A two-colour additive process invented by Percy James Pearce and Anthony Bernardi in the United Kingdom.
Film Explorer
One version of the Talkicolor process printed separate red and blue colour records onto successive frames of a 35mm B/W print. The red frames were then dyed red and the blue frames remained B/W. When the film was projected, a crude colour image appeared on screen. This is believed to be a Talkicolor print, although it is not confirmed.
Courtesy of Brian Pritchard.
This is believed to be a Talkicolor print, although it is not confirmed. It is likely a test, or demonstration footage.
Courtesy of Brian Pritchard.
Identification
Unknown
B/W
Unknown
1
The film was projected at double speed through an alternating red and clear filter, the red record being projected through the red filter, the blue-green record being projected through the clear filter. An alternate version of the process was to dye the red record on the projection print red, and to leave the blue-green record B/W.
Unknown
Surviving print examples don’t contain a soundtrack.
Standard silent 35mm aperture: 24mm x 18mm (0.980 in x 0.735 in).
B/W, panchromatic.
Unknown
History
Talkicolor was developed by Percy James Pearce along with Dr Anthony Bernardi who was also involved in the development of Raycol. The process was funded mainly by the author Elinor Glyn through her company Elinor Glyn Ltd, run by her daughter Juliet Evangeline Williams and her husband Sir Rhys Williams, assisted by her other daughter, Lady Margot Dayson, all of whom were also involved in the development of Morganacolor. In 1929 Glyn decided to adapt one of her novels, Knowing Men, into a sound film. She had previously adapted it for silent film and so hired writer Edward Knoblock to rework the silent scenario for sound. The film, to be produced by a small syndicate company called Talking and Sound Films Ltd, was due to start shooting on 1 October 1929 and, by August, Glyn was considering making the film in colour, entering into discussions with Maurice Elvey and Raycol. Raycol agreed not only to allow Glyn to use the process free of charge but also to fund the production in order to publicise their process. By September this arrangement had broken down. Elvey insisted upon producing, a role that Glyn was doing herself, while Glyn insisted that the film be available in both colour and black and white, a decision with which Elvey did not agree. Lady Williams hired lawyers who found the Raycol patents to be unreliable. Looking around for an alternative, Rhys Williams signed a deal in September with Bernardi for the rights to use Talkicolor for two films, Knowing Men and The Price of Things (both 1931). Bernardi was bought out of his contract with Raycol and hired to develop the process, and a company, Talkicolor Ltd, was formally set up in September 1929, backed by Elinor Glyn Ltd.
As production of Knowing Men and The Price of Things continued, in January 1930 Sir Rhys Williams signed an agreement with United Artists (UA) to distribute the film internationally in both silent and sound versions, for which UA paid an advance of £15,000. Both films were family affairs. Glyn both wrote and produced Knowing Men (ending up in a bitter dispute with Edward Knoblock), while The Price of Things was directed by Juliet Williams and designed by Lady Dayson. Costumes for both were provided by designer Lucy Duff-Gordon, Glyn's sister. By August 1930 it was clear that the process was technically flawed. At a board meeting it was reported that the results were disappointing and that it was highly unlikely that the colour version of The Price of Things could ever be shown. Both films lost considerable sums of money, Knowing Men never making back the £15,000 which United Artists had advanced, and Talkicolor started retrenching by selling off assets and laying off staff. In September the company cancelled its agreements with Bernardi. By 1933 there was talk of winding up the company once the bookings on Knowing Men were officially closed. In 1937 Lady Williams wrote to the registrar of companies in Britain request that Talkicolor be dissolved.
[Reprinted from © Brown, Simon. (2012). “Technical Appendix”. In Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55, Sarah Street (ed.), pp. 283–4. London: British Film Institute, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Used with permission.]
Selected Filmography
A comedy – Elinor Glyn’s adaptation of her own novel, following her return from Hollywood to England. The film was probably developed in both colour and B/W versions.
A comedy – Elinor Glyn’s adaptation of her own novel, following her return from Hollywood to England. The film was probably developed in both colour and B/W versions.
Film directed by Juliet Williams, Elinor Glyn's daughter, who had a later career as a politician. It was supposed to be released both in sound and silent versions.
Film directed by Juliet Williams, Elinor Glyn's daughter, who had a later career as a politician. It was supposed to be released both in sound and silent versions.
Technology
The process used a bipack film in the camera. The front layer was sensitised to blue light and dyed orange to prevent blue and green rays from passing through to the second emulsion which recorded the red portion of the spectrum. The two negatives were separated and then printed successively onto positive stock, so that each frame of the red record alternated with each frame of the blue record. The film was then projected at double speed through an alternating red and clear filter, the red record being projected through the red filter, the blue-green record being projected through a clear filter. An alternate projection method was also suggested to dye the red record red, and to leave the blue-green record black and white. Which version was actually used is not known.
[Reprinted from © Brown, Simon (2012). “Technical Appendix”. In Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55, Sarah Street (ed.), pp. 283–4. London: British Film Institute, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Used with permission.]
References
Glyn, Elinor (n.d.). “Elinor Glyn Collection”. University of Reading Special Collections (UoR MS 4059).
Rhys-Williams, Juliet Evangeline (1901–03). “Rhys-Williams Collection”. London School of Economics British Library of Political and Economic Science (Rhys_Williams_J_16/2/01, 16/2/02, 16/2/03).
Street, Sarah (2012). Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Talkicolor Company (1929). BT 31/33126/242400 Talkicolor Company Ltd, National Archives.
Patents
N/A
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Authors
Simon Brown is Associate Professor of Film and Television at Kingston University, London, UK. He has written extensively on many aspects of film history and technology – including early, silent and British cinema, 3D and colour cinematography. His publications include the monograph Cecil Hepworth and the Rise of the British Film Industry 1899–1911 (University of Exeter Press, 2016) a Technical Appendix on colour film processes in Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900–1955 by Sarah Street (BFI Publishing, 2012) and the online article “Dufaycolor: The Spectacle of Reality and British National Cinema” (2002) – available at http://www.bftv.ac.uk/projects/dufaycolor.htm.
Oleksandr Teliuk is a film scholar, archivist and artist. As a film archivist and programmer, he worked at the Dovzhenko Center, Ukrainian State Film Archive. He was co-curator of film programmes and exhibitions at the Film Museum of Dovzhenko Center, including “VUFKU: Lost & Found” (2019); co-editor of books (Cinematographic Revision of Donbas [2017, 2018], Chornobyl (In)Visible [2017] and Ukrainian Film Critic Anthology of the 1920s [2018—2022]); curator of numerous film programmes of Ukrainian archival cinema at international film festivals. He is a graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation (2024).
The “History” and “Technology” sections, as well as the References are by Simon Brown, using text reprinted from the “Technical Appendix” of Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900–55, Sarah Street (ed.) (2012). All other text was written or compiled by Oleksandr Teliuk.
Brown, Simon & Oleksandr Teliuk (2024). “Talkicolor”. In James Layton (ed.), Film Atlas. www.filmatlas.com. Brussels: International Federation of Film Archives / Rochester, NY: George Eastman Museum.
