Century-Old Technicolor Once Ruled Hollywood’s Color Palette

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December 10th, 2015

The Technicolor process involved a camera with a prism beam splitter that filtered lights onto black and white film strips — one for green, one for blue and one for red.

DAVID DUPREY / ASSOCIATED PRESS

If you read L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” there is Dorothy, a Cowardly Lion, a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, Toto and a pair of silver slippers.

Hollywood took some artistic liberty with that detail in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz,” where Dorothy, of course, wears ruby slippers.

The change to shoes that popped was made because the studios were using the reigning color technology of the time: Technicolor.

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