11. The development of color motion picture film changed entertainment and industry
Both 1939 films The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind are often and erroneously cited as the first feature films to be released in color (though only the sequences in Oz in the former are in color). Neither film was the first. Numerous films were released using the techniques of tinting and toning black and white films well before 1939 and continued to be into the 1950s. True color films using different types of film were produced in the early 1900s, including in documentaries as early as 1912 (With Our King and Queen in India). Regardless, color evolved slowly, in large part because many directors valued the use of black and white because it afforded the opportunity for more dramatic use of lighting and shadow in the final prints of their films. Many actors and actresses preferred it as well, believing that they photographed better in the format.
As noted, a sequence in the 1929 film The Broadway Melody was filmed in Technicolor, though the entire film was not. Another 1929 film, On With the Show, is credited as being the first feature-length film shot entirely in Technicolor, making its director, Alan Crosland, the first to make a film in the format (that is, in color) most widely accepted today. Possibly the most well-known film shot in Technicolor prior to 1939 was the preceding year’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, produced by David O. Selznick and employing several directors. Though color was a novel selling point for films at the time, and though critics gave it consistently good reviews, it lost money at the box office. The introduction of color film changed history, though it took quite some time to do so.