Ambiance

A bit of color…

February 16, 2012 at 2:13 am (By Ron)

Normally, I do my Fred and Ginger posts over at my blog, Fluffy Stuffin, but I thought I’d share this one with the Ambiance readership.

Color Fred and Ginger from 1939! (there is no sound) This is from the film The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, the last film they made for RKO in the 1930’s.  They did a color film 10 years later for MGM, The Barkleys of Broadway, but alas, no color for them in the RKO days except for little snippets like this.  They were going to have a color sequence in 1938’s Carefree for the song “I used to be color blind”, but RKO cheapened out when Fred’s solo film in 1937, A Damsel in Distress, failed badly.  This sequence is quite odd; it’s a fantasy dream sequence, mostly shot in slo-mo…and having it in color would have been cool!  Hollywood experimented with color in small sections of black and white films, (The Women comes to mind) but they pulled out all the stops for the big blockbusters like Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind.  I believe this bit we see here was shot with Ginger’s own camera, which she would take to sets: