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'The industry is rapidly becoming color conscious. With the major problems of sound successfully solved, the studios and color processes are now bending their efforts to the further development of color cinematography.
The leading producing companies are all employing some color system in sequences of their important productions. Several outstanding features have been made entirely in color. In this business of surprises, it is within the bounds of possibility that color will eventually transplant the black and white film. Even as today a silent feature strikes the sound-educated public as more or less of an oddity, it may come to pass that in the future a black-- and-white subject will appear outdated in comparison with an all-color film.
... Technicolor, Photocolor, Multicolor and the Eastman Sonochrome tinted positive films are the processes most generally used in color cinematography to date ... . The consensus of informed opinion is that before many months 50 per cent of all Hollywood features will be using color at least in certain sequences. ...' - Anon., 'Color', The 1930 Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures1
The Film Daily Yearbook's predictions about colour reflect the technological optimism of the film industry in the late transition-to-sound (but pre-Crash) period. The 'transplanting' of black and white by colour would not, alas, occur for another 25 years. It was not until 1955 that productions in colour outnumbered those in black and white; and it was not until the late 1960s - and the widespread diffusion of colour television - that colour would finally supplant black and white, as colour productions rose from 54 per cent in 1966 to 94 per cent in 1970.(2)
One of the most intriguing aspects about Film Daily's speculations is just how faroff the mark they are. What is fascinating for the historian of technology about the invention, innovation, and diffusion of colour within the industry is the relatively lengthy span of time that it took for it to occur. Like the development of widescreen cinema, the history of motion picture colour is a history of failures, setbacks, detours and delays.
The perception of what would take place in the field of colour technology in 1930 is clearly clouded by the recent development of sound. Within a matter of four...