# Why did audiences tolerate B/W movies for so long? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 1, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293 "2009-06-01T00:09:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/61 "2009-06-01T17:20:53Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Might be more strictly accurate to say that the great majority of B&W American movies of the 1960’s which have been saved and transferred to modern media like DVD’s (and VHS) are almost always better than average. I’m sure there are terrible terrible movies from the era, in both B&W and color, that haven’t been preserved and aren’t spoken of in film class or polite society. 😉 I don’t know how tongue in check you’re being here, but there was someone else on these board who believed that 90% of American features from the 1930s were gone now (actually, 94% _exist_), so it’s not impossible that you are thinking along the same lines for 1960s movies. For the record, virtually all American features from the 1960s exist today — more than 99%. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/62 "2009-06-01T17:30:54Z")
> [@Dead\_Badger](#): > > Consider this: you can only fit so many photo-receptors on a given sensor patch (be it film or digital). When you’ve got to separate red, green and blue, that means you’re reducing your spatial resolution to achieve colour reproduction. So for a given density of photo-receptors, the choice of colour over B&W is very much a tradeoff of colour versus resolution. Not an obvious choice, until resolution is so high you can chuck some of it away. This is incorrect is almost every way. Normal color film uses a “layered” approach to capturing [colors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-41_process). There is no spatial trade-off necessary. Technicolor used three strips of B&W film running simultaneously, each being exposed through a different color filter. Once again, no spatial tradeoff. Digital sensors (using the standard Bayer pattern) do have R-G-B sites on a single layer, but most of the Luminance information can be obtained from each sensor regardless of it’s color. Foveon sensors use the Layered approach. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/63 "2009-06-01T17:42:20Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > I don’t know how tongue in check you’re being here, but there was someone else on these board who believed that 90% of American features from the 1930s were gone now (actually, 94% _exist_), so it’s not impossible that you are thinking along the same lines for 1960s movies. For the record, virtually all American features from the 1960s exist today — more than 99%. Exist, I’d be willing to believe, on film or digital in archives somewhere. But are readily available at your local Blockbuster or Netflix? Not unless things have changed a lot since I worked there (BBV). There were lots of 60’s movies we just couldn’t get, no matter how much you want to spend. Thanks for the Movies on TV education, everyone! ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/64 "2009-06-01T17:43:36Z")
> [@kittenblue](#): > > Theaters in small towns couldn’t necessarily afford to switch to new projectors…if that was an issue. I may be talking out of my hat on that one! The same projectors are used for color and black and white movies. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/65 "2009-06-01T17:45:07Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Exist, I’d be willing to believe, on film or digital in archives somewhere. But are readily available at your local Blockbuster or Netflix? Roughly twice as many American movies from the 1960s are available for television than are available on home video. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/66 "2009-06-01T17:53:34Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > I’ll throw in some more modern ones: > **Pi, Dead Man, Ed Wood, Swoon**. They look great in b/w and have a tone and mood to them that wouldn’t work too well, or at all, in color. _Sin City_ kinda sorta fits in there as well, where the colour is rare and used for dramatic effect. Anyway, what hurt _Sky Captain_ more; the sepia-tone or the lousy writing? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/67 "2009-06-01T17:54:23Z")
Believe it or not, the Lon Chaney version of [_The Phantom of the Opera_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera_(1925_film)), a silent film, ALSO had one particular scene in color. This was done in 1925. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/68 "2009-06-01T18:33:17Z")
> [@Henrichek](#): > > For example, look at Prokudin-Gorskii’s photos, or by any other photographer making color photograps in the B&W times, and they seem all the more spectacular. Here’s at least one point. Color is about spectacle. When you view a color image, your mind mainly picks up the colors. A black-and-white image is about form and shade. You’re emphasizing something completely different. It’s no different than choosing tools for other media, whether drawing, painting, sculpture. Is the statue of David "less real"c than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel because the latter is in color? No, it’s not. Neither of them are meant to be “real,” but the details are chosen by the artist to have a certain impact on the viewer. David is all about form. The Sistine isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/69 "2009-06-01T18:40:29Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > There’s another reason that it became almost universal to film movies in color somewhere around the late 1960’s. Up to that time, the colors didn’t look quite right. They looked garish and exaggerated. Then considerably improved color film was available. So it became harder to argue that color films just didn’t look right, and black and white films went out of fashion quite quickly. I disagree totally. Three-strip Technicolor (1932-1955) was capable of giving extremely accurate color rendition. [Gone With the Wind](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yv_PunF284) (1939) [Leave Her to Heaven](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omjRrRG8bq0) (1945) [Restoring Gone With the Wind](http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m3G5V90QFIUJB0) Any “exaggeration” was not from the color process, it was a conscious choice of the director, art director, cinematographer, and costume designer of what they put in _front_ of the camera. [An American in Paris](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlvzGT1Ta2w) (1951). ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/70 "2009-06-01T19:13:37Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Believe it or not, the Lon Chaney version of [_The Phantom of the Opera_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera_(1925_film)), a silent film, ALSO had one particular scene in color. This was done in 1925. Edison was hand painting color on his films back in 1895. Technicolor was first tried in 1916, and refined so that by 1922 it was used in a feature. Once the three-strip process was developed in the early 30s, it was ready, though the Depression made studios reluctant to spend the extra money. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/71 "2009-06-01T19:18:22Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > I disagree totally. Three-strip Technicolor (1932-1955) was capable of giving extremely accurate color rendition. Maybe he’s thinking of 2-strip Technicolor. But you have to admit, that 3-strip was usually employed in films that were highly stylized to begin with, so “accuracy” in a “realistic” sense often has little to do with it. But when you got a blue in Technicolor, it was BLUE. The colors in Eastman could hardly compare in contrast and vibrancy (and the fact that Eastman fades & Technicolor won’t doesn’t help much either). ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/72 "2009-06-01T19:43:51Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > There’s another reason that it became almost universal to film movies in color somewhere around the late 1960’s. Up to that time, the colors didn’t look quite right. They looked garish and exaggerated. Then considerably improved color film was available. So it became harder to argue that color films just didn’t look right, and black and white films went out of fashion quite quickly. I disagree strongly. Once again, no one ever considered equating, much less conflating, as the OP does, films and real life. People went to movies to \*escape \*real life. Audience members before the revolution in film style that happened in Italy after WWII, in France in the 1960s, and whose influence finally began to take hold in American films in the 70s, would never have lifted an eyebrow at the “garish and exaggerated” colors of “Golden Age Hollywood” Technicolor. You don’t eat out to get Hamburger Helper; in postwar America you didn’t go to the movies for kitchen-sink realism. It’s my understanding that any film that had the Technicolor trademark in its opening credits had a Technicolor advisor on set at all times, making sure that color wasn’t color; it was Technicolor. In other words, that exaggerated garishness you refer to was 113% intentional; its “inaccuracy” was not a failure of verisimilitude, it was exactly what everyone involved, filmmakers and filmgoers alike, wanted to see on the screen. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/73 "2009-06-01T19:46:52Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Bingo. **The Jazz Singer** was a sensation (It saved Warner Brothers from bankruptcy). People wanted to see sound films, so the studio provided it. It should be pointed out, perhaps, that “sensation” was \*all \*it was. It’s a terrible movie, and the only reason to see it–then or now–was the novelty of the few lines of synchronized dialog. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/74 "2009-06-01T19:58:45Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > I suspect that the absence of sound was seen as a much bigger issue than the absence of colour. They did various things to get round the absence of sound, including dialogue given in written form, and live music played to accompany the movie, but it was pretty clear that sound is a very important part of drama. Absolutely not. It was not seen as an “absence” of anything. It helps to try to imagine the mindset of the day: no one saw a silent film as a Will Ferrell movie with the sound turned off; it wasn’t \*missing \*anything. The historical context, obviously, is what came before, not after; they weren’t looking backward at an earlier technology, as many people in this thread are doing. Rather, in the context of the day, film–yes, even silent film–was seen as a great leap forward, not a half-step somewhere on the way to _Underworld: Rise of the Lycans_. Think of what films were called: _moving pictures._ If your paradigm included no such phenomenon–a picture was by definition something static; still and flat. But suddenly a photograph could _move_, could tell stories! Think of the possibilities! No one looked at this astonishing miracle of visual storytelling and thought, “Hmm, get back to me when they can talk.” Silent film was an incredible sensation, a worldwide phenomenon, an artistic medium that utterly perfected the art of visual storytelling: some of the greatest masterpieces of human creation are silent films. And none of them \*lacked \*sound, any more than Monet’s _Waterlilies_ lacks a soundtrack or \*Guernica \*lacks dialog. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/75 "2009-06-01T20:01:00Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > It’s my understanding that any film that had the Technicolor trademark in its opening credits had a Technicolor advisor on set at all times, making sure that color wasn’t color; it was Technicolor. In other words, that exaggerated garishness you refer to was 113% intentional Don’t blame Technicolor, Inc. or the Technicolor advisor. Natalie Kalmus, the color advisor on all Technicolor features made 1934–1949, fought the studios to discourage garish use of color, and to encourage moderation. She wrote: “A super-abundance of color is unnatural, and has a most unpleasant effect not only upon the eye itself, but upon the mind as well.” She recommended “the judicious use of neutrals” as a “foil for color” in order to lend “power and interest to the touches of color in a scene.” This so riled producer David O. Selznick during the production of _Gone With the Wind_ in 1939, that he wrote in a studio memo, > [@](#): > > [The] technicolor experts have been up to their old tricks of putting all sorts of obstacles in the way of real beauty. . . . We should have learned by now to take with a pound of salt much of what is said to us by the technicolor experts. . . . I have tried for three years now to hammer into this organization that the technicolor experts are for the purpose of guiding us technically on the [film] stock and not for the purpose of dominating the creative side of our pictures as to sets, costumes, or anything else. . . . If we are not going to go in for lovely combinations of set and costume and really take advantage of the full variety of colors available to us, we might just as well have made the picture in black and white. It would be a sad thing indeed if a great artist had all violent colors taken off his palette for fear that he would use them so clashingly as to make a beautiful painting impossible. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/76 "2009-06-01T20:04:27Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’m sure you meant to make some snarky point, but if you would suppress your knee-jerking for a moment, please consider that much of the actual footage of the D-Day invasion was in black-and-white. _The Longest Day_ used some of this footage. If the new parts of the movie were in color, the sudden and abrupt switch to black-and-white would be jarring. Tracing **Lissener** ’s quote back whence it came, I took it to mean that there exists a great deal of color stock footage from WWII. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/77 "2009-06-01T20:08:49Z")
Hmm, to each his own. I’ve seen _The Jazz Singer_ several times, and I enjoyed it, the whole sentimental, sock-it-home thing. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/78 "2009-06-01T20:23:30Z")
Doesn’t _The Jazz Singer_ feature the main actor in black-face? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/79 "2009-06-01T20:24:01Z")
> [@UncleRojelio](#): > > Tracing **Lissener** ’s quote back whence it came, I took it to mean that there exists a great deal of color stock footage from WWII. I know, but how much from D-Day itself? ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293/80 "2009-06-01T20:24:52Z")
> [@sassyfras](#): > > I tend to negatively prejudge movies that are in black and white, That’s funny, I actually _prefer_ movies in black & white. It’s easier for me to suspend belief. I also prefer movies where all the actors/actresses have died long ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-audiences-tolerate-b-w-movies-for-so-long/498293.md?page=5)