tech­ni­col­or would rent out cam­eras, equip­ment and per­son­nel to stu­dios, then over­see the man­u­fac­tur­ing of all prints, none of which were avail­able on the open mar­ket. Yet what made the com­pa­ny so pow­er­ful – and so unusu­al – was the cre­ative and com­mer­cial con­trol it wielded.

Technicolor’s tech­nol­o­gy was actu­al­ly rather expen­sive and cum­ber­some. Its unique sell­ing point was its Advi­so­ry Ser­vice, where con­sul­tants would cre­ate colour charts for the entire pro­duc­tion, match­ing hues to the dom­i­nant mood or emo­tion for every scene, sequence, set and character.

It was easy to per­suade film­mak­ers to take on the Advi­so­ry Ser­vice because ear­ly Tech­ni­col­or films had been panned for their lurid, dis­tract­ing overuse of colour. Writ­ing in Amer­i­can Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er mag­a­zine, Karl Hale com­plained that in Becky Sharp ​“your eye is con­stant­ly pulled away from the peo­ple and to the flow­ers,” while The New York Times described how ​“even the most delight­ful of colours will dis­play the most detestable ten­den­cies giv­en the opportunity.”

In her 1935 essay ​‘Colour Con­scious­ness’, Natal­ie Kalmus laid out her man­i­festo which would form the ide­o­log­i­cal basis for every Tech­ni­col­or film design for the next two decades. She advised against the ​“fla­grant mis­takes” of the ​“unnat­ur­al super-abun­dance of colour”, instead call­ing for the ​“judi­cious use of neu­trals” and greater ​“pre­ci­sion” so that colours could ​“com­prise a pleas­ing harmony.”

In many respects, Kalmus is the Hol­ly­wood hero­ine that his­to­ry for­got. At a time when women in the film indus­try were either star­lets or sec­re­taries, here was a pow­er­ful woman with unprece­dent­ed influ­ence over the aes­thet­ic of major Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions. She was also tak­ing home an annu­al salary of $65,000 ($1.2 mil­lion in today’s money).

Her per­son­al­i­ty was infa­mous­ly as colour­ful and con­tro­ver­sial as the com­pa­ny she rep­re­sent­ed, and this caused con­sid­er­able fric­tion with her male col­leagues. Direc­tor Allan Dwan called her a ​“bitch”, while pro­duc­er David O Selznick threat­ened to have her removed from the set of Gone With the Wind. Screen­writer Arthur Lau­rents once joked that ​“she might have to be killed off cam­era”, and direc­tor Vin­cente Min­nel­li grum­bled that he ​“couldn’t do any­thing right in Mrs Kalmus’ eyes.”

There is a lot of debate over whether Tech­ni­col­or thrived because of Natal­ie Kalmus or in spite of her. It was easy for peo­ple to dis­miss her posi­tion as the result of nepo­tism: Pho­to­play Mag­a­zine described her as sim­ply the ​“pret­ty, tit­ian-haired wife” of a ​“bril­liant sci­en­tist.” There was also a def­i­nite sense of over­step­ping bound­aries: O Selznick wrote in a memo that some­one ​“needs to ham­mer into this organ­i­sa­tion that these experts are for guid­ing us tech­ni­cal­ly on the [film] stock and not for dom­i­nat­ing the cre­ative side of our pictures.”

Her impact as an indi­vid­ual is unde­ni­able; whether she was a help or a hin­drance is ulti­mate­ly irrel­e­vant. What is impor­tant is how Tech­ni­col­or changed the inter­play between progress and process. When the colour con­sul­tants decid­ed to make Dorothy’s slip­pers ruby rather than sil­ver so that they would con­trast more with the yel­low brick road, the tech­nol­o­gy was not serv­ing the film; the film was serv­ing the technology.

Tech­ni­col­or was both the cause and the effect. It was respon­si­ble for the hyper-sat­u­rat­ed look we asso­ciate with a whole era of cin­e­ma, from the ver­mil­lion hues of An Amer­i­can in Paris to the deep pur­ples of Meet Me in St Louis. It was also the dri­ver of many artis­tic deci­sions – on the set of The Adven­tures of Robin Hood design­ers sprayed real trees with green paint to make them even more resplen­dent, while 800-foot can­dles were need­ed to pro­vide enough light on the set of Black Nar­cis­sus to make sure the colours stood out on the widest lens aper­ture setting.

The influ­ence of Tech­ni­col­or, and this inter­play between artistry and prac­ti­cal­i­ty, rais­es many ques­tions. Is tech­nol­o­gy ever just a pas­sive tool or is it an active instru­ment, which moulds and makes pic­tures in its own image? Should film­mak­ers pri­ori­tise flaunt­ing new tech­nolo­gies or should artis­tic and aes­thet­ic integri­ty come first?

From autonomous drones to algo­rith­mic video edit­ing, tech­nol­o­gy will con­tin­ue to impact not only the ways in which we make films, but the way we con­cep­tu­alise film alto­geth­er. Next year James Dean will be res­ur­rect­ed and ​‘cast’ as a star in the Viet­nam war movie Find­ing Jack using the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy in full body CGI. Is this shrewd mar­ket­ing or a crude gimmick?

Technicolor’s colour con­sul­tan­cy helped to find a com­pro­mise between chro­mo­pho­bia and colour mania, and in doing so Her­bert and Natal­ie Kalmus ruled at the inter­sec­tion between inven­tion, imag­i­na­tion and invest­ment. There is so much we can learn from them about tech­nol­o­gy and art, not least that the for­mer can and per­haps should always serve the latter.