The following list comprises significant milestones in the development of photography technology.
The Good Earth is a 1937 American drama film about Chinese farmers who struggle to survive. It was adapted by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger, and Claudine West from the 1932 play by Owen Davis and Donald Davis, which was in itself based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. The film was directed by Sidney Franklin, with uncredited contributions by Victor Fleming and Gustav Machaty.
The Black Pirate is a 1926 American silent action adventure film shot entirely in two-color Technicolor about an adventurer and a "company" of pirates. Directed by Albert Parker, it stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, and Billie Dove. In 1993, The Black Pirate was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Wong Liu Tsong, known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Beverly of Graustark is a 1926 American silent romantic comedy film directed by Sidney Franklin and starring Marion Davies, Antonio Moreno, and Creighton Hale. The film's screenplay was written by Agnes Christine Johnston based on the novel by George Barr McCutcheon, and set in the fictional land of Graustark. The film features a final sequence in Technicolor. It was the first film by Sidney Franklin for MGM.
A lost film is a feature or short film in which the original negative or copies are not known to exist in any studio archive, private collection, or public archive. Films can be wholly or partially lost for a number of reasons. Early films were not thought to have value beyond their theatrical run, so many were discarded afterward. Nitrate film used in early pictures was highly flammable and susceptible to degradation. The Library of Congress began acquiring copies of American films in 1909, but not all were kept. Due to improvements in film technology and recordkeeping, few films produced in the 1950s or beyond have been lost.
Wong Tung Jim, A.S.C. (Chinese: 黃宗霑; August 28, 1899 – July 12, 1976), known professionally as James Wong Howe (Houghto), was a Chinese-born American cinematographer who worked on over 130 films. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was one of the most sought after cinematographers in Hollywood due to his innovative filming techniques. Howe was known as a master of the use of shadow and one of the first to use deep-focus cinematography, in which both foreground and distant planes remain in focus.
Mystery of the Wax Museum is a 1933 American pre-Code mystery-horror film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, and Frank McHugh. It was produced and released by Warner Bros. and filmed in two-color Technicolor; Doctor X and Mystery of the Wax Museum were the last two dramatic fiction films made using this process.
International House is a 1933 American pre-Code comedy film starring Peggy Hopkins Joyce and W. C. Fields, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and released by Paramount Pictures. The tagline of the film was "The Grand Hotel of comedy". It is a mixture of comedy and musical acts tied together by a slim plot line, in the style of the Big Broadcast pictures that were also released by Paramount during the 1930s. In addition to some typical comedic lunacy from W. C. Fields and Burns and Allen, it provides a snapshot of some popular stage and radio acts of the era. The film includes some risqué pre-Code humor. The cast also features Cab Calloway with his orchestra and Bela Lugosi.
Winton C. Hoch, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. He was earlier a laboratory technician who contributed to the development of Technicolor before becoming a cinematographer in 1936. His understanding of the color process quickly led to his being hailed as one of Hollywood's premier color cinematographers. Hoch never made a film in black and white.
Gold Diggers of Broadway is a 1929 American pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Winnie Lightner and Nick Lucas. Distributed by Warner Bros., the film is the second all-talking, all-Technicolor feature-length film.
Color motion picture film refers both to unexposed color photographic film in a format suitable for use in a motion picture camera, and to finished motion picture film, ready for use in a projector, which bears images in color.
Sidney Arnold Franklin was an American film director and producer. Franklin, like William C. deMille, specialized in adapting literary works or Broadway stage plays.
The Prizma Color system was a color motion picture process, invented in 1913 by William Van Doren Kelley and Charles Raleigh. Initially, it was a two-color additive color system, similar to its predecessor, Kinemacolor. However, Kelley eventually transformed Prizma into a bi-pack color system that itself became the predecessor for future color processes such as Multicolor and Cinecolor.
Anna May Wong was an American actress of Chinese heritage, who grew up in a culturally diverse neighborhood adjacent to Chinatown, Los Angeles. Her father believed in exposing his family to the creative arts, and often took them to see traditional Chinese stage productions. Young Anna, however, was fascinated by the emerging film industry in the area, and would fantasize herself as a movie actress like Pearl White or Mary Pickford. Her daydreams began to look like an achievable goal when local Baptist minister James Wang, who often worked with the film productions, recommended her as an extra in the Alla Nazimova silent production of The Red Lantern. Wong was only 14 years old, and eventually left school before graduating. While still a teenager, she was cast in the lead role of Lotus Flower in The Toll of the Sea.
His Supreme Moment is a 1925 American silent drama film with sequences filmed in Technicolor, starring Blanche Sweet and Ronald Colman, directed by George Fitzmaurice, and produced by Samuel Goldwyn. Anna May Wong has a small role as a harem girl appearing in a play. The film is now considered lost.
Natural color was a term used in the beginning of film and later on in the 1920s, and early 1930s as a color film process that actually filmed color images, rather than a color tinted or colorized movie. The first natural color processes were in the 1900s and 1910s and were two color additive color processes or red and green missing primary color blue, one additive process of time was Kinemacolor. By the 1920s, subtractive color was mostly in use with such processes as Technicolor, Prizma and Multicolor, but Multicolor was mostly never in use in the late 1920s, Technicolor was mostly in use. The only one who cared to mess with Multicolor was William Fox, probably because Multicolor was more cheaper of a process and at the time in 1929 William Fox was in debt. The difference between additive color and subtractive color were that an additive color film required a special projector that could project two components of film at the same time, a green record and a red record. But additive color didn't required a special projector, the two pieces of film were chemically formed together and was projected in one strip of film.
Technicolor is a family of color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades.
Sally is a 1925 American silent romantic comedy film starring Colleen Moore. The film was directed by Alfred E. Green, produced by Moore's husband John McCormick, and based on the musical Sally written by Guy Bolton and Clifford Grey that was adapted to film by June Mathis. The play was a Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. production written specifically for Marilyn Miller that opened on December 21, 1920, at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway. It ran for 570 performances.
Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words is a 2010 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Yunah Hong. It chronicles the life and career of the first Asian American Hollywood film star, Anna May Wong. The film later aired on KPBS (TV) May 23, 2014.
