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Dave,
I can only speculate on part of your question... hand-tinting. I knew
photographers who were still hand-tinting photographic prints in the 1960's.
Low-cost color printing of photographs didn't come into being until then. If you
look at the photographic covers of LIFE magazine in the 1950's you'll note that
they are all black and white... as are all the photos inside the magazine. It
was only the painted or drawn graphic images that were printed in color. Of
course, there was no color film at all in 1922, so the original photograph had
to be in black and white. If you card is actually a photograph printed on
photographic paper, then it was certainly hand-tinted -- there was no other way
to create a "color photo" at the time. My guess is that is what you have. If
your card was an early example of offset printing, it's possible that they used
a hand-tinted photo for the original and printed that with colored inks... but
1922 seems a little too early for that to me.
As for one card being tinted and the title card not... in those days there
was no "standard" way of doing this kind of thing. They did it one way for one
film, and another way for a different film. Some times they would mix techniques
for the same film. It's almost impossible to say what they "officially" did for
a film this old. It's also possible, if the cards are photographs printed on
photographic paper, that they were originally issued in black and white
and later on at some point a collector decided to hand-tint
a couple of the cards just for fun. This was done a lot in the days of pre-color
film. People longed for color photographs long before there was such a thing as
color film... so they did it themselves. You could go down to a retail store
like Woolworth's and purchase over the counter a set of bottles of
photographic tints and brushes. Color film really didn't come into
common use until after World War II (although we have a couple of famous
exceptions, such as THE WIZARD OF OZ in 1939... which was groundbreaking).
I think the only way to know for sure would be to take them to a recognized
expert in early color photography and commercial photographic printing so they
could be examined hands-on to determine if the color is tint or actual printer's
ink.
-- JR
----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Rosen
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 20:13
Subject: [MOPO] Questions: Hand-tinting of early
lobbies... Hi, all:
I have a query that some of you may be able to help
me with. This isn't my area of specialty, in fact I only own two silent era
cards, but still I've wondered...
The two cards I have are the title card and a scene
card for the 1922 film The Man From Glengarry. Oddly, the scene card is tinted,
the title card is not.
Question #1: How do I tell if a card was in fact
hand-tinted? The tinted card doesn't look like it's had water colors applied but
I may be wrong. Are there tell-tale signs? Could the colors in fact be printed
on?
Question #2: How common would it be for a scene
card to be tinted and the title card left b&w? Seems if you were going to
tint any card in the set it would be the title card.
Any enlightenment would be appreciated, as
always.
Thanks,
Dave
Posteropolis
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- [MOPO] Questions: Hand-tinting of early lobbies... Dave Rosen
- Re: [MOPO] Questions: Hand-tinting of early lobbies... JR
- Re: [MOPO] Questions: Hand-tinting of early lobbies... michael king
- Re: [MOPO] Questions: Hand-tinting of early lobbies... Dave Rosen
