From an early stage, comedy producer Mack Sennett actively explored the use of natural color. After a first test with Technicolor’s two-color process #2, filmed on April 24, 1926 by a Sennett crew headed by director Del Lord, sequences in Technicolor #3 filmed by Ray Rennahan were inserted into eight two-reel comedies featuring the Sennett Bathing Girls, released between December 1927 and May 1929. Inspired by the novel possibilities of color, Sennett then reverted to the more affordable Multicolor process for the production of Jazz Mamas (Mack Sennett, June 1929), advertised as the first “all-talking, all-color, singing, dancing comedy”. For this musical comedy, Sennett technicians Paul Guerin, Arthur Blinn and cameraman Billy Williams collaborated with Multicolor inventor William T. Crespinel to shoot the film at Sennett’s new, state-of-the-art soundstage in Studio City, fully equipped and licensed for the RCA Photophone system since October 1928.

With all the technical expertise and facilities in place, Sennett then tried his hand at a natural color process under his own name. This research was facilitated by several key developments in the industry, including the special dye-filtered negative for bi-pack filming developed by Eastman Kodak, and the commercial availability of duplitized (double-coated) film from Agfa, Kodak and Dupont. After more than six months of testing, a huge investment in a color laboratory with printing machines and a chemical room, and the salaries for the cast and crew of an unsuccessful test film (Bulls and Bears, March 1930, filmed in color but released in B/W), Sennett was finally able to release Radio Kisses (May 1930) with sequences in Sennett-Color. Around the same time, Sennett’s chief technician Paul Guerin filed a patent application for a contact printer with two light sources on either side of the film gate, to enable printing on two sides of double-coated film. (Guerin, 1930)

In the time span of little over one year, between September 1930 and November 1931, Sennett produced at least eight shorts in Sennett-Color: six one-reel Mack Sennett Brevities and two two-reel comedies. These full-color, talking comedies explore the increased realism of color and sound for comic effect. Citing the tagline “nature’s reflection”, Sennett-Color was mainly used to display nature’s novelties, capturing the hues and shades of fauna and flora. The stories were filmed on colorful locations and structured like guided tours, touristic visits, or kid’s field trips, picturing comic encounters with specific species, places, and attractions. The typical aesthetics of a Mack Sennett Brevity short can be summed up as: nature’s colorful subjects pictured with color fidelity and synchronized with naturalistic sounds accompanied by expert explanations and songs.

From the start, Sennett made the Sennett-Color process available to the entire industry, reinstituting a dormant corporation and renaming it Mack Sennett Color Film Company, Ltd., on May 22, 1930. (Walker, 2010: p. 192) Trusting the potential of Sennett-Color to attract commissioned films, the company grouped all the assets that were of interest to commercial clients in an Industrial Film Division helmed by General Sales Manager C. W. McCann. This division offered the use of Sennett’s license for the RCA Photophone sound system, the Sennett-Color process, the state-of-the-art sound stages and other studio facilities in Studio City to outside producers in theatrical and nontheatrical circuits. The studio in fact proposed to operate as a service center to try tapping into extra channels of revenue. Still, only a handful of mostly poverty-row producers came forward and by the end of 1931 it had become clear that the continued investment in a minor two-color process like Sennett-Color was not financially viable. By the time the patent application was granted in 1932, all color activities had ceased and the color lab was dismantled in June 1932. 

The end of these color activities heralded the studio’s continued demise. Following cashflow problems that had been building up during the early Depression years, the investments for studio and sound equipment, overdue income from rentals, and the bankruptcy of distributor Paramount Publix Corporation, Mack Sennett Inc. saw no other option than to file for bankruptcy on December 12, 1933.